Scene #9650: Meet the Launchers

Owner	Pose
Mag	Fortunately for all new visitors today, there isn't much of a walk between the newly activated warpgate you're told to arrive through and the Launcher family home. Even better, the gate itself is hosted indoors, in the west wing of the Pannam branch of the Society Museum. This means that when you step out, you're first met with a momentarily startled receptionist in a grey suit who passes out small Society pamphlets (freshly printed!) to anyone who will take them, and who guides you politely to the main lobby and from there the door to get outside. Pannam Town isn't that big, it turns out. As soon as you step out of the Society building, a look to your left down the gravel street gives you a narrow view out over the fence around this part of town and into the local hillsides, dotted with tall but somewhat sparse pine trees. Panning back to your right from there gives you a good summary of what must be town center; maybe 30 smallish buildings, brick and shingle construction in a style mostly reminiscent of early 1900's America... Although strangely with a layout to the overall town that might give off a feeling more like that of the long dusty street flanked by shopfronts in a cowboy movie. The gravel paths aren't dramatically dusty, and the air smells like rain isn't infrequent here though. The whole town might feel a little odd, given the fact that despite people clearly having settled here for the long haul, the streetsides and alleys are kind of cluttered with containers, deck chairs, shaded tables and seemingly public benches, almost like the town collectively just had too many pieces of furniture to find a good place for everything... One shop has tons of pipes coming out of the roof and the side walls emitting steam, its front window shuttered with crates and barrels (and a stray bike tire?) in the way, with a blue signboard that says "Custom". Further right is a more homey-looking one whose sign says "Shop" on top and "ITEM" underneath, with a blue bench out front and some flower planters hanging by the door. All the way to the right (and in the direction you have to walk) is a two-floor building with saloon doors and slatted windowshutters, the sign reading in small orange cursive "Heaven's Cafe" at the top, and then "Milk" in larger red cursive. It doesn't seem like a literal milk bar... You can probably smell the coffee from outside at this time of day. On your way up the street, past the cafe and out the north side of town past an admittedly slightly intrusively parked RV trailer, you find yourselves outside of the town border only in the sense that you've crossed through the thin veil between public space and technically private land. The gravel path leads past another welcoming blue bench and a wooden roadsign, indicating "Left: Pannam Airfield" and "Right: Launcher Residence". Not that you need the sign; they're close enough to town that you could see the top of the roof amongst the trees as soon as you left! The rest of the walk affords you just long enough to get comfortable with the crunch of gravel underfoot and the chirping of birds, before you arrive.
Mag	The Launcher family home is a comfortable-looking old two floor brick house, with small balconies above the front door and the west wall. The property is surrounded with a short brick partition and a metal fence atop that, but there is no gate at the front and you are free to stroll right into the yard unimpeded. The yard is maybe 100 feet across, with a slope on the right leading to the garage and some short stone steps leading up to the front door. The grass has seen slightly better days, but it's still green (if patchy). Up against the house and underneath the french door windows there are about a dozen flower planters, half of which are monotype with daisies, bunchberry flowers, or wild roses. Outside the fence on either side are neatly aligned pine trees and what looks like a small water-tower and a bulky generator unit, though one of the near corners has some stuff heaped in it... Some pipes, a metal lamp-hood, an old water-heater and about half of a bicycle. It turns out, you don't even need to knock! You can see a petite woman with bristly red hair and pinkish freckly cheeks seated on the inside of one of the windowsills as you walk up, and after a moment of eye contact she turns away to call "Heeeey! They're here already, get over here ya doofus!" When Mag doesn't answer immediately, it ends up being someone else that opens the door in his stead while the girl scoffs and rolls her eyes at the lack of response. Standing at easily six feet plus, Gre meets you at the doorway with one arm folded behind his back, dressed like he hasn't quite caught on to the fact he's meant to be retired from butlering; a blue tailcoat and red waistcoat over a white shirt, with a stiff little red bowtie, black longpants and polished brown loafers. His eyes seem to be closed beneath his big bushy grey eyebrows and his mouth is almost invisible behind his broom-bristle moustache, but his cheeks curve upward so noticeably that his entire face seems warm and beatifically pleased regardless. "My goodness, what a wonderful group of guests! To think the day has again come to host such a lively gathering within this household... Please, do come inside. You may call me Gre. Should you need anything at all, you need only ask!" He seems really happy to be hosting for this many people, and the joyous belly-laugh he allows himself as he turns from the door to lead you into the living room is just more proof. "I will go and impress upon the Master a sense of urgency, but please do make yourselves at home. In the meantime, Master Linear, Pepper, Chain, would you keep our guests company?" For a guy in his 60's, Gre sure walks with a purpose; he practically trots toward the back of the living room and off to the right, through a door that seems like it probably leads into the garage you saw outside.
Mag	The living room has some end-tables and displays with vases, a short hall to your left that leads to someone's room, a staircase at the far end, and a little nook alongside the stairs with a wall-mounted rotary phone, a grandfather clock and a record player. There's a large plaid-stripe rug over the center of the wood flooring, and a pair of linen-upholstered blue couches with cute white floral embroidery on the seat cushions, flanking a wide ovular glass coffee table. Seated on the rightmost couch are two blonde women, one in maybe her mid-20's with curly hair, distressed jeans and a matching denim jacket that she seems disinclined to button up. The other is a few years younger with straighter hair, wearing mini-shorts that you almost can't see underneath the bottom hem of a sunny-yellow oversized hoodie; with the hood raised atop her head, you can see it has dog ears and a big pair of cartoony eyes sewn in. The girl in the hoodie seems a little shyer, but she still lifts a sleeve-engulfed hand to wave while the one wearing all the denim unfolds her legs to sit forward. Meanwhile, the red-haired girl from the window sill hops down and stuffs her hands into the pockets of her zipped up black jacket, looking at most of you with the first hints of real scrutiny you've felt since arriving despite approaching to be social. Her voice is a little high and sharp even she's relaxed. "Sup. The dummy'll be here in a sec probably. I'm Chain." Sounding more at-ease with a smoother, flirtier tone, the tallest woman follows, "Mm! I wasn't expecting a full-on girls' night! The name's Pepper Box, sweethearts. And this is Linear- say hi, darling." Pepper pats the girl next to her on the head and wiggles her a bit, and Linear raises her arms with slack wrists so that her hoodie's sleeves droop when she wiggles them side to side. "H-... Hello. It's nice to meet you." Linear speaks a lot more softly than the others, but she's not having any trouble making eye contact so it's probably not that she's scared of people or crowds at least. Actually, she might be staring at Skipper; having never seen a person that resembles an animal before, she can't help but try to mentally compare them to a stuffed animal, but her expression refuses to budge no matter how cute her thoughts get. Pepper makes a few encouraging little hums, wiggling Linear's head a little more before gesturing at the couches- both of them, even scootching both herself and Linear over to the side a little more with a push of her hips. "So, it's not every day the whole gang gets together! What do you cuties wanna do with the opportunity? Any burning questions? Exciting requests~?" Chain, meanwhile, sighs overdramatically and steps over to the couch-side and hops up to sit on the arm of it rather than the seat, leaving that spot open. "I know Mag's looking for jobs, but uuuuuugh it's been so boring lately... I've done nothing but deliver mail for weeks... There's barely ever even a monster along the way."
Skipper	> easily six feet plus Skipper (three foot nine, if you generously include the ears) has their smile flicker for just a moment. Why does everyone need to be so tall??? Oh thank goodness, Skipper's led in to where there's people with more sensible heights. "Hello! I'm Skipper Whiskersmith. It's nice to meet you." Oh no. Skipper's seen the sort of look that Linear has, before. "Um. I assure you. I'm real." "So um," Skipper realizes that that might have been a bit of a non-sequitur, and goes for the topic change. "Requests! Yes. I'm actually looking for some training, in whatever I can get. Heroing specifically, but just... whatever's useful could work." A spot on the couch opens! Skipper goes for it.
Mag	Skipper hopping up onto the couch beside Pepper does at least put someone slightly in the way of a comfortable staring line from Linear, but Linear still ends up slowly reaching across Pepper's lap to offer a... Handshake? Okay, maybe inside her head it's just an excuse to touch Skipper in a way that isn't impolite, but... Well, it probably isn't impolite, just a bit odd. If Skipper takes her hand, she's very gentle and at least frees them before long, though she seems to be making some kind of joke when she nods and says, "Mhm. Real." Pepper lays an arm over the back of the couch behind Skipper, but there's enough difference in their sizes that she's not taking up too much of their personal space in the process. "'Heroing', huh? Well cutie, it sounds like you've got something in common with dear little Mag then. It wasn't really our line of work before, strictly speaking, but when something happens to you by accident enough times sometimes you can get a taste for it you know? For training though..." Pepper sways her head to either side while she thinks, humming some soft tune to help jiggle her braincells into place. "I guess normally it wouldn't be a big deal to bring you through a ruin, but most of the local ones are already pretty done and dusted. Maybe I should put a line out and see how things look around Museville lately... Or have Mag do it~." Chain scoffs a little, but it seems to be at Pepper more than Skipper. "If anything works, get the dork to ramble at you about his repair work. That's basically all he's done for a few days, is pick up busted ovens and generators and stuff."
Regulus	Regulus is actually feeling a little gloomy after her last talk with Lilian, though she also feels like a pressure's off her shoulder, but she's also anxious for Schneider-related reasons so really, she's feeling a mess, but she's not going to make that be a today problem, she's decided, because it's not like Mag and his family know about any of that shit! And also, like, he is definitely a human right? It's a friend opportunity. And then she'll have two human friends and nobody will be able to tell her she doesn't have human friends anymore (the other human friend is Rita, of course). She's brought her bag with her which has a slew of records since she THINKS she offered to bring some over, and APPLe has come along with her who helpfully takes a Society pamphlet so that Regulus won't eat it in front of the poor receptionist. "Do you think they'll mind if I pilfer one of those extra chairs?" Regulus asks APPLe. "Would look nice and spiffy right in front of the lake." "Mm, perhaps we best get to know the people here first." Regulus is the captain and it's APPLe's job to navigate the captain away from whirlpools and typhoons. "Wow...! That's HEAVEN'S cafe, APPLe, we should check it out!" "Did the Captain save any money at all to pay for the meal?" "Do they ask for money here?" Regulus wonders aloud. "I'm sure they'll understand if we admit we didn't know." "Did the captain forget that it took some time for Mag to pay off a family debt? I'd hate to imagine--" "I get it, I get it!" They approach the Launcher residence and Regulus grins at the woman, throwing her a big wave but it's APPLe who bobs gentlemanly at Gre first. "You must be---ahh, yes, Gre. My name is APPLe. It is a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for hosting us." "Yeah!" Regulus beams and then looks to APPLe. "He seems right friendly!" They make their way inside. "Nice to meetcha Chain!" Regulus chirps, reminding herself to not use the expression 'that's off the chain' in case it makes her feel bad. "I'm Regulus, a rocking pirate, at your service!" She's probably not actually looking for work though. "Good to see you too, Pepper, Linear." ''It's been so boring lately...'' Regulus is immediately sympathetic. "Well if you're looking for something to do, I bet there's someone in the Watch who can find you some excitement."
Rita Ma	Rita's eyebrows climb her forehead as she walks through town, chatting on her phone. A milk bar?? They have those? ... I wonder if I can drink milk. I haven't tried it. It's from animals, and sometimes milk is 'raw', right? What makes it raw, anyway? Is it pink before you-- PHONE: Regulus quietly, "Um, I told Lilian you were a human friend of mine, I just realized maybe you were keeping your human-ness a secret. I'm really sorry if I spilled the beans..." Rita's thoughts are interrupted by cough-choking sharply into her hand and waving off a concerned look from the townsfolk. . . . She's done with the phone conversation by the time she arrives properly, and leans down to investigate the potted flowers with a bright-calm enthusiasm. Rita is dressed in a little springish white jacket, dark shirt and leggings, and green pleated skirt; with her shiny leather flats, she looks like a peppy slightly-upper-class ordinary-blonde-girl. And then the door opens, and-- Oh no it's a butler. Stay calm, Rita, you've encountered this species before! She gives a commiserating look to Skipper, completely misinterpreting the reason for their stare. "It's good to meet you, Mr. Gre!" She won't be outdone in etiquette. "I'm Rita. Mr. Mag did mention he's out of the house a lot. It's a shame if not many people get to see your hard work." And then, inside... "Hi, Ms. Chain! Miss... Linear?" Rita can't help but stare at her for a moment too. Maybe it's in awestruck adoration at how cute she is; maybe it's in recognition of someone who might be a younger form of herself. Rita scoots closer, holds out her hand just above Linear's head while she forgets to sit down, and then glances between Linear's eyes and Chain's for some kind of permission. This is novel. She hasn't often been the pat-giver, before...
Mag	At the door It's no surprise that Gre finds APPLe to be strange and novel, but he's the perfect image of a polite gentleman who would never dream of making a guest feel singled out. He only smiles, dips his head respectfully, and replies "It is certainly a pleasure to host you all in turn." Rita's politeness is recieved similarly fondly, and Gre laughs softly at her thoughtful observation. "It's no shame at all, Miss Rita. Truly, it is a joy to be the pillar of the household; Masters Mag and Linear fill me with hope every single day. Oftentimes I even worry that there will be nothing left I might do for them, with how they've striven to adopt many of the household's tasks themselves..." ... Does Gre actually know he's meant to be retired? Presently Regulus's greetings to the others get a comfortable sleeve-drooped wave from Linear, a loose-wristed wave from Pepper, and... A little shoulder-shimmy from Chain, whose hands are still in her pockets. "Heya. Man, I sure hope so. If nothing else, I need somewhere new to joyride... Anyway, you're the 'funny DJ girl' huh? D'you get like, donations? How does that work?" After the moment of attention to Skipper, Linear doesn't take long to pick up on Rita's attention on her next. The way she tilts her head up to try and look at Rita's face with the edge of her hood just a little bit in the way of her eyes, the way the soft sewn-on ears waver a little with the movement, the quarter-lidded almost sleepy vibe to her face as her mouth opens just a little bit without saying anything... Linear is, for better or worse, very cute. By some perspectives, perhaps even worryingly so; she almost looks a little bit lost when Rita hand-hovers over her, not flinching or pulling away but actively doing all kinds of mental math on why exactly this is happening. Chain sees Rita look her way searchingly, but just shoulder-shrugs at her like she's saying 'Why ask me?' Eventually, Linear just says, "It's okay." She even reaches up to adjust one of her hoodie's ears so that Rita's palm can land right between them without squishing. She's a kind of sponge, this girl.
Vantablitz Remnants	All things considered, Ahn really cannot get a decent picture of how big any town is. A long time ago, she lived in a normal-sized big city. Nowadays, she lives in a bunker slash science facility, up a mountain from a village for maybe nine hundred people. Her last few rounds of activity were in The City, which is the size of a country and has seven billion people, the Union Busan, which was a ship and had perhaps ten thousand, the Motherlobe, which was a survival scenario with ten people in a single office, and Chicago in the 1920s, which is back where she kinda started. Pannam Town is just . . . "Wow. It's kinda nice here! I was expecting more like, cottages or something? That guy was talking about dungeons and traps and stuff." Ahn is ten minutes late as usual, and then heinously distracted by a shop that just says ITEM; like an honest to god Item Shop in real life, and there are no people she can talk to who would get why that's just fascinating. Five minutes inside, just to look around, is actually forty-five minutes of unmedicated perusal and questions. . . . . . . . . "Oh gosh oh gosh I'm sorry I totally got held up on-- oh I know it's not important or anything aaaah I'm sorry!" Disaster! Everyone's going to be so mad at her! Ahn has to bow at least three times to the butler on entry, all the way down to thirty degrees like some kind of anime character (by her standards anyways) and scooch inside like if she's fast enough she can dodge all of the guns with bullets that are going to be shot at her for screwing up. "I brought-- Stuff!" she blurts out, waving emphatically at the old military backpack she's shoved an entire plastic icebox inside, which rattles when she hefts it.
Skipper	Skipper settles in. That not everyone can stare at them from this vantage point on the couch, that seems like a win in their book! > "If anything works, get the dork to ramble at you about his repair work." "Oh can you fix ovens? Ours has been having problems..." > "Well if you're looking for something to do, I bet there's someone in the Watch who can find you some excitement." "Um, treasure the boring moments if you have them, I guess? If it's not too... forward of me to say that, I mean. Though if you do need something to do, my world's dealing with a monster problem..." Whatever thought would come next is cut off as Ahn bursts through the door. There's no reaction from Skipper, save for confusion. "... Oh? Um, hello. My name's Skipper Whiskersmith?" It comes out more like a question. > "I brought-- Stuff!" "Stuff!" repeats Skipper excitedly, sitting up, giving Ahn their full attention. "What do you have?"
Regulus	APPLe is always happy to make new friends, especially those in a similar position as his, and he's pretty understanding of someone 'being retired' while not really 'being retired' at all. Regulus gives APPLe a cheery little smile and offers him a hi-five, which she receives, and then a low-five, which APPLe also reciprocates, and then she hip bumps him back up into the air and then swing each other around in a circle for a bit before Regulus lets go and APPLe is sent spinning into the air above her head, which seems to have been the plan all along. "Grooving." REgulus declares proudly. ''I brought-- Stuff!'' "And I brought recooords...!" Regulus starts pulling out a truly unreasonable amount of records that have been stuffed into her bag, truly unreasonable for the fact that she seems incapable of actually zipping her bag up. She finds a reasonable place to place them down and does so--so Gre can check them out later, presumably. "I wasn't sure you were going to make it for a minute there, Ahn!" She offers Ahn a hi-five too. "Glad you could though!" She gives her another similarly cheery smile. She doesn't seem to think twice about Skipper's presence, at least, and looks over to Rita. "Well I knew you were making it, Rita, you just said you were coming. Pretty charming place isn't it? What do you think of it so far?" "They gave us a pamphlet." APPLe ventures dangerously. "Oh um--... Well why read about it when we could find out ourselves by hitting the town later?"
Rita Ma	Oh wow, Linear's a master of her craft. The little ear-shift for optimal petting... "Oh, um, thank you," Rita says, realizing with only slight awkwardness that perhaps she shouldn't even have asked. Pat, pat... ... Ahn enters, and for a reason she can't possibly explain even to herself, Rita freezes mid-patting like she's been caught. (Is it because, by being the one to give the pats, she's somehow been defeated?) "Miss Ahn! I was just--" Nothing. Her hand flexes, and then drops to her side, and she pivots to sit next to Linear with her hands in her lap. "Trying to answer some questions for Ms. Pepper and Ms. Linear." Skipper's already asking what Ahn brought, so tht's some further heat bled off. Whew. "Is Mr. Mag busy, right now? And... 'Museville' is the next town over?" Rita strikes up with Pepper. Her finger taps her own cheek. "You've got ruins, but you're putting your exploring work aside for a little while. You've got monsters, but it seems like they aren't a really big problem for people, ordinarily?" Exactly who she can talk about the Watch to here, openly, isn't clear to Rita. Is Chain in on it? Is Gre? She edges towards being a little conservative. "Do any of you have diving experience? I've been thinking of fixing up an underwater structure in my world into being a, um, a kind of base. I know Ms. Ahn could help, but I don't want to leave all the repairs to her..." And then to Regulus: "The milk bar seemed really interesting. I've never seen doors like--" Rita mimes swinging Western-style saloon doors with her hands. "--before. It's really pretty, and I love the things they do with scrap metal. Um..." ... Rita's beginning to feel self-conscious that she didn't actually read the pamphlet too. Fuck.
Mag	Ahn's panic is at least fairly unwarranted; Linear looks curious about the icebox but doesn't comment on her lateness, Pepper just fans her hand loosely in Ahn's direction from the couch dismissively while soothing, "It's fine, it's fiiiine! Come sit down and get comfy~!" Chain ends up mostly inadvertently being the closest thing to a critic, putting on a bit of a terse tone without locking eyes with Ahn. "Geez, calm down!" She even takes her hands out of her pockets just to put her fists on her hips imperiously, then lifting one back up to point at a spot on the couch. "Go on, go, siddown! It's fine!" She's... A bit too loud, but at least she's only insisting on something pretty unremarkable. Eventually after a few minutes, Gre returns from the garage with Mag, who has his hand on the back of his head a little sheepishly. He must've gotten too tied up in a personal project or something, because it looks like Gre had to chide him a little. He's jacketless and gloveless, but the cheap looking green T-shirt he's wearing looks like it was just changed into- he had oil on the other one he was wearing, so it seemed polite. He does happen to be the only one here actually wearing their Cyframe right now too, which means you can see what looks like a folding metal bar mounted to his shoulderblade right through the shirt, with a big green folding-knife-case sort of thing tucked against his back on the end of it. "I get it, I get it, geez... Hey everyone, I thought I could wrap something up before you got here, and I got distracted and- well, anyway. I'm Mag," he reintroduces, before emphasizing, "Mag Launcher! I hope everyone's doing well today. I'm not really used to this kinda get-together, but since it's kind of a work thing and kind of just a hangout..." Gre is politely stood beside him, intially silent and still with his eyes closed for whatever reason. But, after Mag waffles a little too long, Gre softly clears his throat. "Master Mag, I might advise you and your friends to share about yourselves. Perhaps begin with things that may further your hope for new opportunities to be of assistance?" "Right, right. That makes sense. Thanks Gre." "Of course, I am happy to be of assistance. I believe I will prepare to serve lunch; should anything be required of me, I am but a room away." Gre is speaking more to the rest of the room than to Mag with that comment, but Mag still nods and steps over to join the group. If anyone's still looking for a spot to sit he makes a kind of ushering gesture with his hands, saying "Go ahead, guests have dibs!" while he lowers himself toward the floor on the other side of the glass table. There's no chair there, but the mechanical arm on his back unfolds and a white hand emerges from the end, arching down to plant its palm on the ground where he can just kind of lean back against the side of the casing.
Mag	Chain doesn't even let him get settled before she's pointing at Skipper and telling Mag, "Hey. Their oven's on the fritz." She sounds like she's trying to pressure him now that she knows there's something she could fight; she won't be doing any treasuring of boredom, no siree. Mag makes a moment of eye contact, double-blinks at Skipper for the obvious reason, then plays it off by letting his eyes wander over the rest of the group- though he ends up trying to cover a laugh when he sees Rita and Linear. "Okay, an oven, that's fine. I can take a look at that later. I guess, to speed through the overview, 'Team Launcher' used to be an adventuring group. Adventurer's like, the name for people who work for the Society, not just a general thing. As far as what we can actually do, most of us are pretty good in a scrap. Cyframes are pretty powerful, and we've toughened up a lot. Linear isn't a Cyframe user, but..." Mag spends a moment hesitating, looking at Linear until they make eye contact like he's trying to double-check something, but she doesn't seem to have a strong feeling about whatever it is so he carries on. "... She has powers. So she can heal people, and make us a whole lot stronger. It gets a little weirder than that too, but y'know, trying to speed through and all. Lesse... Chain and Pepper used to be solo adventurers, so they're especially focused on combat, but all of us have been in the game long enough that we can find our way around pretty well underground. Pepper and my Cyframes are good at dealing with obstacles, Chain's lets her fly until she starts getting sleepy." "Yeah, which means I get stuck on deliveries all the time." "Ohhh shut yer trap, you were just fine with it when you started." "Anyway, I know machines really well, even weirder ones, since I've fiddled with the robots we've found in the ruins before and I grew up with my Cyframe, and all. Gre taught me how to fly a plane, though it might be a little tricky to get the Comet or the Sea Otter through a warpgate on short notice... I guess it's worth noting, we usually work in a team of three. Pepper and Chain swap in and out, since that's the number we're used to, and sometimes Pepper's busy with... Hobbies." "Don't make me sound so suspicious, Mag... I have perfectly wholesome interests." "It's... It's not like I'm not busy too! I just make time because I'm so nice. Dweeb." "... So anyway, does that help? We can answer questions but I feel like I've already talked a lot, and I don't really know much about you all yet! Regulus, Ahn, Rita, Skipper..." He kind of trails off into mental-noting everyone's names by hearing from proximity, though ironically he only seems to be missing APPLe's name. When Rita plops down next to Linear, she doesn't seem to percieve any reason for the embarrassment and instead just assumes it's now Her Turn; Linear reaches up to pat Rita on the head, slowly disturbing and then gently smoothing out her hair mostly with fingertips against her scalp rather than the palm. She, of course, is petting Rita like a cat, because that's just what she knows how to do. Fortunately, Rita having questions to follow up on Mag's summary is actually a huge relief for the fella, who waits for Pepper to answer Rita before elaborating.
Mag	"Mm, Museville is a few hours away by train, so it's not too far away, but it's not right next door either. But yep! I still take adventurer gigs here and there on my own, but the well's drying up pretty badly around Pannam Town you know? But you're right darling, monsters generally don't make their way far out of the ruins... Sometimes they can, but that usually means there's a new ruin that nobody's explored yet! So it's a bit of a good sign, really. Lots of the gadgets and gizmos people use nowadays came from studying what comes from the ruins, you know? And everyone's always hoping we'll find something new and exciting." About diving, Mag says "Oh, I guess not a ton? But we've got respirators and other stuff like that to help with that sort of thing, and swimming isn't that hard for most of us. Magnus gives me lots of leverage when I don't have good footing, and Chain's Griffin works at least a little bit underwater since the jets aren't really flame. We could totally pitch in." Pepper seems pleased by Rita's interest in the bar-slash-cafe though, a big devilish smirk crawling up her cheeks along with a giggle seeping out of her. "It's my favorite little spot for miles, y'know~? It isn't really a 'milk bar' though, that's just a sort of joke the owner is really fond of. They serve coffee in the mornings and then the hard stuff in the evenings; I'm sure they'd be happy to make your acquaintance at any time though cutie."
Skipper	> "...and I don't really know much about you all yet! Regulus, Ahn, Rita, Skipper..." "Well..." What do you say in these situations? Do you desperately try to sell yourself, be humble, or give your honest assessment of yourself (functionally equivalent to extra-humble)? "I fight monsters and I save people from monsters?" Skipper offers. "And... I'm a farmer, and a bit of a blacksmith... though mostly I've only been working on farm tools and lately swords..." "I'm also working in a team of three, usually. I can bring them by next time, but didn't want to have things be too crowded..." "... Also, did you say you could fly a plane?" Skipper leans forward a bit. "Does it have extra seats? How fast can it go? Does it do one of those barrel rolls?"
Vantablitz Remnants	'What do you have?' Ahn, eager to have the in, puts the backpack down in a hurry. She clearly thinks nothing at all of how often she carries around military surplus (actually it's just that all the guys who would have owned it are dead), because she doesn't look at all embarrassed about removing a generic plastic icebox from it and rotating it twice before figuring out which side is the top before putting it down. She even does a lame little 'tada!' when removing the top, revealing a plastic divider one quarter of the way that's stacked on one side with sixteen kinds of (hopefully not flat) soda and a rather substantial pile of assorted fruits and vegetables she proudly claims "Came off the stem this morning!" Girl you grow so many and yet you hardly ever eat them. 'I wasn't sure you were going to make it for a minute there, Ahn!' "Geh!" Ahn stiffens up. "I wasn't in danger or anything! It was just--" Quick. Think of an obvious excuse. "Lotus! You know how it is!" 'Miss Ahn! I was just--' "Hi Rita!" Ahn chirps, waving brightly at the only person in the room looking more nervous than her. 'I know Ms. Ahn could help, but I don't want to leave all the repairs to her...' "Nonono! It's fine!" Ahn whines. "You only ever asked me one time before! It's really not a huge deal!" She only breaks from her fussing when an older (younger) woman tells her sit down, which results in sitting down so immediately that she may as well have said 'yes ma'am'. Even though it's on the spot Chain pointed at. That's the guest spot, clearly. 'I get it, I get it, geez... Hey everyone, I thought I could wrap something up before you got here, and I got distracted and-' "Same!" Ahn suddenly blurts out! "I mean-- Not that I got distracted! But! So it's fine!" Hearing Mag's name suddenly reminds Ahn to introduce herself too. "Oh! Ahn! That's me!" she says, awkward-style. "Nice to meet you!" 'Master Mag, I might advise you and your friends to share about yourselves.' Ahn makes a quiet "Guah." noise and swallows, pointing her gaze at the floor with her hands on her knees. Oh god why did she never think about this? She keeps nodding along with Mag's explanation, trying to not look like she'd hoping everyone will forget about her turn. "Right right! I remember you talking about that! It sounds really interesting!" 'Hey. Their oven's on the fritz.' "Oh I can probably handle that." Ahn says. Escape route spotted. 'Don't make me sound so suspicious, Mag... I have perfectly wholesome interests.' 'I don't really know much about you all yet! Regulus, Ahn, Rita, Skipper...' Ah shit. Caught. How do they do this at workplaces?
Vantablitz Remnants	"Oh. Uh, my name's Ahn, like I said. I'm-- well I guess you wouldn't know the country. Uh, I guess how old I am doesn't matter either." Ahn scrunches her eyes and presses her fingers to her temples, telling herself 'you are bombing it out here!' until she can think in a hurry. "I live on a mountain? With one roommate. We're outside a pretty small village. I know a little about a lot of things, so I help out? Um, I mean like I picked up stuff about . . ." She starts counting on her fingers. "Botany, agriculture, medicine, electronics, plumbing, metalwork, engines, construction, virology, nuclear fusion, genetic engineering, kungfu, surgery, rock climbing, parkour . . ." She pauses, then throws up her hands instead. "Really though, just a tiny bit! Not much! So don't expect a lot!" Maybe add cooking to the list. Or cleaning up.
Skipper	Skipper is instantly enamored by the fruit Ahn offers. "(Oh this is so juicy...)" There's a bit of juice on the side of their face after they finish eating. "And so many kinds of soda... I didn't know there were this many flavors of it and you've got them all."
Regulus	Regulus's hand remains outstretched for a moment before she awkwardly drops it. Ahn looks as stiff as a board, she probably... shouldn't expect a hi-five under these circumstances. "Oh uh--I mean, I didn't think you were in danger. I just thought maybe something came up? ... Like Lotus I guess?" As a peace offering, she picks one (1) fruit off the table, notices APPLe looking at her, and quietly replaces it with a vegetable. That was a close one. She almost ate that thing right in front of APPLe. Her decision to occassionally eat fruits and vegetables is largely an 'In Ahn's presence' modification to her life. Do it for her and also the rules and regulations outlined in the turnip war treaty of earlier this year. ''The milk bar seemed interesting.'' Regulus nibbles her official vegetable as Rita mentions the milk bar. "Oooh that sounds tasty, maybe if we've got time we can check it out--" She pauses. Can Rita consume milk bar products? It seems to be a pretty raw meat based diet. Maybe she can have milk if it's raw milk? Regulus wiggles the official vegetable for consumption of the day in her hands as Mag makes his way down and says, "Hey Mag! I brought records, Ahn brought produce." ''Rita, Skipper..'' "Oh! Dear me, did I forget to introduce myself? My name is APPLe," APPLe bobs politely. "The e is lowercase, just so you know." Regulus points out. "...And everything else is uppercase. It's not just 'Apple', it's 'APPLe'."
Mag	Fortunately, Skipper has a metalworking-adjacent guy and a weird swords appreciator girl in the same room with them, so hearing 'blacksmith' and 'swords' grabs their interest easily. Farming would also grab Linear, but she's already paying attention to Skipper inbetween adjustments to the headpats arrangement with Rita, so there's not as much of an obvious shift in focus. "Oh sick. I got Mag to make me a knife once, but it's not like a thing he does seriously. What kinda swords, big ones?" "Oh I getcha, sometimes it's the same for us; it ends up being just me and Linear going to meetups sometimes, because otherwise things get too crowded and getting everyone's schedules lined up is a pain. Sounds cool though! Was farming your family's thing? That's how I got into Adventuring." The more plane-specific stuff seems to be a more personal interest of Skipper's, and Mag grins as he gets the chance to feed into that. "Well, both of our planes are about the same size. A seaplane and a fighter plane, though when we were gifted the Comet they did take all the weapons off of it. The Sea Otter's a three-seater, but Linear and Chain are small enough to cram in with someone else. Comet's a four-seater, similar situation. The Comet's lighter so it's faster than the Sea Otter, it probably hits around 200mph or so? I can totally do tricks in either of 'em, but it stresses Gre out so... Only once in a while!" For what it's worth, Mag doesn't seem to think too much about why Ahn has the stuff she has. "The surplus stuff is always so convenient, right? The bags have so many pockets and spots to tie stuff so it doesn't wobble." Ahn's selection of fresh nibbleable items seems to be popular with this household, given Mag is immediately double-checking his hands are clean before reaching in to grab something juicy like a tomato, Chain lean-looms closer to nonchalantly just stick her hand in and grab a light fistful of whatever fits between her fingers to start turning over curiously and sampling, and Linear reaches straight for the most colorful thing in the box. Pepper just grabs the fanciest looking canned drink she can see, humming pleasantly. If there are bell peppers present, Linear grabs a bright yellow one between her sleeve-covered hands before she draws those sleeves back, preparing to bite straight into the side of it... Which seems to be sort of uncomfortable to Mag, for some reason, given he looks away and tries to focus on literally anything else. He really hates bell peppers, but he can play it off still. The crunch he probably hears makes him shiver slightly though... Linear does remember to say "Thank you. They're very pretty." at least, and if Ahn's too closely seated on the adjacent couch, Linear even reaches out to pat her head like she did Rita's.
Mag	Ahn's flusterment does reach Mag though (and Chain, though she mostly just smirks from nearby), and Mag overcomes his bell pepper repulsion in time to smile back at her. "Nice to meet you too. It's cool to see there's stuff we have in common! Linear likes to garden too, though mostly for flowers. Oh uh, if you wanna help with Skipper's oven, that's fine. I guess I wouldn't wanna steal your thunder or anything." He considers offering to fix it together, but fixing an oven seems to slot too firmly into 'one person job' until he remembers, "Oh, I guess it might be heavy. I could still help move it?" Mag, and to some extent Pepper, each seem quite impressed with Ahn's list of different skills even if hearing 'nuclear fusion' come up makes Pepper look at Mag for a moment like she wants to ask what that means. "Well well well, what a big beautiful brain you have there little miss Ahn!" Pepper teases, taking a sip before sticking her tongue out just to play it up. "It's okay to brag a little bit, you know? Or do you have a hard time with attention~?" Danger, danger, the homing Pepper has locked on... To Ahn. Mag, who is either oblivious or trying very hard not to get caught up in Pepper's games himself, politely asks Ahn, "What's your roommate like? It sounds tricky living out in the mountains with just the two of you, are they good with a bunch of stuff too?"
Rita Ma	Whew. Ahn's anxiety has a pleasant way of being soothing. As long as Rita isn't the most endearingly flustered person in the room, she can relax. "I know how it is! And I'd love to have you helping, too." Rita blink-blinks in soft surprise when Linear pets her head, but then relaxes completely, eyes smiling shut. She's pretty pettable!! And the cat techniques are well-suited. ... Her hair feels a little odd though. Like, it's the room-ish temperature hair should be, but it saps the warmth from your hand just a bit more, as if you're touching something denser? "Linear isn't a Cyframe user, but..." "... She has powers. So she can heal people" The way he says that, even the little anxious glance-to-Linear for permission, twigs something in the back of Rita's mind. Her eyes open and sliiide over to Linear, silently questioning; and then she smiles in an 'it's-okay-and-do-your-best' way, only a little hesitantly. Overall: "Mmm! Reminds me a little of my family. That's really amazing, Mag. Good enough to run a whole town out of adventures..." Wait, not 'mister' Mag? But it is 'mister' Gre, and 'miss' Linear...? "The place I'm thinking of might be flooded, and there might be old dead bodies, but I don't think it'll be too bad." "It isn't really a 'milk bar' though" "Oh! Oh," Rita says, trying not to sound disappointed. Milk was a maybe, but she can't have coffee and she definitely can't have the 'hard stuff'! An older woman calling her 'cutie' does help with not looking down, though. Rita straightens up shamelessly like a just-watered thirsty flower and dons a radiant smile. "Thank you, Ms. Pepper! If they're like you, I'm sure I'd love them too." Bio and credentials! "I live... somewhere kind of a lot like this, but it's on an island, with a really big beached ship." Ticking off on her fingers: "I'm good at just fighting, but people usually think of me for 'disguises and sneaking around', I think. And..." Rita glances over at Regulus, with a slight nervousness. 'Coming out' is always a continual process, negotiated against the standing preconception of 'normal'. There's always someone who isn't in the know. Rita can't just go around wearing an 'I'M A PEOPLE-EATING MONSTER' t-shirt all the time. They don't make a pride flag for that anyway. It's a process that can wait for another day. "... I'm okay at healing people, but you wouldn't want to count on it. And, um, most things that people call 'monsters' usually listen to me if I boss them around. That's why I asked," she gets through, with only mild embarrassment.
Skipper	> "What kinda swords, big ones?" "Ah, no," says Skipper, who's about the same size as a big sword. "Shortswords, mostly. Some knives, hammer pieces, arrowheads..." "Farming was my family's thing for a while. Before that it was hero-ing and now it's hero-ing again." "Oh so they have different amounts of seats? And one of them sees and the other one fights?" This seems to be Skipper's sum knowledge of aircraft. Planes are not so much a specific special interest as a much as a 'I've never been in one and I have a new friend who owns one' interest. > And, um, most things that people call 'monsters' usually listen to me if I boss them around. Skipper's head snaps over to look at Rita so fast that they might have whiplash now. "They listen to you?" They're looking to Rita with wide eyes, amazement, and cautious hope tinged with a bit of apprehension. "Can... you understand them? Talk to them? Figure out what they want?"
Rita Ma	"They listen to you?" Rita puts up her hands, a little benignly startled by how sharply Skipper's attention pivots. "Ah... big ones sometimes need beating up first, but, usually?" There's some restrictions, but it's harder to explain that in front of Regulus!! "Can... you understand them? Talk to them? Figure out what they want?" "That's... harder than just bossing them around. But, um, sometimes," Rita hesitantly admits. "The monsters in your world, Mi-- um, Skipper-- you don't know what it is they want?"
Regulus	''Disguises and sneaking around.'' "Oh I don't think I'm good at disguises, maybe you can help me with disguises because last time I got caught immediately." ''Most things that people call 'monsters' usually listen to me if I boss them around.'' "Oh... Like a Critter Tamer?" Regulus asks. "Gosssh if only you were there when we were in YuRia's workshop, you could've just told them to cut it out and we wouldn't have had to deal with all that trouble." She considers the 'restrictions' Rita mentions, specifically with the difficulty of bigger monsters. "Mmm... I don't think any of them were ''that'' big." rRegulus successfully kept in the dark! Don't worry, she defaults to believing Rita! She quirks her head at Regulus. She looks a little nervous. Is it because she's eating thsi thing in front of APPLe. It isn't actually a fruit is it? No she's pretty sure it's vegetable not fruit. "Though I've seen some pretty big critters." Maybe she's just anxious around big crowds? This is a lot of people in one spot, really, but she seemed fine in the village. Maybe she's worried that she's not wearing a flower here? No, Mag and the others aren't wearing them etiher. Regulus sits herself down and stares up at the ceiling. Her buddy is worried! She's gotta do something! But what??
Vantablitz Remnants	Of course there are bell peppers. What do you take this operation for? They're like the single most inoffensive 'vegetable' thing that everyone either likes or pretends to like because they're so normal and nobody wants to be a freak like Mag. 'The surplus stuff is always so convenient, right?' "Wha?" Ahn blinks in Mag's direction, then looks back to the bag. "Oh. Yeah! I have normal bags and stuff too." Ahn says, sweatily. "It's just, going up and down a mountain, you know? That's what it's built for!" She does look pretty relieved when everyone seems to enjoy the produce, though. It is, fortunately, the kind of good that a jobless botany freak who likes crossbreeding and modifying plants gets into. Even some of the soda is nice, being ~import~ 'Thank you. They're very pretty.'} "Pretty?" takes Ahn off guard. "Oh. Thank you? I get kinda used to it so I stop noticing." She goes completely blank at the headpat; like she'd go kitten limp if it wouldn't make her fall over. And yet, still, "Y-you're really sweet, Linear." 'Oh uh, if you wanna help with Skipper's oven, that's fine. I guess I wouldn't wanna steal your thunder or anything.' "Wait whose?" Ahn points back and forth between Mag and Skipper, then points accusingly at Chain. "I thought it was yours? Oh gosh I somehow misheard." Well, after being too embarrassed to ask for directions and ending up inside the Motherlobe rather than coordinating with the Watch like she intended, Ahn has absolutely not learned her lesson at all and says "Um. That'd be helpful. Thanks." instead of what she should. 'Well well well, what a big beautiful brain you have there little miss Ahn!' Ahn stares very hard at the floor and says "Thank you." in a small voice. 'Or do you have a hard time with attention~?' "I just have a lot time." she says at an even higher pitch. A voice in the back of her head is blaring MISSILE. MISSILE. MISSILE. MISSILE. 'What's your roommate like? It sounds tricky living out in the mountains with just the two of you, are they good with a bunch of stuff too?' Oh look! A different question! "Wow, gosh, um, she's changed a lot over the years I guess. She used to be kinda flighty and immature but really curious, and now I guess she's more mature and helpful, but she's a tiny bit bit bossy, and like, she helps out a ton but she tries to hide it sorta? And she really has like no sense of-- you know, like, gravity? She's barely ever serious. But she's actually really dependable too. And she gets restless way more than me. And she's still pretty curious! But lately she's gotten weirdly lazy . . . O-oh, but it's actually way easier than you think! It used to be tougher, but we got a whole system down!" That and there's ten years of supplies for several hundred people.
Skipper	Rita's verbal misstep is entirely missed. Skipper's incensed. Exasperated. Not at Rita, but at the topic at hand. "No!" they shout, fists balled at their sides. "They wander around, but they're not looking for any sort of nest or home, they never seem to settle down. They go attack villages and towns if they come across one but it doesn't seem like they're seeking them out. They attack people but they don't eat- actually I don't know what they eat- I don't even know what they are-" Skipper takes a breath. They take a few seconds to compose themselves. They are Being Seen right now, and not in a good way. Specifically, they are Being Seen standing up on the couch, fists balled, tail swishing rapidly behind them, and blinking rapidly as if warding off tears. It would not do to get emotional like this. "Sorry," they say, to the room at large, and Mag's crew in specific . "I didn't mean to cause a scene at your get-together." Skipper carefully sits back down on the couch. "... If you can get anything off of them," they say to Rita, in a clearly forcefully more measured and calm way, "it'd be a big help. Anything at all."
Mag	A little belatedly, Mag gets around to Regulus telling him she brought records by getting back up from his lean-seated position and walking over to wherever she's settled in, holding his partly eaten tomato away to keep juice away from the records. "Oh awesome. Once Gre's done making lunch, you should show him some of these, I bet he'd wanna listen. Actually, the player's just over there by the phone near the stairs, if you wanna put one on?" This boy has total faith in a music-minded person's special collection, and he has seemingly never seen any of what Regulus's collection includes before. He seems happy to be talking to an apple too, and a little glad he didn't choose one out of the icebox to bite into in hindsight, even if it wasn't strictly out of consideration for APPLe at the time... "Wow... There're some really neat kinds of people out there, huh? Nice to meet you too, Mister APPLe." He doesn't catch the nuance of the spelling, like this, so adding Mister makes it feel more like a person's name than if he were to just say apple like he was talking to an inanimate object. Linear spares a few more moments Rita-petting and curiously trying to figure out what's up with her hair, though it might feel a little odd to be doing so while making direct eye contact the way Linear starts to after Rita's gaze slides over onto her. She does stop the petting of her own volition before too much longer, but only after she's gotten a good look at Rita's comfy-pleased expression and smiled a little back. It's like a positive review! "Good enough to run a whole town out of adventures..." Mag seems flattered enough to rub his head and smile like a goofball! "Well, eventually! Pannam isn't a very big town though, so it had to happen eventually. My dad was a pretty famous adventurer around here too, y'know? And it used to be that me and Chain were rivals, not teammates. Even Pepper was sort of competition at first, but she helped us out a bunch when Linear got into some trouble a couple of times." He seems perfectly fine with just Mag, even a notch relieved as he realizes he doesn't need to raise that idea himself. His grin does shrink a little into a more reserved smile, when Rita notes the disclaimers about there being dead bodies, but he nods with an easy sort of confidence. "Some places get like that, yeah... Can't always get around the fact that people used to be there before you. You're talking about places people used to live before the flooding, I guess? Either way, I get it." Linear seems a tiny bit sadder to hear about it too, but nods along politely even as she clasps her hands around the once-bitten pepper like she's halfway to praying for the dead she's never seen. Around a pepper, anyway.
Mag	Mag seems to pick up better on Rita's moment of disappointment about "Heaven" than Pepper does, albeit not with full comprehension. "Iiif you want milk, we have milk. I think they do too, they just usually give it to the kids who walk in 'cause they're not allowed to have alcohol. I get if you're not into the bitter stuff, I'm not really either most of the time." Pepper seems pleased by Rita's sentiments as well, and it seems like she's going to wind up to tease her a little like she has been Ahn, but the urge drains out of her enough to be a little more genuine for the moment. "Oh, you sweetheart... Well, I wouldn't say they're 'like me' exactly, but they're very kind. Grant and Lora have helped me out lots of times; they even keep a sleeping bag and a pillow around just for me. I love them to death!" She even hugs her own chest with both arms and wiggles like she's shaking her friends around in her imagination. Pepper seems delighted by the idea of Rita's home, too. "Oh gosh, I've never been on an island like that before! I'll just have to come by to sightsee. Even just getting to see the beach is such a trek from here..." The explanation of Rita's skills, meanwhile, has Chain kind of blatantly reexamining Rita like she's looking for a secret source of fighty-power, having immediately forgotten that hiding that kind of thing would slot right into what Rita just said she was known for. "So you're like some kind of spy? I guess that's pretty cool too. Most of you seem to be less..? Than I thought." Chain trails off, failing to find a word that doesn't sound stupid to convey 'tough' or 'dangerous', and Mag tries to hop in to blunt the rudeness of it. "C'mon Chain. I did say we were gonna work with them because they do like, humanitarian stuff too, right? It's not like everybody's gonna be throwing punches all the time. You should pick up some hobbies, actually! Maybe Gre can teach you to cook..?" "Oh screw you, dweeb. I have plenty of hobbies, anyway." she snaps back, listing none of them. She doesn't have to prove anything!
Mag	The thing that catches Linear's attention, though, is 'bossing around monsters'. It's probably hard to miss the way she turns to stare at Rita, thoughts rolling through her head as she tries to figure out if they're somehow some kind of other-world twins. She even adjusts her hood to let a bit of her bright blonde hair fall loose to pinch between her fingertips like she's comparing their hair colors. Mag seems surprised, too! "Holy crap! That's... I mean, it sounds like it works different, but Linear can talk to monsters too y'know? Even back when she didn't speak much, it was like they'd pick up what she was thinking. Sometimes she'd stop in the middle of a fight and pull one of the monsters aside- usually the 'cute' ones-, and she'd squat down with them and whisper in their ear to ask them to leave, and-" Linear tosses her bell pepper at Mag, bonking him in the side of the head. He seems only harmed in the sense that it's demoralizing to have your least favorite food thrown at you by your sweet and quiet sister. Linear gets up to go pick up the pepper after it lands, though. Maybe she was embarrassed by how excited he sounded about the commonality? She sits back down beside Rita afterward in a conclusive little flomph. It's around now that Mag seems to react to Ahn talking about her mysterious roommate by slowly turning to look at Linear more with each new adjective. "I totally get what you mean, Ahn. Like the more you get to know each other, the more comfortable you get with being kind of openly fussy with each other, right?" Maybe it's not an unfounded sentiment, but Linear still reacts by lifting her arm like she's going to throw the pepper at his head again. When he half-raises an arm to shield himself, she matter-of-factly lowers her hand again and bites into the pepper like nothing's amiss. She's not gonna waste food!
Mag	Chain seems mildly interested in Skipper's family schtick, and has some respect for how hard it is to make things out of metal. On account of having tried and failed on her own time before, of course. "Well that's fine too, s'good you can make anything at all. I usually have my Cyframe make blades for me, but it's not the kind of thing I can just pass out to people... The shapes are kind of clumsy and I had to practice a lot since I was little to get better than just throwing them at stuff and ramming into things." Mag responds about further plane questions, first noticing Skipper's misunderstanding of what a seaplane is, by simply saying "... How about I show you later? The airfield's not that far from here." Unfortunately, he hasn't quite kept up enough to know immediately why Skipper got upset, but he and the others listen while Skipper vents about it. Pepper, as the nearest once Skipper sits back down, tries to be kind by laying a hand on their shoulder (draping her whole arm over feels like a bit much right now!) and softening her voice. "You've been through a lot, haven't you hon..? Well, maybe your monsters are different from ours, but you've got some enthusiastic help now, mmkay?" A little squeeze, for good measure.
Rita Ma	"It's," Rita says, her hands still raised anxious-soothingly. She looks at the Launchers. "... Alright?" She doesn't want to speak for them. But she knows that frustration, or something close to it. There was a time nobody understood leviathans too. So her impulse is to forgive it, first and foremost. That impulse easily wins out over her Regulus-reticence, after only a small pause. "... If they're too dumb, or too weird, I might not be able to learn anything. But I'll do my best. The next time you're going to fight one, give me a call and I'll come along. Okay, Skipper?" "Oh... Like a Critter Tamer?" A moment later, winding down: "Um, like a Critter Tamer, maybe." But not exactly. Hm. "And I can try to help with disguises, Ms. Regulus, but... you know, they say if someone's a natural talent, they're a bad teacher, because they can't help someone who struggles. Maybe you should look for someone who used to be no good, but learned anyway?" she encourages gently. Ahn's roomie... "Ms. Lotus is really sweet! She's a little mean to Ms. Ahn, but, you know, in nice ways. And a little mean to me sometimes, but I trust her. She acts kind of like... a lazy older sibling, who cares a lot? Even if she's younger. That's what I think. And she's really pretty!" This may make those present question Rita's tastes when they actually see Lotus.
Skipper	> "You've been through a lot, haven't you hon..? Well, maybe your monsters are different from ours, but you've got some enthusiastic help now, mmkay?" Skipper calms down a bit more at the touch and the reassuring words. > "It's," > "... Alright?" Is it really, though? Skipper's inclined to think that no, it isn't outright that they had that little outburst, but looking at Rita... Skipper thinks she's being genuine. "Thank you," they say.
Regulus	Regulus considers Rita's suggestion seriously for a few moments before saying, "Mm... But I don't really know anyone like that. How would I find them anyway? The only reason I know you're good at disguises because you said you were, if someone was really good at disguises and I didn't know them in advance and they didn't say anything, they'd be too busy being disguised for me to figure that they're good at disguising themselves." Honestly, Rita being a monster tamer makes a lot of sense. If there's something weird that happens, it's probably because of an invisible monster. Maybe that's why she can only eat raw meat too. It's part of telling all her invisible monstesr that she's alright. Do monsters prefer raw meat? Probably, I mean, they don't cook right? Regulus feels she has solved the Rita mystery. She feels strong. And smart. She's so good at this. "I would love to hear some of Gre's stories sometime." APPLe says. Regulus is offered to put on a record and she says, "Oh sure! I'll put on one of my favorites...!" She rushes over to the record player and slides one on. BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoDaYjdfSg "Oooh! This one's really good!" Regulus says, starting to dance right there in the middle of the room, swinging her hips from side to side again. "Purple haze all in my brain o/~" She sings.
Rita Ma	It's hard to tell what's going on with Rita's hair just by touching it! It sure looks like hair. It feels like hair. It even seems to have the weight of hair, or lack thereof. But if you try to pick out individual strands from their locks, it proves oddly difficult to; you might think you've pinched out just a single hair, but it'll always slip through your fingers to rejoin its group. There just isn't a real object that feels exactly like Rita's hair feels, looks like Rita's hair looks, and behaves like Rita's hair behaves. After extended combing-and-probing, one might begin to get the sense that it's a multi-sensory illusion or perhaps somehow computer-rendered, but that gets you no closer to its real nature. To find that out, you'd have to pinch real hard, and surely Linear isn't that mean! "Linear can talk to monsters too y'know?" "Huh? Really??" Rita says, just as astonished as Mag is. She leans forward from the couch, finding it hard to decide whether she should stare at Mag (incredulously) or Linear (in soft awe). "I've never heard of anybody else doing that. ... The two of you aren't... I mean, one of you is adopted, right?" It's a guess from the height gap! And also the hair. And also the 'most other stuff'. "So maybe me and her are long-lost sisters," Rita jokes. She covers her mouth to giggle to the pepper-toss... and then looks away a little, still soft-smiling, when Linear bites into the pepper after all. Yeah. They aren't that similar. It'd probably be bad if they were, anyway. "Oh, ah... I just get stomach-sick really easily, Ms. Pepper. I don't know if milk agrees with me, but you can't get it on an island or a ship, so I thought I'd try it once. I'm pretty sure alcohol's bad for me. That's all," she says, which is a slightly different story than she's told Regulus! "I'd still love to meet Mr. Grant and Ms. Lora! They sound wonderful. Are they adventurers too, or townsfolk?" "Most of you seem to be less..?" "Less...?" Rita repeats, tilting her head at Chain. But Mag makes it clear the missing word was something along the lines of 'brawny', and she says "Oh!", and then "Well, you happened to get mostly the sneaky people today I think, but..." Rita rummages in her little satchel, pulls out a rusted steel nut (the nuts-and-bolts kind!), and with a little glance at Regulus- Regulus has seen her scamper up buildings before, it's fiiine!- screeek-scrunches its hexagonal donut shape flat between her forefinger and thumb with a small quiver of effort. "So if you do need to fight monsters or something, I'm happy to help with that too," she says, while working on the considerably harder task of un-scrunching the nut. For Mag, she nods: "When the world started flooding, people got on boats or sealed bunkers. Almost nobody in the bunkers lived. What are the ruins from in your world, if you know? I mean, things don't just become 'ruined' for no reason, right?"
Vantablitz Remnants	'C'mon Chain. I did say we were gonna work with them because they do like, humanitarian stuff too, right? It's not like everybody's gonna be throwing punches all the time.' Head on a swivel back and forth between everything that's going on, Ahn starts to panic at being left out of the conversation for so long, and picks now to interject while still sounding all confused and glum. "I know how to throw a punch." 'Holy crap! That's... I mean, it sounds like it works different, but Linear can talk to monsters too y'know?' Ahn shrivels back down. Can't do that one. 'I totally get what you mean, Ahn. Like the more you get to know each other, the more comfortable you get with being kind of openly fussy with each other, right?' Getting direct attention, she has to look up. Being about Lotus, however, is a simple enough topic that she can be normal about it. Or, well, Lotus is really anything but simple; it's more like 'such a familiar topic'. "Yeah, actually. Like I used to find her really scary at first, but now we set up all our stuff to do basically everything together. I . . ." Ahn looks at Regulus, contemplates whether gitmo needs to get this out of her, and then makes a resigned noise. "Kind of let everything get really messy if she's not around for a while. But she gets into trouble a lot if I'm not too! So it's fair." She backs herself up by nodding at her own clearly factual statement. "I'm kinda looking forward to getting to introduce her to people again. I hope it's before summer . . ." She really doesn't want to talk about monsters. 'Ms. Lotus is really sweet! She's a little mean to Ms. Ahn, but, you know, in nice ways. And a little mean to me sometimes, but I trust her. She acts kind of like... a lazy older sibling, who cares a lot?' Ahn puffs out her cheeks for a second. "That's so annoying because you're basically right." she says. "And I am the older one."
Mag	Mag laughs a little when APPLe mentions Gre's stories and admits, "He doesn't really talk about what he did before he started working for my dad, but we're pretty sure he was ex-military. He would totally start talking about really embarrassing stories of me though, so uh, have mercy?" He's innoculated from childhood cringe poisoning thanks to all the times that Gre has already done this before, but one can only survive so much... The song that Regulus plays first seems to hit the room strangely at first; it hits a midpoint between the types that each half of the room is most familiar with, such that it takes a short while of Mag sorta head-tilt listening-to-understand before he starts to warm up to it and start tapping his foot along. Linear seems to become distracted, staring into the middle distance as she tries to figure out how one plays this kind of song on an ocarina before accepting that the answer is 'you don't', and just lightly bouncing along on the couch when she sees Regulus start to dance. Pepper slides her hand from Skipper's near shoulder to the other, gives them a gentle squeeze in one arm, and hops up to follow suit with Regulus; after a few moments of just following the other woman's pace, she gets a scampish look on her face and suddenly turns it into an improvised partner dance, trying to surprise Regulus by grabbing onto her and sliding their hands together. Better figure it out quick, Reggie! Chain seems the most neutral-disinterested in the music, but does step over to take the spot between Linear and Skipper on the couch after Pepper empties it. Chain, it turns out, has the emotional sensitivities of a cat. Being quietly in proximity is a way to show support, too. It's not long from there before Gre brings out lunch, having heard the music start from the kitchen and therefor having no reason to be confused by now. He doesn't seem familiar with the musical style either, but he's still smiling behind his moustache, a little strut in his stride while carrying two silver platters of various sandwiches, from toasted to submarine to slightly odder things like spaghetti sandwiches. Tragically, there's nothing there that's raw enough for Rita to be likely to be able to eat it comfortably... But there's always a next time. Though, she can see salmon on one of the sandwiches so maybe they have some raw fish in the fridge if she asks. Mag seems strangely pleased, or maybe relieved, that Rita has more things in common with Linear. Linear seems understandably curious too, but is struggling a little more to figure out what to say about it at first. She does pinch Rita's hair a little bit, but eventually lets go when she feels she's been messing with it for too long. "... Yeah, that's right. My dad, well, he went missing a long time ago now, looking for a Cyframe named Evolutia. Sorta... The holy grail for the family, right? Well, he found Linear instead. He sent her here with an escort and a letter that didn't tell us much, and she's been staying here ever since." "We didn't really even know she had powers for a few years, either. The garden always did really well with her taking care of it, and whenever she would give me encouragement on an adventure I'd feel way better, but neither of us really knew she was actually making me stronger, back then. It was mostly once Chain started working with us about four years ago that she pointed out something was weird, and then this whole mess happened with this guy named Eugene-... Sorry, long story, I'll save it for now, haha."
Mag	Pepper, now on the other side of the table and dancing with Regulus, looks back over without missing a step when she hears Rita elaborate. "Oh wow... That sounds rough! Well, if you ever feel like experimenting just let me know, okay? My Cyframe can make medicine that should do the trick if you're worried about your poor tummy. If it's no good for you, I'm sure we can find something else for you, mmkay? And I would be happy to introduce you. They're just residents though, yep. Goodness, Lora must be close to graduating by now come to think... I'll have to get that darling a present." Chain and Mag have a moment of synchonization when Rita squishes the metal nut like that, each of them leaning in and making nearly the same "Woah..." Though, Mag does follow up by bringing Magnus around on his right side to look at it while working the fingertips together, wondering aloud, "It's tough to bend something that small... I guess because your fingers are smaller you have an advantage..? Never thought about that... Do you do martial arts? Gre's done some stuff like that before, but not by just forcing it, he's got this whole routine he has to do first..." That's a passing interest though, and he doesn't want to be rude and ignore a good question, so he snaps back to attention- literally, with a snap of Magnus's fingers before he stows the arm behind himself again. "Oh uh, we've got an idea in lots of cases, yeah. Tons of ruins are like old vaults that we're pretty sure were set up to grow monsters on purpose, but only to a certain point. So, y'know, people would stay away from the technology until they had advanced to a certain level and could handle the stuff protecting the vault. Though, most of them end up damaged since it's been thousands of years since they were made by now... And some of them aren't made that way on purpose, but were old facilities used by the Prehistoric Civilization. Like one of them was a research lab, and another was this old medical facility." Mag then hears out Ahn, seemingly glad he had the right idea. "That's how the team here is, too, kinda. Everyone got a lot happier once we were looking out for each other, and all. Sometimes it's kinda ridiculous, like Chain messing up her Cyframe or Pepper sleeping at the bar every night, but... Well, I'll look forward to meeting her too!" And he does. He seems to really like hearing about these kinds of relationships, in that it bolsters his fondness for a person instantly to know that they have something like that going on. Mag lets out a sigh as he seems to be relaxing again after momentarily tensing from talking around Linear's past, then walks around to behind the couch to lean over and hug Linear. She wiggles, squirms, then frees one arm to hook around his neck in return, a placid little smile on her face while Mag chuckles. "Mag..." she says softly. "Yeah?" he asks. "You can tell them. They seem nice." "Oh, if you're sure then..." "Linear turned out to be Evolutia after all. Half of it anyway. So... Sometimes when dangerous people go looking for Evolutia, especially if they followed my dad's tracks, it leads them to us.", he explains, trying to make it straightforward to understand. "I don't think the name means enough that other-worlders would really give her trouble over it, but if you could just play dumb if anyone strange asks about her, I'd appreciate it."