Scene #9682: Hey Do You Wanna Talk About Why Gardens are Such a Common Theme With You?

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	The Dragon's Garden was named, apocyphally, for the supernatural underwater ecosystem in the caves that bore into the cliffside closest to the manorhouse. The village has been named in a vague, pseudo-colloquial sense by proximity to it; first as a code name, then as a matter of familiarity. Within the four kilometer radius punctured into the fog of former Shikoku, there are farms, there are groves, there are orchards, and there is even a spooky little dubiously indoor micro-arboretum, but, funny enough, not any gardens besides those kept in windowboxes and odd corners for herbs. Lilian being reminded (repeatedly) by Tamamo and Petra of how often they do, actually, visit the place while she's busy, is the wind driving the change. The arc of is very simple: Lilian got weird and self-conscious about how much she unconsciously avoids spending time there, like she might be 'intruding' on a place the others can get away from her, and then took Sakura's suggestion, laundered through Petra, to try practising her new gardening hobby here, rather than just the one little patch that could fit into the family property's garden. Don't worry about what happened before that! Making up her mind to do so, of course, immediately results in her realizing that maybe other people would like pretty little gardens just for the sake of it, which means one of her random incognito shipments of supplemental arrives with material to spare. The end of 1929, Chicago, the 24 hours that followed, sheltering from the Storm, and the marble white nightmare after that, have pushed her to move her schedule up. Because she could really use something quiet and normal to do right now. Lilian on thirty six hours of extremely minimal sleep, which is actually fifty three and a half, arrives through the beach overlook Warpgate with her hat on, gloves hanging from her belt, a plastic crate dangling from one hand, and the recycled paper stick of a lollipop hanging from the corner of her mouth like the world's shittiest cigarette. She walks the crescent path in silence, watching the ocean as she often does along it, faintly stunned by the bright and sunny weather, until she arrives at . . . "Lilian! Hey look!" "Oh goodness finally. I mean, so soon?" Nika is indulging in her brand new hobby of 'fishing but in real life'. Despite insisting on trying it from the cliffside 'for aura', this time she is in the midst of bringing-- well, having the boat brought back. Sakura is, for a rare occasion, not 'after work' or 'between jobs', but genuinely taking her time out in the sun, curled up on a beach chair under a parasol that Lilian doesn't remember buying, reading a collection of classic Japanese poetry chosen under the careful advice of an expert. Frazzled, Lilian stares at Nika running up from the beach in her rain boots, waving as if she might somehow miss her, and Sakura peeking over her sunglasses just behind, and all that comes to mind for a second is "Ash?" Nika points past Lilian, who turns around, and scans most of the landscape before looking up to the radio mast on the opposite cliff where they'd had their only real 'big talk' in the last couple of months, finding a lone figure reclining against it. "Seriously? They didn't come down even once?" "Oh, no! Of course they have! They're just . . . Nika, what was it?" "¶Farming aura¶." "Thank you."
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Help with aura farming "YO," Arthur points at Ash. "They want'cha probably approach JUST ASIDE FROM BEHIND. Want me to do a GATES thing for it? So you don't gotta CLIMB SHIT." Why is he here? "Or you could take one'a the spots for DRAMATIC JUMP-DOWN. Real classic. Kind of on your MOOD. I mean, I'd prefer the LANDING obviously." Arthur scouts out precise spots for likely dramatic descent and gets the correct almost-but-not-quite-looking-away positions. Despite the entire world ending and all of that, Arthur's still here and still blandly, clumsily, constantly supportive at Lilian. He is as immutable as ever. "You want like... COFFEE or some shit?" He asides, carefully splitting the difference between acknowledging Lilian's exhaustion (offering a nice coffee instead of Code Fuck, Registered Trademark, 'MTNDEW') and respecting her decency and dignity (not immediately forcing tons of reminders about whatever stressed her out onto her). As always, lots of greetings and chatter with the others, too -- Nika especially, who he always gets on best with, especially recently.
Tamamo	There doesn't need to be any special reason for Tamamo to be here. It's always been, in large part, something of a personal project from the outset, and the only reason she never thought to move in permanently was because Lilian wasn't inclined to. The time they'd needed her to set wards and clear impurities and dispense blessings has... not entirely passed, but the need is lessened, shifting to a greater number of times she's come over just to see people. Of course, when she does, she might as well pass out some small blessings. It's only polite. Today... "As you were thinking of gardening, and we already have much of what we need elsewhere, I thought to do something new." Tamamo's dressed for Summer with a wide, straw hat, cut to allow her ears to pierce it. The rest of her clothing is kept light, top still cut in that not-quite-familiar shrine maiden style, but in white and blue, with a same-colored, patterned shawl acting as a windbreaker for the salt breeze. Under one arm, she's carrying a stack of clay pots, held together with twine for carrying. With the other, a smaller bag of items, some clinking. "I am not too used to using traditions of further West -- that is, of what the West calls the East -- ah, no, how to I put it? Well, in any case, I decided it would be fun to try breeding peppers. You can make them hotter or milder, sweeter or not, between each generation, you know? It all seemed quite interesting." Getting close enough to speak, "Dear Nika, hello! Have you caught anything interesting? Ah, Sakura, are you enjoying the weather? It is nice to have a mild showing, after..." Don't say Storm.
Petra Soroka	Petra is already at the Dragon's Garden, as has been her habit lately. Each justification to hang out there is cumulative with the last, worming her way from 'care visits' to doing her homework there to sleepovers, for the simple fact that she likes to be there around the others. It is her and Sakura's mutual scheme to rope Lilian into spending more time there, for everyone's benefit, even Lilian's. Today, she had to hurry there not just because Lilian announced her intention to visit, but also because she had to gossip with Sakura about the past two days of Lilian's safety. Allies in being so frequently aware of Lilian's condition that those forty-eight hours were extremely stressful, the two of them can vent out that lingering fretfulness together, and be normal by the time Lilian actually shows up. Or, mostly normal. Nika's boat is being returned to the shore just as Lilian arrives so that Nika can hop right off onto the sand and scamper up, but the physical mechanism moving the boat needs to take a minute longer. Petra pops out of the water, wearing a sports bra and swim trunks and out of breath for having been shoving the boat manually while swimming. Her extradimensional guitar case is open on the sand beside Sakura's chair, and she scurries over to it while streaming water with every step. To activate its magical outfit change capabilities, she has to say, while Sakura is trying to look past her to see Lilian, "Um-- beep boop. Normal daytime clothes. Go," which instantly puts her into a more typical cutout t-shirt and shorts. This does nothing to dry her hair, and the momentarily-dry shirt starts soaking down the entire back as her hair drains into it. But this doesn't slow her down, because the moment she's clothed, she's racing up the beach and hopping up the cliffside to take the shortest path to Lilian possible. Once in reach, Petra impacts her with a hug of the likes she would normally never dare, giddy with relief and still worried about what she'd heard. "Lilian!!! You're--" 'Okay' might be too strong of a word right now. "Hi!" It is Petra's God-given role to carry Lilian's plastic crate once joining her party, and so she does. Unlike Lilian, she has not been awake for fifty-odd hours, and also didn't have to endure an apocalypse during those hours, so her excess energy magnifies off of Lilian's depleted energy to make her orbit laps around her as she makes her way down to the beach. On Ash, Petra remarks, "They would be so lame if they weren't so cool. They literally only just went back up there." "Well, in any case, I decided it would be fun to try breeding peppers." "Tamamo!!" It's sort of sickening how un-tired she is, actually, after apparently just having been used as some sort of water-horse for Nika's fishing carriage. "That does sound like fun, though. Uh-- Sakura, what's your spice tolerance like, actually?"
Angela	Angela's asleep, time to go out and have a good time! But Roland would feel a little crummy going out on his own so he left an note by Angela's bedside and went looking for a Sephirah, any Sephirah, and ultimately he decides to go with Tiphereth because she's the one who will most resist going outside and just having fun. "It'll be good for you to relax." Roland is saying as he arrives. "I don't need to relax, I'm ''productive''." Tiphereth grumbles, but since she's here, Roland must have managed it somehow. "You know I barely know a lot of the people here, right?" "Great time to get to know them!" Roland chirps uncaringly. He's carrying a bag over one shoulder whereas Tiphereth is still in her Librarian uniform but has left the bright yellow coat behind but as they get closer, Tiphereth breaks off, sliding on some sunglasses of her own as she makes her way to the Bloom. "Uh hey. I'm Tiphereth." Tiphereth manages, feeling real out of place. Roland, on the other hand, approaches Lilian and Arthur and he says, "Hey man. You're Knifefist thing works real well, thanks a bunch." and then to Lilian. "Enjoying your vacation?" He glances over to Petra, bracing a little to get chided for leaving Angela on her own but he's not entirely sure that'll happen so it's just a mild tension for a moment.
Lilian Rook	'YO' "Hey dipshit." Ash responds, looking sooooo cool by not looking away from staring out unto the horizon from that broody lean, and even holding out a fist expending some stupid fuckass dap. 'Or you could take one'a the spots for DRAMATIC JUMP-DOWN. Real classic. Kind of on your MOOD.' "Already did, gamer blankie." they say, nodding oh-so sage and satisfied. "The fuck you take me for?" There's a slightly weird pause-beat in the flow of conversation. Ash glances off to the left, down the cliff. "Oh shit." They unfold their arms and straighten up. "Fuck I zoned out. I was going to jump down in her way and pick a fight on the road! Nobody tells you staring at the ocean is weirdly relaxing; fuck!" 'You want like... COFFEE or some shit?' "Lowell." Lilian says, curt-respectful, then removes the stick to reveal the majority of a horrid rainbow slime-coloured sugar orb with light teeth marks. There's an instant whiff of freshly opened cough medicine. "You actually wouldn't believe how well these work." she says. "Plus I get your taste in coffee is foul. Show me." 'I am not too used to using traditions of further West -- that is, of what the West calls the East -- ah, no, how to I put it? Well, in any case, I decided it would be fun to try breeding peppers.' Leaning on Tamamo, as always, makes everything better. Not physically, given the walk, but in the sense of comfortably hovering around her side and absorbing all of her conversation without feeling pressured to respond is kind of the same thing. She lets entire verbal paragraphs slide without mention, then responds ever so often in faintly dreamy fashion as if she hadn't. "How long does that take? Breeding, I mean. I haven't looked up anything about peppers yet. Annual? Twice?" 'Dear Nika, hello! Have you caught anything interesting?' Nika, who seems to think nothing of treating Petra like a draft animal (would you make her row?! look at her arms you savage!) and instead rushes for the digital camera slung around her neck by a nylon lanyard. "I didn't actually catch it because we agreed ¶non-TAS/play it honest¶, but if you look at this part where it's barely underwater isn't that totally a hammerhead shark?! I don't think they're even supposed to be here? So I'm going to go look it up now! I'm so so curious about how the oceans are adapting to stuff now, because you'd think a ton of ¶critters¶ would be extinct but actually humans being gone is actually so good for the sea it balances out or something? I should learn to write science-style or something I think. Maybe I should pick a ¶pseudonym/nom de guerre/calling card¶ first?" 'It is nice to have a mild showing, after...' Sakura purses her lips and subtly yet urgently shakes her head, eyes wide over her sunglasses, held down with pinched fingers at the hinge. Once the 'Storm' has passed, she says "For the first time in an age, yes. Thanks to what Ash has achieved, I now have that luxury. Ah, for a time at least! Let us hope that it lasts until the heat makes the water all the more appealing, no?"
Lilian Rook	Lilian completely dissociates through the small talk. All of her thoughts are stored completely in physical composure. The processing jam in her head is embodied in the little game of putting increasingly harder pressure on the hard candy between her teeth until she gets just short of cracking it. The faint squeal of stressed crystal starts to grow worrisomely loud, before it terminates in a wet snap the moment Petra throws her arms around her. Then she just looks like a startled cat. 'Lilian!!! You're--' "Here." Lilian says, rendered mild from confusion. "Somehow." follows, then adds "Because it's tomorrow." Smiling at something private, she attempts to shade her eyes despite already wearing a hat, and says "Goodness. Were the colours here always this bright?" 'They literally only just went back up there.' Unfortunately, this is Ash's perfect opening. Because they do not actually weigh five hundred pounds, there's a limit to how dramatic the impact of landing in sand directly behind Petra is, but the little shadow passing overhead an instant before is a nice touch. As the sand-mist swirls, Ash claps their hand on Petra's shoulder from behind, and says "Say the line, Cyborg. It's the rules." 'That does sound like fun, though. Uh-- Sakura, what's your spice tolerance like, actually?' Sakura is 'secretly' deeply grateful for the conversational 'in'. Sliding her legs over the edge of her beach chair, she holds her cheek in a perfect imitation of a forty-year-old married woman off local reality TV, and says "Oh my, I don't think I could handle those special peppers. They're so terribly violent. Why on Earth do people make those forsaken things?" Then she starts giggling to herself, and has to cover up her mouth instead. "Let me think . . . This time I . . ." she says, then trails off in recollection. "Medium-high?" She glances at Lilian, waiting for the confirmation, since the peppers are Her Thing now (assigned by committee). Lilian cluelessly says "Oh, same then. Or-- hang on, are you trying to account for the white women here, or do you mean . . . ?" "No no no, deadly serious!" Lilian snort-laughs, repeats "Deadly . . ." in an exaggerated accent, and hands off the crate to Petra. 'Uh hey. I'm Tiphereth.' Lilian is now alerted to the point of actually waving. She doesn't actually know Tiphereth very well either; the One Week War wasn't a great opportunity for a mixer, though it does instill a ton of automatic trust. "It feels as if it's been forever." she says, still with a trace of a lingering smile. "The people here are either the hope for redemption of all humanity or a pack of demons from the stars trying out mortal flesh, depending on who you ask." "Yo hold up, who do I ask to get that second one?" "Oh you'll love her, huh." 'Enjoying your vacation?' Three of the four Blooms present look at Roland with their own respective versions of a subtle grimacing emoji. Nika is quickest to jump on it. "Can we have a sleepover? Petra keeps ¶greedy gobbling¶ and if you keep letting her then she'll have a patent on sleepovers."
Tamamo	Petra hugs Lilian, and Tamamo considers her as one would an overly excited dog. In this moment, she decides, some excitement is permitted, even though she says aloud, "You need not be so worried, Ms. Soroka." That's technically true, but there was a whole lot of reason to worry. Tamamo glances up toward Ash, then down again. "They will join us if they wish, I suppose." In contrast to Arthur's proaction, that's about how she's felt about Ash ever since they stopped having to fight, and isn't likely to change without external factors. 'That does sound like fun, though. Uh-- Sakura, what's your spice tolerance like, actually?' "Though I am somewhat less familiar with modern dishes of this era's Japan, there was not a great deal of use for something like strong peppers in dishes of that prior era, compared to the mainland. Does that sound more or less true?" Tamamo glances to Sakura as she speaks, without ever mentioning spice tolerance directly. When she gets the answer, even without any shared scale to comprehend it, she smiles. "Oh, my, how bold. I shall certainly request your aid putting this to the test, when the time comes." 'Uh hey. I'm Tiphereth.' "It is good to see you again, Ms. Tiphereth." She's most certainly just being polite, but you could hardly guess by tone, and the motion of pots and gardening tools only suggests good, 'productive' mood. "Have you fished before?" Maybe she's asking Roland. Actually, would either of them have ever had the chance? Does the City have water? She hasn't seen any and wouldn't trust it if she found it. 'I haven't looked up anything about peppers yet. Annual? Twice?' Tamamo was chattering on the walk, and continues to do so now. It doesn't matter too much how long it takes Lilian to ask a question; she's never stopped being low-key giddy about time spent together. For someone else, it could almost be called embarrassing. "As little as three months suffice for some varieties, from seed to maturity, though the hotter types need longer, it seems. They may have only one harvest a year, but this depends on the climate. If we control well for it, and no frost takes them, there may be three or four." The prospect of needing a season to two to find any results of this effort isn't something she considers a problem at all, of course. 'Thanks to what Ash has achieved, I now have that luxury.' "Thanks to Ash, is it? Ah, speaking of the water, I should, perhaps, go shopping for this season's." This season's what? Looking at what Nika brings over to show, Tamamo shakes her head. "Oh, this is a mystery to myself, as well. I have wondered, since it would mention, why the Antegent like not the seas. There has been such less intrusion, and so, that field continues to grow as it would. Even that is only something I have heard, however, having not lived among people in the time of whale-hunters. Is it not grand, come to that, to consider a world so hidden? One can look to the heavens, or fly to see the highest mountains of the earth, and yet, this will not let one see the depths of the domain of Her younger brother." 'Petra keeps ¶greedy gobbling¶...' Tamamo turns a faint frown of 'what sin have you committed' onto Petra.
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Fondly regard POWERUP CANDY Arthur can't fondly regard that! > Arthur: Incredulously sniff POWERUP CANDY like an INSISTING CAT Arthur takes a whiff and immediately recoils. "FUCK, that's CHEMICALS." He says, in an incredibly useless way. > Arthur: Try out BREEDING PEPPERS "Damn, you gonna do some SPECIALIZED GROWING? I ever tell you about how I used to have a FROG-BREEDING JOB? I'd use SPECIAL SLIME," He beams confidently. "By DOING TIME TRAVEL WRONG." Maybe that won't be useful for what Tamamo is doing. "But I guess you can use SEEDS and stuff TOO if ya wanna. Lemme TASTE-TEST that shit for real, though, MRS. ROOK." She's Mrs. Rook now too. > Arthur: Greet Tiphereth "WHAT'S GOOD TIPPY." Arthur barrages her hands with twenty seconds of pounds, daps, grips, grabs, low-fives, high-fives, mid-fives, finger-wiggles, slides, slips, curls, flexes, and other hand-to-hand combat that's hard to keep up with. He flashes a grin to Roland. "GLAD TO HEAR. You got a lot of FIGHTING in the LIBRARY? BAD PATRONS? Glad you can GRIP 'EM AND SLIT 'EM." > Arthur: Get the coffee \| ARTHUR ALCHEMIZED \| \| USED PICRASMA CANDY && CHEAP INSTANT COFFEE \| \| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- \| \| 10 Build, 30 Steel \| \| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- \| \| Picrasma coffee's taste is exactly equivalent to treating the candy of the \| \| Picrasma Tree as if it were functionally equivalent to coffee beans, in all \| \| mechanical methods of preparation. \| Arthur returns from the building he's stored his alchemization equipment in. "DAWG." He says. "I did some INHALING in the VICINITY of this. I think I'm dying of the THE MYSTERIOUS CHEMICAL DISEASE." He offers the cup of coffee on a little plate to Lilian, and gets back to socializing.
Lilian Rook	'Oh, my, how bold. I shall certainly request your aid putting this to the test, when the time comes.' "I would be honoured." Sakura giggles. "Actually, it's Saeko who prefers everything needlessly spicy. It seems I developed a taste for it secondhand. Perhaps I should invite her as well?" It is transparently an attempt to get her [older female guardian figure] to interact with people 'her age'. Lilian, meanwhile, immerses herself in the pleasant bath of pepper-breeding trivia, burbling "Three or four times . . ." around her medicinally horrible lollipop. 'Thanks to Ash, is it?' Sakura looks to Ash, who wasn't looking at her for confirmation, actually, and just says "Oh yeah. Double-dee filled me in on the whole fucked up sword hunt situation, and, like, her cult?" Now they look aside, just to say "It's okay if I call it a cult right? Because it is. In the old-times way." and then continue on anyways. "So, whatever, basically, that shit got dangerous as fuck after these guys hit the halfway point, because the big clans are getting pissy and desperate about who keeps stealing all their shit, and guys keep getting maimed and killed all the time, so Dee-Two has to work overtime. So I just figured, hey, I'm between jobs, and fuckin' invincible, and bored shitless skipping rocks on the ocean." 'FUCK, that's CHEMICALS.' "It's picrasma." Lilian says, snootily, as a form of humour. "They put advisories on these like they do with energy drinks. Ignoring them is what makes it sweet." 'I ever tell you about how I used to have a FROG-BREEDING JOB? I'd use SPECIAL SLIME' Lilian looks annoyed. Ash looks baffled. Sakura looks grossed out. Nika looks like her eyes are going to emit glitter effects at any second. "Is the slime frog slime, or time travel slime?" Girl what? 'Lemme TASTE-TEST that shit for real, though, MRS. ROOK.' "Hmph. Well. If you insist." Lilian says, brainhacked. It's a different reason she just takes the coffee abomination immediately as if she actually asked for it. The same reason as usual, unfortunately. She takes one sip, elegantly places the mug back down, and says in aristocratic tones "Oh that is vile. You've surpassed yourself this time."
Petra Soroka	"Because it's tomorrow." "Yeah! And where else would you be?" Petra's self-satisfied tail-wagging could only be more clear if she actually had a tail. The bad news, of course, was bad, but here everyone is safe and warm and she's surrounded by loved ones, so there's a bounce in her step as she wanders all around within leash-range of Lilian. Automatically, she swings the plastic crate back and forth, and then double checks what's in it to make sure that she can't damage it like that. "Enjoying your vacation?" "Lilian's taken a vacation once and it was for her honeymoon," Petra retorts, as the voice of many collective grimaces. "Every other time she's just between bits of working harder than anyone else." She doesn't seem particularly inclined to scold Roland for leaving Angela. In fact, it is normal to leave someone to sleep when they are sleeping. She does, however, have other things to say about that. "Hey, you-- did you get Ange comfortable on the bed? No limbs overlapping or anything? Did you put water nearby? What was her breathing like? I guess-- we'll have to ask if she had any dreams when she wakes up, actually. Who knows what part of, uh, becoming human, getting dreams is?" "Actually--" Petra whirls around to put her attention on Lilian, and then hesitates. "Er-- that was a horrible segue. I'll try a different one later." "I should learn to write science-style or something I think." Petra nods enthusiastically, blissfully not mentioning anything about being put to work swimming around in shark infested waters. "You could! I mean, like, who else on Earth will? I actually saw-- oh my god it would be so easy to just go underwater and show you everything* (or you could go yourself probably?)-- when getting the Voyager, how healthy everything underwater looks. If none of the Antegent went far offshore, then further water is probably totally perfectly recovered to pre-human levels, right? There's gotta be some crazy coral reefs and shit out there." "Say the line, Cyborg. It's the rules." The line that comes to mind when Ash's shadow flies over her and lands behind, is to spin around after the shoulder clap and raise her arm up 'defensively'. "H-huh?! So fast-!" This is entirely Love's fault for giving her that brainworm. "Why on Earth do people make those forsaken things?" Snickering from her own cringy joke, Petra is now fully in the orbit of four or five very important people, which prompts her to babble aimlessly in excitement. "One of my friends in highschool's parents owned a farm with those things, I forget the specific type, and one time on a trip she brought a bunch of the absolute worst peppers maybe in the world? And we kinda thought we'd have to bail and go to the hospital. Or-- well, based on that, I think my own spice tolerance is pretty high? Lots of food in the City is pretty spicy too." "Let me think . . . This time I . . ." "Oh, I didn't think about-- how much do your food preferences change, actually? I mean, between physiological familiarity and just over time-- I could always bring some hot sauces over to test?"
Petra Soroka	"Ah, speaking of the water, I should, perhaps, go shopping for this season's." Petra nods along thoughtfully with Tamamo swimsuit contemplations. "I guess I should too? I didn't actually, expect to go in the water today, but it was basically fine anyways. I've always got lots of clothes." The swimsuit on the calendar, naturally, wasn't exactly her type for casual wear. "Petra keeps ÷greedy gobbling÷ . . ." "That's the second time! Why am I always greedy gobbling!" Petra's protests mostly serve the purpose of it being funny to dunk on her when she makes them. Tugging on her invisible leash to guide Lilian in the direction, she ends up gravitating everyone towards Sakura's chair as the anchor point. She opens her mouth to complain again, and then freezes at some thought that follows from the idea of either Lilian sleeping over or her own sleepovers. Now when she regains the ability to speak, it sounds like she's making a retort to something else entirely different from what was said. "It's just normal to hang out."
Angela	"I don't think we've ever met outside of some work thing." Tiphereth looks back over to Lilian, relieved at her doing her part to break the ice. Out of all the Sephirah (not counting Angela herself), Tiphereth had the least attachment to the Seed of Light project (considering it killed her brother and all) but she did still find it important enough to fight for until everyone was too exhausted to keep going. She is, less strangely, the Sephirah that Angela seems to like and trust most and also the one she had to be cruelest to. It's been tough for her to still be loyal the project now that it's semi-over, though. Like Angela, she wants to figure out her own life. And Roland is kind enough to apparently make it easier for her by dragging her out to events like this. Supporting her expectation a meaning of existence. "It's good to see you, I've been trying to figure out stuff for myself for a while. I actually visited my old hometown in the Outskirts a while back. Told them about what happened with Enoch and Gebura's been helping me learn how to fight and I've been reading up on Biology and Ecology. Sometimes Angela asks me to help with something, but not that often." She looks a little worried, biting at her lip. "It's weird that she's sleeping." She's worried she might not wake up. This is weird even in her already weird life. "Pretty sure she'd agree you should've come here." Roland assures Tiphereth. "Maybe... But I'm not complaining." Tiphereth insists, despite definitely having been complaining a little before--but she's talking to someone she likes so that's helping ease her unease about being at a 'function' like this. ''Either the hope for redepmtion of all huamnity or a pack of demons.'' "Oh I'm feeling at home already." Tiphereth quips with a tired smile. "It's nice having a 'human' body that feels closer to my age." Naturally, she was always a boxbot even if her Cognition Filter made her look like a child, but it's nice be able to be viewed as adult. ''Yo hold up, who do I ask to get that second one?'' Tiphereth turns over and offers her hand to Ash. "Ah--hey. Tiphereth. Nice to meet you too." She tries to think of some sort of ice breaking quip to add on top of Lilian and Ash's comments but fails to. Tiphereth is less socially anxious and more grew up in a supervillain's lair for most of her life. "Friend of Petra's?"
Angela	''Can we have a sleepover? Petra keeps greedy gobbling'' "Sounds like a great plan, Lilian's at an all time low for ways to dodge stuff like that." Roland is a bit of a shit-eating grin in a suit sometimes. ''Have you fished before?'' "I pretended to." Roland offers to Tamamo. "Not since I was, like, six." Tiphereth admits to Tamamo. There's not really an opportunity she'd had since. ''Arthur!'' ''WHAT'S GOOD TIPPY'' Roland gives Tiphereth a look of 'what do you mean you hardly know anyone here, you've gotten three people jumping to talk to you', and Tiphereth's cheeks are turning a bit red. She offers Arthur her hand too which results in it being comandeered for twenty fully seconds of pounds and daps. Tiphereth's expression isn't pleased. It looks almost exactly as Angela's when she is pulled into something she doesn't appreciate but is going along with it for the sake of social cohesion. When Arthur's hands finally stop, Tiphereth starts rubbing at her knuckles. "Uh. Hey Arthur. It's a 'ph', wouldn't it be Tiff--" She pauses. "Tippy is fine." Roland on the other hand is surprised. "Wow, you might be the first person to speak about my job like that. Maybe we should hire you. But yeah, it's been a big help." ''Lilian's taken a vacation once.'' "And the multiverse held together for the honeymoon, afraid of what might happen if it was interrupted, but maybe it can even handle a third vacation now." He jokes before flinching. "It's...a little hard to tell, she always looks a little uncomfortable but, I got her a pillow for her head, put the sheets over her. ... Uh I didn't put water nearby, her breathing seemed---normal? I can call Malkuth and ask her to add a glass of water?" Roland has no idea about the dreams either. Maybe we'll get to find out what she's dreaming in an upcoming cutscene now that her player's been given a prompt about it! "I did find her on the floor so she might still be a little stiff after." Roland admits.
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Is the slime frog slime, or time travel slime? Arthur's beaming smile answers Nika. "TIME TRAVEL SLIME." He says. "PARADOX TYPE specific. If you try to TELEPORT something when that'd go VIOLATE some TIME STUFF, the TARGET STAYS, you still get MASS but it's SLIME. I did FROG-BREEDING with it! It's great for TUBES." This was less a gross thing and more of a... weird puzzle thing? "Still got some at HOME. Could bring them HERE to HANG OUT!" > Arthur: Why am I always greedy gobbling! "SHE'S SPITTIN' FACTS." Arthur asserts. "YOUR GREED IS UNLIMITED. That's one'a the reasons you even HAVE ASPECT goin' on." His shrug is vague, helpless, and probably even devoid of meaning. "S'good though. You know I took it for INSPIRATION for SARRACENIA'S TRAINING?" God, what's THAT look like?! > Arthur: Maybe we should hire you. "LAST TIME I WORKED IN A LIBRARY," Arthur mutters. "There was a lot more ENDING OF UNIVERSAL CYCLES than I think ya want over there. Maybe I'll VISIT sometime, tho'." > Arthur: You've surpassed yourself this time. An achievement pops up near Arthur, and the little "ding" happens right when he gives that wink and shit-eating grin and double-fingerguns.
Tamamo	'I ever tell you about how I used to have a FROG-BREEDING JOB?' "I feel as if an importance in breeding frogs... or in raising one frog, in particular, perhaps, was mentioned... though that was quite some time ago." She nods to the mention of 'special slime.' That sounds like something frog-breeding-related. Then, she -- doesn't quite frown, but gives a look somewhere between concerned and perplexed. "Does performing incorrect time travel create frogs, or was it that performing time travel correctly would not have resulted in the frog you needed?" 'Actually, it's Saeko who prefers everything needlessly spicy.' "Oh, dear. Well, now, I should not wish for things to be needlessly spiced. One should flavor with purpose greater than burning away all other sensations. It is not a battlefield of that sort!" Tamamo allows herself a moment to fuss about this, before getting back around to, "More hands -- or tongues, perhaps -- are ever useful in judging such things. Perhaps you should invite her, after all." 'Three or four times . . .' "It takes several generations to stabilize around a particular flavor, of course, but I do not mind the adventure along the way. Would you? One never knows just what sort of chaotic development may arise from the first cross of two distinct types." She's rather into this. "Or so I have read." 'It's okay if I call it a cult right? Because it is.' After glancing between Lilian and Sakura and quietly drawing out, "'Dee-two'...?" Tamamo says, "That which keeps a mystery is a cult thereof." The word has no negative feeling when she says it, so she might not be the right person to ask, anyway. "Oh, the blades... yes, you would be rather well-fitted to handle that particular danger." It's not clear which of several dangers she means, but maybe 'all of them.' "Thank you." 'I've always got lots of clothes.' "The fun is in 'trying something new,' of course, and also in 'showing something new,' as one does when giving a gift." A new swimsuit for herself and giving gifts to someone else are exactly the same thing, in fact. 'That's the second time! Why am I always greedy gobbling!' "A lack of sense of moderation, undoubtedly." Even without knowing what she was gobbling, Tamamo sounds so sure. 'I pretended to.' 'Not since I was, like, six.' "Oh, truly? I wondered if there were rivers in the City... or was this outside of it? Of course, it is quite strange, on this world, to have cities without rivers. They are so important to the development of civilization, you see. And then, of course, they are like to go the way of London." After taking a moment to realize that might need elaboration, "They become rather dirty."
Lilian Rook	'H-huh?! So fast-!' This is apparently deemed acceptable tribute. Ash still has to prod Petra in the cheek and say "If you were on the battlefield, you'd already be dead." in their shittiest gravelly voice. God only knows who they're imitating, but dear lord do they clearly think that guy is a clown. 'Yeah! And where else would you be?' Something in Lilian's usual style of sarcasm rises to her lips, then dies there. She exhales without wanting to say it. 'Actually--' "Could you, I don't know, get robotomized again and wander into the infinite psychic void again to tell her to calm the fuck down?" Lilian sighs. "No don't do that." Ash opens their mouth, stares at Petra, then thinks better of asking right this second. Instead they stage whisper in tones of awe, "Bitch are you fetish mining the fucking Multiverse? How does that happen?" 'Is it not grand, come to that, to consider a world so hidden? One can look to the heavens, or fly to see the highest mountains of the earth, and yet, this will not let one see the depths of the domain of Her younger brother.' "I actually read that we used to know more about the dark side of the moon than the bottom of the ocean. I think that's probably because America got mad we were doing it better." Nika says, first as an offhanded factoid being burbled out on auto, then intentfully staring at Ash. "Nika, you weren't even alive for Russia, never-goddamn-mind the Soviet Union. What kind of posting are you on?" Nika, however, continues to stare, until Ash says "Nope. You get nothing from me. I'm not even an American citizen. They literally had to steal all the special 'Bloom stuff' and take it there." Nika then turns to look at Petra, staring like a smug cat about some private joke. "What?" 'You could! I mean, like, who else on Earth will?' "You're right." Nika suddenly gasps, awestruck with the enormity of an idea. "Nobody wants to ¶touch grass/remember mother's day¶ enough to do something like that so we could totally make like the ¶Bestiary of Earth¶! And then catching every fish is doing two things at once!" '-- when getting the Voyager' "Yeah how'd that go anyway?" says Ash, obliviously curious. "The way the dead fucks used to tell it, some War of the Worlds shit went down when they tried the first time. I bet some chucklefuck blew the engine in the chopper and everyone did their USonian best and called it aliens." 'Oh, I didn't think about-- how much do your food preferences change, actually?' "If nothing else, it's all . . ." Sakura takes a moment to gather her breath again, after the size of that euphemistic pause "An enlightening opportunity to map the seams between the embodiment and the embodied. For instance, the feeling of pain from spice is naturally sharpened all over again by the return of the receptors to an undamaged state, but the ability to tolerate it, is oddly the same, which averages to a new point entirely. Then, revisiting each choice along the returning to the addiction to heat is like reading a book all over again a year later, and noticing all the things you hadn't before. It's much the same as with 'memory' and 'muscle' memory."
Lilian Rook	A red highlighted keyword draws Lilian's attention. "Seriously? As in, it's physically in your muscles entirely? Is that the answer?" Sakura smiles and says "It's a lengthy and meandering topic, I'm afraid. Would--" but Lilian follows up thoughtless-automatic with "Yes, I'd like to know! Ten o'clock?" which Sakura doesn't seem to think is remotely weird enough to keep her from nodding, though she does look slightly stunned by something. 'Ah, speaking of the water, I should, perhaps, go shopping for this season's.' 'I guess I should too? I didn't actually, expect to go in the water today, but it was basically fine anyways. I've always got lots of clothes.' Ash jabs their finger accusingly at Petra. They open their mouth and take a deep breath to yell something, then choose "C'mon do I even need to say it?!" instead, and look around at the crowd. Lilian, expression first turned bleak by the idea, cracks up with a nasal snicker. 'That's the second time! Why am I always greedy gobbling!' "Why are you?" Nika teasingly sing-songs. 'It's just normal to hang out.' "See? Puppy said so. She's beating you at hangouts. Her ¶social link¶ is so high right now." Nika actually manages to pull off an eyewaggle taunt at Lilian, who starts to roll her eyes and then blinks and stares at Petra instead. The plastic crate has mostly soft material in it. When Lilian motions Petra to set it down and unbuckle the straps, the top lifts off to reveal a selection of supplies to replace a reasonably sized flowerbed of space with similar composition to the family land, and then a second, different set of supplies for testing and improving the soil here. It also contains a slightly worrying amount of stimulant and alcoholic beverages, and, oddly, a pillow. "I was thinking of right along the sides of the footpath down to the beach." Lilian says, ostensibly to Sakura, because she settles down on the beach chair beside her without really thinking, and points upwards slightly through her personal bubble to draw lines down the irregular stones and buried logs that make it up. She pats the seat on the other side of her with her hand, without seeming to notice. "That gets the sunrise but isn't blocked by the shadow of the building. I've noticed that the wind veers off the inside of the cliffs from the coastal angle." Sakura enthusiastically nods the whole way.
Lilian Rook	'It's good to see you, I've been trying to figure out stuff for myself for a while. I actually visited my old hometown in the Outskirts a while back.' "What?! Really?!" Lilian's head whips around mid-explanation. "You-- She lets you just-- You can do that?" For reasons unknown, Lilian seems to find the idea of anyone in the City having a 'hometown', much less caring about one, bizarrely unique and character-identifying. "What's it like? Your hometown, I mean, but also what Gebura's kept you up to." 'It's weird that she's sleeping.' "People say that about me all the time." Lilian says, and laughs only slightly uneasily. 'It's nice having a 'human' body that feels closer to my age.' Lilian has the social graces not to look right at Sakura. Nika does. Ash doesn't know why she did. Sakura sighs, and with a weary tone of congratulation, says "Revisiting old places isn't quite right unless everything is a bit smaller." 'Sounds like a great plan, Lilian's at an all time low for ways to dodge stuff like that.' "Motherfucker." Lilian huffs. Trying to make this less about her, she gets as far as "Ash?" before they throw up one palm and say "Nice try, but I live here. Houseboat." "Oh so it's not a sleepover when you wander by the house or crash on the sofa? Because you're a big adult property-owner and your property is floating like a hundred feet away?" "Ain't I a fucking genius?" 'And the multiverse held together for the honeymoon, afraid of what might happen if it was interrupted' "No survivors." Lilian blurts out impulsively. 'TIME TRAVEL SLIME.' "Heck yes!" Nika squeals. "I knew it I knew it! It's ¶wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey-stuff¶ isn't it?! You have to bring it!" She actually starts pumping her fists. "I can trust you Arthur! I have to win an internet argument!" 'YOUR GREED IS UNLIMITED.' "He's right Cyborg." "Yup." 'More hands -- or tongues, perhaps -- are ever useful in judging such things. Perhaps you should invite her, after all.' Sakura claps her hands together in delight. "Of course!" she says. "I'll try not to make it sound very formal either! I can barely believe I've gotten to the point of worrying about her after all this time . . ." ''Dee-two'...?' "Oh yeah." Ash begins explaining with a series of largely inscrutable finger gestures. "Forty-four, shi-shi, death-death, double-death, DD. Good thing too, 'cause anything with 'cherry' sounds depraved."
Petra Soroka	"If you were on the battlefield, you'd already be dead." "If we were on the battlefield, we wouldn't be on opposite sides." Petra quotes(?) back in a similarly affected voice and scoff, broken up by giggles. Whatever Ash has going on in their mind, it seems like Petra might be basing this bit off of something entirely more insane. "I think I'm dying of the THE MYSTERIOUS CHEMICAL DISEASE." "You're literally made of fifty percent mysterious diseased chemicals. If you were gonna die from them you would already." Petra huffs at Arthur, but her attention follows the instant picrasma coffee nevertheless. Lilian is drinking a special beverage! Petra knows what picrasma is! She's interested! "I'm between jobs, and fuckin' invincible, and bored shitless skipping rocks on the ocean." Petra agrees, as the natural salve to boredom, "We've gotta get up in space. Now that Lilian's back." "I did FROG-BREEDING with it!" The movements of Petra's hands attempt to convey her confusion as to how teleportation could violate time stuff. To try and model time as a thing that can conflict with movement, Lilian can see in her eyes the exact moment where Petra starts trying to match this concept to the experience of using her own power, and envisions a way in which Lilian's time stop could produce any sort of slime. She comes to an uncertain conclusion while one hand, palm flat-down, is inserted between the fingers of her other hand, like she's crudely miming out scissoring. "Does it create slime? Does doing that leave you a frog, and then also more slime that appears? Or does the thing turn into equivalent mass slime? I can imagine how that would work. --Wait, what were you specializing frogs for anyways?" "I actually visited my old hometown in the Outskirts a while back." Petra has some comment that's about to unthinkingly burble past her lips again at Tiphereth, but two neurons connect in a way that makes her come to a complete stop. The thought train, unelaborated to anyone outside of the strange prison of her own mind, goes as follows: 'Oh, I visited someone's hometown in the Outskirts too'; 'Right, that was Cinder's place'; 'Ahn was talking about visiting a village recently too and there were babies involved'; 'There was one baby in Cinder's old village too when we visited'; 'Whose name was Cinder, and her mom was Ember'; 'Like that fucking new Watch guy who just showed up yesterday'. After several seconds pass from that thought, she autocompletes her queued up speech action more callously than she otherwise would've. "They remembered you?"
Petra Soroka	"It's weird that she's sleeping." "Ah-- er, it is weird. But honestly I was expecting sleeping to come before bleeding, but she bled a while ago. So it's weird but it's normal. I'm not really worried." "It's nice having a 'human' body that feels closer to my age." Petra tilts her head and reexamines Tipereth, and then glances at Roland's collection of limbs. "Huh. Have you aged? In the past year, I mean. I don't think I've noticed one way or the other." "Friend of Petra's?" When answering Tiphereth's question for Ash, Petra immediately becomes as smug and haughty as possible to bait them into burying her in the sand. "Obviously~" "Not since I was, like, six." "Hard to get to District 21 when you're dead in a little box buried underground in a bigger box," Petra elaborates for Tamamo. "That's where the Great Lake is. Oh, Ange's gone fishing though, when we went with Shinra that one time." "You know I took it for INSPIRATION for SARRACENIA'S TRAINING?" After a mere handful of conversations with Matilda about romance, Matilda remarked to Lilian, about something Lilian said that Petra has not been informed of, that Petra is 'ruthless'. The question of her greed should be skipped past as quickly as possible, actually. "-- You're using me as 'inspiration'? How?" "The fun is in 'trying something new,' of course, and also in 'showing something new,' as one does when giving a gift." "I've already--" No! Don't finish that sentence, Petra! "C'mon do I even need to say it?!" Her only other granted prompt doesn't seem any more promising. "Er, say what?"
Tamamo	'I actually read that we used to know more about the dark side of the moon than the bottom of the ocean.' "Is that no longer true? It has been some time, of course, but... even so." The rest of the topic about past nations passes her like a breeze, or maybe like youthful slang she's not inclined to admit to not understanding. Instead, "A bestiary, is it? That sounds rather exciting, when put like so." '...the return of the receptors to an undamaged state, but the ability to tolerate it...' "Oh, how unexpected. I had thought such a thing to be too 'passive' to be stored in such a way. That which is remembered..." She trails off without finishing the thought. ''cause anything with 'cherry' sounds depraved.' Having nodded along up to that point, Tamamo innocently asks, "Oh, why? Is there something particular about cherries in your hanakotoba?" 'I was thinking of right along the sides of the footpath down to the beach.' "For my own part, an area of greatest sun would be most useful." Hefting, "Oh, it would be nice to put things down. Shall we?"
Lilian Rook	'If we were on the battlefield, we wouldn't be on opposite sides.' "Yeah yeah, you'd be oiling up my rifle and making big yearning sighs while I stomp on a guy's face with my big hurty boot. I know what you are." Ash says, very fondly for some reason. 'You're literally made of fifty percent mysterious diseased chemicals. If you were gonna die from them you would already.' Lilian holds the vile concoction out to Petra, still steaming. "Dare ye, brave heroine?" she says, putting on one quarter of her simulation stage voice. 'We've gotta get up in space. Now that Lilian's back.' That makes Lilian and Sakura very quiet, and Ash act exactly like this was the most obvious outcome in the entire world. "Oh fuck, finally? We're having this talk? I've been wondering about those space warnings, like, forever. We're gonna go see how bad they fucked it right? Like 'this is not a place of honour' style graveyard of civilization. I literally carved a shitty tombstone one day when I was really bored and I just read that whole study about linguistic future drift to try and say 'Fucked around and Found Out' to future alien species. I was hoping I'd get to put it there, like, straight up do a touchdown with it, but if I couldn't then the funniest shit would be that it still works if you leave it on Earth." "Yes, Ash. Actually." Sakura sighs. "Lilian and the others were working on the details, and I hadn't asked much. But . . ." "Kepler." "Knew it." "It's ready to launch whenever." "Hell yes." "We'd like it if you came too." "Hell yes!" "Arthur Lowell built the ship." "Fuck no!" "What--?" "I'm still gonna go but that sentence is nightmare fuel." "So is the ¶ship/thrift store¶." "Hey. Hey Nika. Why did the spirit speech come out like that?" "Oh . . . You'll see . . . The feng shui is . . ." "The vibes are evil."
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Does performing incorrect time travel create frogs? > Arthur: Or does the thing turn into equivalent mass slime? Arthur answers Tamamo and Petra both. "Nah. INCORRECT TIME TRAVEL makes SLIME. Gotta be really CAREFUL." Arthur unhelpfully explains the entire system. "You wanna TELEPORT SOMETHING that's got a DESTINY, your TELEPORTER is gonna want some MASS and GENETICS, right? But the MATTER gotta STAY. We called it PARADOX SLIME." > Arthur: Wait, what were you specializing frogs for anyways? "THE FATED DESTINY." Arthur's words hang in the air in a way that somehow waves up and down with weight. "The ENTIRE GAME was for the frog. It was FROG GAME. I had to do it to perpetuate the cycle of destruction and creation of worlds." > Arthur: Kepler "Yep. I've taken the SHIP out for a couple TEST DRIVES on the BLOOM ENGINE. The LENSES aren't gonna last forever, but the NEXT COUPLE MONTHS, they'll be ALL GOOD. We got a STABLE CRUISE. And HEY! My SHIPCRAFT is TIGHT! I'm the SPACE GUY. You wanna get STRAINED OUT OF SPACE BY THE NUCLEAR SIEVE? I'm doin' you FAVORS!" Arthur declares, striking obnoxious and nagging poses arounds the edge of the frame for the Blooms. "It's gonna be a BORING-ASS RIDE, so y'all gonna need to BRING A LOT OF PALS. GAMES too, I'm gonna LAN-PARTY THAT THING. But at least it's not gonna go as long as WHATSHERFACE had to ride it. Anyway, yeah, all READY TO GO, the SOKOBANS are PRE-SOLVED and EVERYTHING." He has such a way with words when saying 'it's fully furnished'.
Angela	Roland nods to Arthur easily. He almost pipes in that he doubts the Library will end a UNIVERSAL cycle but then hesitates a little. If he says that and is wrong he'll look SO DUMB. So he elects to just say, "Understandable. You should. She gets a lonely cooped up in that place. She's taken to walking along the outskirts of the Library lately. And she mentioned you saying something about aspect stuff or something like that?" Tiphereth is actually getting eager to talk about rivers. "Oh actually there are a lot of rivers in The City. Despite the name. How the rivers are managed depend on The District. As for the Outskirts, there's countless rivers out there too but you have to be careful, they can be contaminated. Villages tend to sprout up by the safer rivers but not too close to avoid the monsters and killer robots and such. But if you avoid the Ruins, they'll probably be fine to drink from. Gebura says it's mostly an issue for Fixers who don't know the Outskirts too well but if you had to move because your village, you might want to be careful when you're looking for a new one too. That's what Enoch and I were doing when we got picked up." ''What?! Really?!'' "I don't know about 'let'--she needed a guide through the Outskirts and the second best option was Gebura. And she trusts me more than Gebura." Honestly probably a fair thing to do even if Angela was neutral on the opinion. Outside of the Library, Gebura wouldn't have that hard of a time taking Angela out if she wanted to. Tiphereth has the civility enough to look embarrassed at the comment. "She didn't back when it was Lobcorp except for the Meltdowns. It's possible she snuck in her forty winks out of sight--but uh, I don't mean it's bad or anything. You just get a kind of image of someone for a while and when they start to change, it takes some getting used to." ''What's it like? Your hometown, I mean, but also--'' Tiphereth hesitates. "To be honest, though, I think Angela would let me specifically go back there if I asked. But it didn't really .... feel like home anymore. I didn't remember most of the people there, and--" She looks to Sakura, unsure why everybody else is but gives her a friendly nod of affirmation in case it's important to her. She is too polite to just ask about it though. "--well, I'd been gone too long. I don't think I could go to that kind of life. I'd be a Hunter by now I stayed there, but I'd probably be a hindrance as I am now. Maybe that's why Gebura started training me, so I could become a Hunter if I wanted, but I'm actually ... not sure where I'd go, even if Angela released me, you know? Gebura's mostly kept me on basic forms with a sword so far and has been teaching me how to throw a punch properly, use people's weight against them, that sort of thing." ''Motherfucker.'' Roland returns that motherfucker with a smile that shifts from shit-eating to sincere. "No survivors." He repeats. He is a sincere adherent to this philosophy as well which to Lilian at least might explain why he's doing what he's doing.
Angela	''They remembered you?'' Tiphereth looks confused, at first, by the comment. Then understanding fills her eyes. "Oh... Oh! That's right, you don't--" She sheepishly smiles as she dips her head, and pulls a pair of contacts out of her eyes. When she lifts her head again, her eyes are now purple. "They didn't really need to remember me. Most of the people in our village have purple eyes. While it never happened while I was there, the elders would tell me that sometimes Syndicates or Fixer groups would come by, ask some questions, and take someone back to The City. Some do return to the village, one did while I was living there, but they never stick around long. Maybe it's the same as me, they don't feel comfortable returning." She looks over to Lilian. The eyes might look familiar. "I don't want to get hassled about it, so I usually wear the contacts. My eye color in the old body was different because--well that's what Ayin decided, I guess." ''Have you aged?'' "It's a little hard to tell of a year, but I think so." Tiphereth admits. "Angela spent more time on my new body than the others, but she hasn't really talked too much about how they work." She does smile a little at the mention of Angela going fishing but suppresses it quickly lest she seem like she's too chill.
Lilian Rook	'Does it create slime?' Lilian narrows her eyes at Petra. 'They remembered you?' Nika is not actually within reach to bap Petra, but the "¶Bad dog¶" causes a firecracker-snap sound and a little blue flash that stings the shit out of Petra's forehead. 'But honestly I was expecting sleeping to come before bleeding, but she bled a while ago.' "Gross." 'Obviously~' "Yeah, she folds up nice in a guitar case. Really works with my wandering karate vigilante thing." "Oh! So I don't need to explain 'purple rider' after all?" "No yeah you do actually." 'You know I took it for INSPIRATION for SARRACENIA'S TRAINING?' '-- You're using me as 'inspiration'? How?' "Well, you see . . ." Lilian lifts one finger, then tilts it along with her entire body, first one way, then the other. "You're trainable, and she's not. So in order to train her, one must first envision a version of her that could be trained." After three seconds of fighting back the demon, Lilian scrapes the last of the residue off her horrid candy, flicks the stick spinning up into the air, incinerates it with a finger snap, and says "We have to get her and Ash in a radio frequency." "This sounds like pervert shit." "No, trust me, it's way, way better." "Oho! Yeah?" 'Er, say what?' "Fuckboy!" 'Is that no longer true? It has been some time, of course, but... even so.' "Well if you think about it we basically don't know anything anymore because of ¶the guy¶ up there." "The . . . Man in the Moon? Nika? The Antegent?" "¶The guy¶." 'A bestiary, is it? That sounds rather exciting, when put like so.' Nika finds a big rock to sit on just so she can kick her legs. It is, in fact, the big rock she put here so that there'd be a big rock. She used it to catch worms with Petra before. "People save all the best words for games. 'Bestiary', 'Atelier', 'Codex', 'Affinity', 'Transmogrify'. You ever notice? They feel ¶fear and shame/nearness to god¶ when they try to use them in the world we have to live in." 'Oh, why? Is there something particular about cherries in your hanakotoba?' Ash stares. Lilian stares. Ash waits a while to break the standoff first, to awkwardly say "I have principles." at which Lilian says "Very much appreciated." then beckons Tamamo to lean in so she can whisper. 'We got a STABLE CRUISE. And HEY! My SHIPCRAFT is TIGHT! I'm the SPACE GUY.' "We've discussed it." Sakura says, nodding to Nika. "Miss Oreshnika will--" "You're getting stressed . . . Remember?" "A-ah, Nika and I will be keeping a connection from the ground, of course. Should anything happen, we will be able to provide . . . various means of assistance. Between those departing, I believe we need only cover the most unlikely possibilities ourselves, but, still." "Also I get to be ¶Master AI¶." 'It's gonna be a BORING-ASS RIDE, so y'all gonna need to BRING A LOT OF PALS. GAMES too'
Lilian Rook	Nika solemnly reaches out her hand for Arthur's, ostensibly emboldened by Ash's continued proximity to try and stoically nod about it. Lilian sighs and says "At least the bloody thing is enormous.", regretting it immediately when Ash puts on a fascinated shit-eating smirk at a genuine 'bloody'. 'I don't know about 'let'--she needed a guide through the Outskirts and the second best option was Gebura. And she trusts me more than Gebura.' "Oh good God I don't want to know what she's up to out there." Lilian groans. 'I could become a Hunter if I wanted, but I'm actually ... not sure where I'd go' "The City is a place in which everywhere you can go is best paved with the edge of a sword. It'll--" "Sick." "Sick." "--serve you well no matter what you choose."
Petra Soroka	"Could you, I don't know, get robotomized again and . . ." "Oh, no," Petra begins in the tone of clarifying a common misunderstanding. "Not robotomized. Robotomizing is when someone's used as a material for a robot, but their preexisting personhood isn't transferred over at all, whether that's because it's a whole different personality or because it's not a sentient machine at all. Robotocizing is when someone's built into a robot-- which is closer, but what Doctor Eggman does to do that and what Dimo does are totally different methods." "... I think there's probably a simpler way than that anyways," She adds belatedly. Then to Ash, "-- Huh? What? I'm not doing any of that on purpose at all! It just happens to me!" "You get nothing from me. I'm not even an American citizen." Petra snickers at the exchange, but because she's always the butt of the joke when it comes to accusing someone of being American, the moment Nika looks at her she assumes she is now too. Thus making Ash her ally in not-Americanism, which is a much more devastating blow to Ash's psyche than Nika could've managed on her own. "My-- the passport I had as a kid expired years ago, and all my records got blown up by one bomb or another. I'm not a citizen of anywhere." 183,"And then catching every fish is doing two things at once!" "We could just go swimming around in the Beauty of Ash taking pictures of fish to fill out the log..." The image in Petra's mind is so captivating that she immediately takes out her Nintendo DS to use her Pictochat logs with Nika as the least efficient notetaking app of all time. The Silver squishes into a stylus and doodles out a scrapbook journal with pictures of fish surrounded by notes, and the Beauty of Ash floating around at the bottom of the ocean. "Yeah how'd that go anyway?" "Oh, there was definitely aliens." Petra nods idly while drawing. "They fucked with Dictum's stasis mode and triggered their explodey defenses or something. Auto-parried. Imagine being nice to something instead of shooting it. We set up a whole thing on that lighthouse island." "Seriously? As in, it's physically in your muscles entirely?" Petra opens her mouth to respond to Sakura, but Lilian's attention is much more important. She hides her mouth behind her hand and holds back a smug little giggle at her successful wingmanning, but with Lilian facing away from her, Petra looks past her to lock eyes with Sakura for a silent shared cheer. Instead, she says, "Ten tonight? So you'll stay?" "See? Puppy said so. She's beating you at hangouts." The most damning part is that Petra doesn't even recognize it as something to respond to strangely at all at first. Cognitively interchangeable with her own name, she loyally joins in the egging-on until Lilian's stare makes her stop. "See? You've got no choice now. I mean, you-- er-- you--" The heretofore unseen secret weapon that Oreshnika wields to be even more shameless than Petra brings her from full HP to zero in an instant. Her cheeks turn pink, and once she regains the ability to move, she gives up on the bullying and slooowly sinks down to sit in the sand besides Lilian and Sakura, knees up to her chest. As Lilian starts talking about her garden plans, Petra opens up the box for her so that she can use props if she wants. "Aha. So you were planning to sleep over the whole time." Petra holds the pillow in both of her hands, and maneuvers it onto her knees so that it hides her face.
Petra Soroka	"You-- She lets you just-- You can do that?" Behind-pillow, Petra exposits, "Yeah, you totally can. It's dangerous for normal people, but kind of nothing compared to what we put the agents through. Ange and I know of a warpgate on the outside, even; I dunno if that's near enough that Tiph used the same one." "He's right Cyborg." "God keeps trying to strike me down for my hubris, but I'm unstoppable." This would sound more defiant if it didn't look like she was trying to burrow downwards like a sand crab. "Dare ye, brave heroine?" "Oh, hell yeah." Petra tilts over to sit on her knees to accept the can from Lilian, holding her breath before sipping it, which makes her voice nasally when she reflects the bit back. ""My mithridic-- mithridatic training has made me immune to these amateur toxins." She is fully aware that picrasma candy is poisonous to anyone who isn't an arcanist, and Petra does not have a magical bone in her body that would be strictly categorized as such. But on that same topic, for multiple reasons, it becomes a triumph of determination when she throws back a horrible bitter mouthful and just grimaces instead of gags. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, entire face scrunched into a wince. The can is handed back to Lilian after that, with one last pained punchline. "Uuuu... it's poison, my lady." Then Petra shakes out her hands with a weird full-body shudder. "Ugh. Wow that has some kick to it. Jesus." "I'm still gonna go but that sentence is nightmare fuel." "Vibes are evil," Petra agrees with Nika. "You should be glad we cleared out the fucking puzzle rooms first. Ten thousand escherian bachelor pads in a row."
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: You're using me as 'inspiration'? How? Arthur jabs his index finger at Petra. "Because you CLAWED OUT of a bunch'a SWAMP-ASS THINKING by WANTING IMPOSSIBLE THINGS and not LOSING YOUR MIND about it when people sometimes TALKED SHIT ABOUT YOU over it. And also I guess you got HELLA PSYCHIC by doing it." He does a vague, shitty little sneer. "Could'a gave her the NORMAL-TYPE TRAINING but YEARNFREAK GRINDSET is the NUMBER ONE SUCCESS STORY for people GETTING their SHIT TOGETHER for GIRLS AROUND LILIAN."
Lilian Rook	'...which is closer, but what Doctor Eggman does to do that and what Dimo does are totally different methods.' "Robottom surgery then." Lilian scoffs, irritated at being explained to in that tone by Petra. Ash squints noncomprehending. Sakura turns aside to suddenly start coughing, and fans herself with her hand as if it'll help swallowing her own spit. 'We could just go swimming around in the Beauty of Ash taking pictures of fish to fill out the log...' "Yes yes yes yes--!" Nika breaks off as Petra pulls out her DS, just so she can do the same, apparently having taken it fishing. The sacred communion begins; though really, Nika is just utterly fascinated with Petra's mental image, and does little to interrupt at all. 'They fucked with Dictum's stasis mode and triggered their explodey defenses or something.' "Hold up. Was Dictum a thing you told me about or just something you're flexing now to show off how in with the cool kids you are? Because ho-ly shit you can't imagine how much fucking latin the op-heads used to hit me with." 'Imagine being nice to something instead of shooting it.' "We're all ¶nice/mad¶ here . . ." Nika murmurs, over doodles of make-believe alien fish. "Are we going to the Kepler that's an ocean planet?" 'Ten tonight? So you'll stay?' Still staring at Petra with suspicion that could burn a hole through concrete, much less a pillow, Lilian says "I told you. They're not letting me back into the field without physicals and psychiatrics. I'm catching up on my desk work and then leaving it to the last minute to waste as much of their time as possible in petty revenge." "Nurses begging for overtime." "What?" "Yeah I see you laughing DD!" "Huh?" 'Aha. So you were planning to sleep over the whole time.' "You never know. Perhaps I was planning to smother you with it." 'My mithridic-- mithridatic training has made me immune to these amateur toxins.' For some reason, that makes Lilian giggle so loud that it completely breaks her aura of thorns focused on Petra. "Naturally. My strongest toxins would slay an Ultraman, let alone a blonde!" 'Uuuu... it's poison, my lady.' "Excellent. Have the vizier executed at once." 'Ugh. Wow that has some kick to it. Jesus.' Lilian takes the coffee back with less absent-minded automation than being offered it, mostly just wanting to relieve Petra of the burden, but sort of also wanting it back. "It's not bad as candy, actually. I think I just taste sweet more strongly than bitter?" 'You should be glad we cleared out the fucking puzzle rooms first. Ten thousand escherian bachelor pads in a row.' "On a scale of Five Nights to Myst . . . ?" Nika says, suddenly worried. Any remotely relevant answer makes her conclude "¶Boys¶ are scary." 'YEARNFREAK GRINDSET is the NUMBER ONE SUCCESS STORY for people GETTING their SHIT TOGETHER for GIRLS AROUND LILIAN.' "All two of them." Lilian rolls her eyes. "Come on. She's not some 'girl'. She's . . . something worse."
Angela	''Oh good God I don't want to know what she's up to out there.'' Tiphereth almost tells Lilian what she's been up to out there but then she recalls she's not exactly sure WHY they went out there, exactly, and that stalls her long enough that she remembes Lilian literally said she didn't want to know. So instead she says, "I'm sure it's fine." ''The City is a place--'' "There's--always this temptation to just leave, but I want to believe a better world is possible even there. So I don't think I'm ready to just leave. So--yeah, a good sword-arm will probably help. Thanks, Lilian." She seems a little more confident in the future after saying so. ''But kind of nothing compared to what we put the agents through. Ange and I know of a warpgate outside'' "There's also enviromental problems, it's not just stuff trying to actively kill you, but I'm pretty sure a small group of Elites could handle moving around out there without too many problems, even if Lilian wasn't in that group. With her, they'd probably have a real easy time." ''Robottom surgery.'' ''Robotocizing is when someone's built into a robot'' Tiphereth gets a strange look in her eye. "Huh... were we robotocized then?" "What did your robot forms look like anyway?" Roland asks. "Uh a box with metal limbs and a single eye." Tiphereth says, hoping nobody mentions the smell of said boxbots.
Petra Soroka	"Robottom surgery then." With zero hesitation, Petra perfect parries Lilian with "Exactly, as opposed to Robimboification." "You wanna TELEPORT SOMETHING that's got a DESTINY, your TELEPORTER is gonna want some MASS and GENETICS, right?" "Do frogs have a destiny?" "The ENTIRE GAME was for the frog. It was FROG GAME." "Oh, okay." Petra marinates thoughts on how the frog's potential personal destiny was colonized by becoming a pawn in some elaborate cosmic sequence performed by humans for a more elevated 'human' destiny. What comes out of her mouth is, "Early 10's era games are so weird. You gotta breed your Macguffins." ÷Bad dog÷ Petra is popped in the forehead and tumbles backwards onto the sand with a thwap. Scolded but undeterred from her energy, she rolls over to sit back up on her hands and knees, rubbing her forehead and wincing. She should have a tail, and it should be guiltily between her legs. "Sorry. I should've phrased that better." "They didn't really need to remember me." Having been scolded, Tiphereth's explanation retroactively justifies Petra's way of asking the question-- which is bad, because that would make the scolding hypothetically unjust. In order to rectify this accidental rightdoing, Petra says to Tiphereth, which is actually saying to Nika, slipping into the latter's speech habit for clarity, "I can't ÷told you so÷ because I didn't know that." Then, actually on topic, she wonders, "Huh. Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen anyone with purple eyes in the City before? I guess it is sort of an Outskirts-tell, then." "Angela spent more time on my new body than the others, but she hasn't really talked too much about how they work." "I don't really know how they work either. That was after me." Sometimes talking about Petra and Angela's shared life experience becomes extremely strange linguistically, but Petra became so familiar with the thoughts of how it would be explained during that time that it doesn't even register. "But Roland's arms and legs and everything work well enough even after training with new EGO and everything? So I guess it has to be pretty much normally responsive to the world changing." "Gross." "Grow upppppppppp!" Petra whines at Ash. "Yeah, she folds up nice in a guitar case." "That's true, actually." Her whining and pouting ends immediately, buffered by her overall very positive mood, and she shifts tones from one sentence to the next effortlessly. On some bizarre little unspoken mission, she wanders over to her own guitar case nearby, flips it open, and presses her hand to the little taped-on mirror under the cover. Her hand closes around a fistful of blonde-purple hair, and she pulls out another Petra's head, who looks bleary and confused, before stuffing her back into the guitar case. "We have to get her and Ash in a radio frequency." "I was just saying!" Petra claps her hands together, looking around for the Eggpack to shake it around at Ash. It's up in the house, though, not here. "No, dude, it'd be so fucking funny. It's not pervert shit because she's thirty five years old and can't say 'boob' with a straight face. She's just a complete lunatic."
Petra Soroka	"A-ah, Nika and I will be keeping a connection from the ground, of course. Should anything happen, we will be able to provide . . . various means of assistance." In an ideal world, Nika and Sakura would be coming along personally, but hanging out via the Eggpack is a decent compromise. Petra is looking forwards to the trip as a trip in itself, not just for the extremely important knowledge about Dictum and the Blooms that it'll reveal. "We'll be alright. It's too nice a setup for anything bad to ever happen." Petra pauses, allowing the dramatic irony of that to resonate, and then repeats herself completely self-assuredly. "Yeah. We'll be fine." "Also-- I told you about Dictum, but not Dictum-Dictum-the-name, 'cause I didn't know it yet. But that's the person that squished themselves into the Voyager to beam over here. Uh-- well, that's a whole story too, but we can teabag their planet all we want; I just think Dictum's pretty cool themselves." Petra rubs her mouth with her knuckles. "The Latin is so cringe though. They're so fucking cringe." "Are we going to the Kepler that's an ocean planet?" "Wasn't before. Who knows what it is now?" With a little bit of excitement bubbling back up, Petra wriggles around on her butt in the sand. "I mean, really, who the fuck knows? It could be anything. Do you think they'll be waiting for us there?" "Perhaps I was planning to smother you with it." Petra's compulsion to advance the Sakura Agenda overrides her good sense and nerves at wrongdoing. "Well-- gotta wait until I'm asleep for that." "Have the vizier executed at once." Petra purses her lips, hand across her chin. Mournfully full of regret, "I might also be the vizier...." "And also I guess you got HELLA PSYCHIC by doing it." > 'YEARNFREAK GRINDSET' has been added to your list of titles! Try equipping it now! "I-- was already psychic." Stunlocked, that's really the only complaint that comes to mind. "Just had to get normal. -- I mean, actually, she did apologize sincerely for the first time literally ever just a few days ago. Maybe there's something to it."
Angela	''I can't told you so because I didn't know that.'' Tiphereth didn't realize something like that was rude to say, largely because of her own distance to the village right now thanks to it feeling like it was maybe even two lifetimes ago rather than one. But the 'Sorry I should've phrased that better' and the 'Bad dog' kind of gets Tiphereth to recognize how the statement could be considered rude. "Ah, I appreciate the apology, then." She looks to Nika, smiling genuinely. "Thanks for looking out for me." Roland has gotten pretty quiet since the eyeball reveal, something's on his mind but he's keeping quiet about it for now--it's not something he can ask about right now. And, come to think of it, pressing Tiphereth too carelessly about it might be dangerous too. "I've seen one or two, but people do just get pulled into the City from the Outskirts. I wouldn't say it's common, but it's not exactly rare either. Sometimes it's a rich family hoping to show off some 'charity'--" Like with Cinder. "Sometimes Wings take them in for ... tests and stuff." A hesitation before 'tests', as if he was gonna add a little something else but thought better of it. Of course, Petra knows why Lisa and Enoch were taken in. Well, really Enoch. That's who they wanted. Lisa was the package deal. ''I don't really know how they work either.'' "Me neither, but I'm not about to look free limbs in the mouth." ''As opposed to Robimboification.'' "I'm ... sticking with roboticization rather than the other options." Tiphereth decides.