2017-07-23: Unlimited Icecream
- Log: Unlimited Icecream
- Cast: Riesenlied, Noeline, Zed
- Where: Photosphere
- Date: 23rd June 2017
- Summary: WARNING: Does not involve ice cream. Zed recovers in the Photosphere, and Riesenlied and Noeline come to check up on the green-haired demon...
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Well, that was a disaster.
As early as Riesenlied called it that they should leave, she did hang around for long enough -- along with the rest of the Ebony Wings in town -- so that they can do the appropriate clean-up. Part of it is the inevitable recovery of the certain green-haired ninja who went up to go head-first against Lady Harken himself... and then there's all the extractions required when your aligned faction just goes and makes a good show of how little you appear to care about any perceived notions of 'neutrality'.
Still, it is nothing new. But it is something worth talking about, so it is in the Photosphere that Riesenlied approaches after receiving word that Zed might be... rescuscitating, at this point in time.
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
Resuscitating is a good way to put it.
Even the infamously durable Hyadean physiology can only last for so long when subjected to Azrael's vicious assault. Zed managed to make it through the fight without losing any limbs, which is probably more than can be said for most who encounter an angry Lady Harken in her natural habitat-- but he still sustained grievous injuries and lost a considerable amount of blood.
And so he's... In a bed, unable to do much other than stare at the ceili--
Wait, no, /SOMEONE/ has set up a monitor and data playback device, and Zed appears to be munching on literal nuts and bolts as colorful characters punch each other in the face and hurl oversized energy blasts all on big screen.
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
Noeline still looks ruffled in the wake of the attack; she's spent a lot of time lapsing into thought, obviously worried about what could have caused Harken to break into such a sudden and unexpected bloodlust. The Quarter Knight is known for enjoying a fight, of course, but-- but not like that, and whichever way Noeline looks at the problem, her thoughts inevitably come back to one major suspect. It's not exactly master detective stuff, after all.
She has at least stayed at Riesenlied's side the whole time, making sure that they're visible evacuating the townsfolk from the arena first and foremost and then dealing with the logistics of a rather sudden departure from Lacour - including a number of messages towards their allies around town, to at least warn them to be careful. It doesn't exactly take much to realize that the Fiends might want to get out of dodge before Leo and co turn up.
She's-- stalking the corridors rather than walking through them. She doesn't have Riesenlied's pure resolve in these matters, not all the time, and the thought of having to confront Alhazred is not a comfortable one. On the other hand, she's not about to let this one simply lie, finding herself unable to leave the thought alone.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied looks -- a little relieved when Zed shows that he's at least doing all right. He's probably all right if he's watching his cartoons and eating literal nuts and bolts, though she probably could have some words about what's good and what's not good to eat when you're convalescing. Those nuts are high in whatever passes for Metal Demon trans-fats, okay?!
"Zed," she speaks softly. "... it looks like you'll pull through. How are you?"
The Tainted commander's tone is level as she glances to one side, rather clearly knowing that she's here to discuss more than just his health.
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
OH MY GOD MOM I CAN EAT WHATEVER I WANT, I'M IN THE HOSPITAL, THAT MEANS UNLIMITED ICECREAM.
Or... Whatever passes as icecream for a Metal Demon. Some kind of... Cooling fluid, or something...??
...
Well, anyway! Zed has a visitor. The Probably-Shouldn't-Be-Up-Already Metal Demon pauses mid-chomp when Riesenlied enters the room. Something about this seems familiar, but backwards. He had visited Siegfried in a manner just like this not long ago, and now it's happening in reverse! Kind of! Riesen is nicer than Sieg is, so that's good.
"Oh, Riese! Uh, I'm pretty good, I guess." The elaborate system of bandages/duct tape wrapped around his chest suggests that 'pretty good' might be kind of an overstatement. "They have me resting up until I can replace most of my fluids, but uh. That's normal, right?"
"How's... How's Lacour, and Harken? Is everything alright?"
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
"Lacour will survive," Noeline sums up as she follows Riesenlied through the door, her arms folded close to her chest. "Thanks to the Arena's protections, there appear to have been no casualties - though I understand Miss Everstead-Rey is in something of a bad shape." Her voice is rather clipped, having lost that playful lilt for the moment; she does at least glance at Zed for a moment, trying to judge the demon's state. "I doubt it will help how people as a whole will think of us or the Ebony Wings, but so long as we stay near Adlehyde, I'm not sure what would."
"As for Harken-- I can't say I even begin to know for sure." She pauses, and looks towards Riesenlied briefly before flicking out her hair with an aggrieved huff. "But I can certainly make a few educated guesses."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied looks to Noeline as she explains, before she leans her head to one side. Matter-of-factly, she states: "Harken is convalescing at present, and she is not yet awake. I plan to speak with Lord Siegfried on what has happened, as this does not appear to be... ordinary, even for her."
She frowns very gently... but then it becomes that nurturing smile as she says, "It is ordinary for... such battle wounds, I suppose. You will recover, Zed -- you're as tough as they come." There is a faint sigh, however. "A human could very well have died out, though, and it is fortunate that the Arena's protections were there, yes."
There's a quiet hum of thought, and something approaching disappointment. "I won't lie. The second showing of such forceful action won't sit well in our future campaigns. Our enemies can point to this and Adlehyde both as a rallying call against us. It will be ammunition to help them bolster their call."
She makes a gesture with her hand. "But even if it has been made more difficult, our mission still continues." She smiles with a bit more certainty. "And I've your hand in that, don't I, Zed?" You paged Noeline and Hiro with 'aww, sorry to hear that, but OK!'
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
"Haaaaah," Zed sighs, slumping back into his soft, fluffy, ultrafoam++ (tm) pillow. "That's good. We were able to retrieve her. I was getting worried, considering all that, that she'd end up burning up out there and we'd be down another Quarter Knight." And then they'd have to pick someone to replace her, and Zed isn't sure Riesenlied can properly fill out being ten feet tall.
She might have to get stilts or something.
Or... Go full Cucco Queen. But nobody wants to see that again, do they?
"She... She wasn't in her right mind," Zed murmurs, his brow knitting. "At the end, she... She said that there was something-- some/one/ controlling her." Someone... But /who?/
Yes... Who indeed...!?
"I saw Ida drop," he frowns, then, deftly hitting the pause button with all the reflexes and surety of a veteran couch potato. "And I saw Harken crush her gun. She's not going to be happy about that. But if she's alive, then I'm sure she'll probably recover."
There's a beat. Zed shrugs to Riese's question. "Well, sure. Of course. I mean, do you really need to ask at this point?" He chuckles, tossing another nut and/or bolt into his mouth before offering the pouch to his two lovely visitors, "You want some?"
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
Noeline rests her hand on Riesenlied's arm as the winged woman talks of her disappointment; she tilts her head a little in thought, then shakes it slowly. "I-- given that it was Lady Harken involved, and given that no-one was hurt, I do at least harbour a hope this will not fall too badly on the Ebony Wings. At the very least, you've reached out to enough people that they will understand you would never have had a hand in this - and perhaps they can be taught in turn that this was-- far from normal."
It might be cold comfort right now, but she feels it important enough to say out loud, catching Riesenlied's gaze with her own for a moment. "... we have lost a home, and been set back - but we will find another, and prove ourselves anew." A pause, and she chuckles softly. "Perhaps I was always meant to be a Tainted, if I can take to it this well, hm?" It's a bad joke, but she's trying.
"... a list of people who could control Lady Harken is, shall we say, /vanishingly/ small," she adds afterwards with a sigh and a hand in her hair, squinting suspiciously at the unadorned 'snacks'.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
"It is something to bring up to Lord Siegfried," Riesenlied decides at that comment of Noeline's. "It's the best way to proceed with this." Not out of a sense of sewing discord, but because Siegfried himself has expressed his distaste for Alhazred's methods.
"... you are right in that I do not believe she was in control, either," she murmurs. "Having spoken to her on multiple occasions, I must wonder what her nature truly is." She has her theories. It's just unpleasant. "A master of the Fast Draw, appearing after our assault at Arctica, home of the Fast Draw..."
She shakes her head at Zed as she holds her hand out to decline, since... well, probably Tainted allergies of some sort. Bolt allergies. Do not Thundaga.
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
It must be a terrible thing, to harbor an [ELEC] weakness.
But these bolts are just raw metals. Basically junk food to a Metal Demon, but surprisingly effective for one in the midst of convalescence.
"Mmmmph, I don't want to think down that way. For now, Lady Harken is Lady Harken. If it turns out that she isn't Lady Harken down the line, then we deal with that then. I mean, so she uses Fast Draw, big deal?? A lot of us like to watch humans practice their martial arts, so maybe she just decided to master it better than any of them could? The thing I'm worried most about is... Well, I'm not sure you saw it. But there was /something/ that was... Sort of tugging her around like a puppet. Like this shade, or ghost, or something else, I don't know. I don't think someone could control her directly and manage to fight as well as she did, but, like... If someone put a curse on her or something, to make her fight harder and harder until the enemy was dead, and if that curse went /too far,/ then... Maybe we get what we saw out in Lacour?"
Zed shrugs. Again. At least his shoulders are working. "I dunno. I'm no expert on curses." Says the man with the most-cursed sword in the Photosphere.
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
Noeline's glance towards Riesenlied is at once terribly brief - and just as dangerous. The way in which the Tainted commander sums it up rather narrows down the list of possibilities, and paints a very significant and obvious picture - which could probably get them in a great deal of trouble. 'Should I look into it?' her gaze asks automatically before her brow furrows and she looks away again.
Whatever the answer, she's probably making a mental checklist.
"I very much doubt that was a curse," she mutters instead with a shake of her head. "At the very least, I did not think it felt like Malevolence, nor anything of the sort. ... as far as I'm concerned, the crux of the point is that the demon that attacked the arena was /not/ Lady Harken in anything but name - and I would, personally, like to know why. I'm not so cruel as to simply leave someone to be manipulated," she grumbles as she folds her arms.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied has an acquiescing smile in turn at Zed, nodding. "Of course not," she answers to his comment to not go down that path. It's not a healthy one to go down. To be honest, if that were where it stopped, she wouldn't have doubted either. But... living in the Photosphere for the last four hundred years...
The story that Lady Harken was in torpor this whole time just doesn't /quite/ add up. Not when the position has remained vacant for centuries. Not when she's been there, hearing about the squabbling amongst the elders of who should fill in for Enkidu's shoes. There was nary a mention, not even the potential.
Something didn't add up.
"Indeed. Again, this is something that should swiftly be brought up to Lord Siegfried," she remarks. "Understanding is paramount. What it is. What triggers it. How to best overcome it next time. A curse... would be a powerful one to land upon us, given how Malevolence just washes off off us."
A pause.
"And... ah," she holds up a particular datacrystal that looks totally burned from blank, with a slapdash label that reads 'Y-BURN SPHERE HYPER' on it. "Devet has a gift for you. I do not know what it is, but... it must be more animation?"
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
Everyone* knows that Zed was born to be Enkidu's replacement and to someday ascend to the lofty heights of superstardom and raw superpower that is the position of Quarter Knight. He'd totally rock the shoulder pads.
(*Hahahaha nobody thinks that)
"If not a curse, then some kind of weird code thing. I don't know, ask Cetiri, she knows more about how this kind of thing works. I'm sure she has a few ideas. Point is, that was a crazy fight. Did you guys see that thing Claude pulled out of his pants? It made this huge, white blast that broke right through the sky!"
Beat.
Zed's dread gaze falls upon Riesenlied.
Specifically, the crystal held precariously in her fingertips.
Suddenly Zed is no longer in bed, because Zed has lept off the side, snatched the crystal, and has begun cuddling his cheek against it like it were some kind of adorable kitten. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! She finally found the fiiiiiiles! I've been waiting ages for this! Now I can finally find out whether Fou-Lu and Mami finally reunite! /Someone/ had better punch that fox-faced asshole right in the kisser too, or I'm going to have to write LETTERS." LETTERS TO WHO, ZED, THIS SHOW WAS MADE THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO. "OH MAN I AM SO HYPE."
he is so hype
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
One rather long pause later, and Noeline puts a hand to her forehead with an exasperated sort of sigh. "Good grief," she sighs out as Zed suddenly springs from the bed, carefully and casually stepping back a pace as she gets out of dodge.
Though she pays Zed's final string of comments no mind, her eyebrows do go up a moment later as she evaluates the rest of the words that come flying past in a torrent and slowly picks them apart. "Cetiri's counsel /would/ probably be worth seeking. At the very least, it would be much more discreet than some of the other options available to us," she suggests towards Riesenlied, her arms folded across her chest; for a moment she flicks at an errant strand or few of hair, worrying at her lips.
"At least in terms of-- mystical affairs, I could not sense anything amiss." Not the most subtle way to refer to it, but then it's not like Zed's likely to pick it up given that he's unaware of Noeline's rather special state. "That said, I suppose the place was already awash in it, given the effects that were accompanying the fight. Whether I would be good enough to pick anything specific out, I can't begin to say."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied flinches back as Zed explodes into joy as she... anticipated he might, but maybe not to this degree, smiling just a little bit nervously. At the very least, on her part, she's accepted that she can do more good not being a Quarter Knight than she would be as one. I mean, she'd just look ridiculous with those shoulderpads. She's not an epic and savage warlord. Epicly savage.
"Gently now, you don't want to exacerbate your wounds," she reassures, before chuckling faintly to Noeline as she steps back again. "Mm. Cetiri has been in R&D for the longest time before her... accident. She would have some insight into that portion of the Photosphere."
Researchers tend to live for hundreds of years, after all.
"It is good to not leave anything out. After what I experienced with Id, I scarce can say we've begun to catalogue every single kind of mystical curse out there in Filgaia."
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
"Ufufufufufuuuuuu, I've been waiting for so long for thisMerilan (talk)" Zed says of his precious, precious little data storage crystal. "Hahahahaaaa, I thought I'd just have to watch reruns all this time. I don't mind of course, but this is SO MUCH BETT--"
Oh.
Wait, Zed still has guests.
"Uhhhh..." Zed stares blankly at the ladies before abruptly flash-stepping back into bed like NOTHING HAD JUST HAPPENED. Yep. He's getting his full worker's comp time for this one. "Well, even if it's not a curse, it definitely wasn't anything I've ever seen one of us use before. Or, if it was, it's not something I remember. I mean, the closest thing, I think is like... When I shoot purple at people, except way more dangerous and a lot more angry."
"I'm beginning to think that 'terrifying violence tornado' isn't Harken's natural state at all. You know?"
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
Noeline likes Devet, on the whole. It's not something she'd admit to publicly - like most instances of her liking someone - but the idea of a wide-eyed and innocent demon is one that's almost comforting, like a reminder that they're not all destined to become the warriors Photosphere says they are. Plus, she can appreciate genuine eagerness and interest in a field of study, so it does her good to see the girl just messing around with technology as if nothing were wrong in the world.
Most of all, right now, she can appreciate Devet's ability to burn bootleg copies of old and terrible shows - because Zed's narrowminded focus on the disc in front of him gives her a chance to study Riesenlied's expression for a long moment, and ask a question that probably doesn't have an answer just yet, but does at least need to be asked: "... still... should we find out what happened - /let alone/ find out the worst - what can be done with it?"
She drops it when Zed blinks back to himself, raising a distinct eyebrow at the way he just sli-i-ides back into bed. "I would like to think it is not the natural state of any of us," she huffs in response, as if needing to make that point first and foremost.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
"... that weapon is concerning," Riesenlied murmurs off-handedly. "And... familiar. It was not the light of magic... it was..." She holds her hand and looks to her palm for a moment. "Photons. Much like mine."
She's faintly sighing for a moment as she nods towards Zed. "... from what we've seen of Harken when she visited us, it did not seem her natural state. But we need to know more... do keep an eye out, and we will in turn. ... I do not think violence is any of our natural states."
She nods towards Noeline as she looks towards the door. "There's much to do -- do enjoy your animation while you convalesce, yes?"
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
Zed's ability to casually walk away from embarassing situations is a well-studied phenomena. Sometimes he just walks faster than he usually does. "Well yeah, but she's Harken. I thought that was kind of what she did, you know? Like how Berserk's natural state is basically just a jerk." YEP, GONNA KEEP POKING THAT BUTTON. "If there are people like you and Noel, then there are people who love to fight and spill blood, too. Can't just write that off completely, you know? Well, anyway. We can't do ANYTHING without knowing what's wrong in the first place, right? So if we take any step forward, the veeery first one has to be 'figure out what's up with Harken.' Or that's what I think, anyway."
Zed appears to be fussing with his projector. Replacing the crystal, maybe? "...Huh. So you think maybe it was... some kind of ARM? I don't THINK it was a technique-- no human can put out that kind of power, and he didn't start glowing red, so he's not Id in disguise."
...
They're leaving...?
"Oh! You two sure you don't want to watch a few episodes with me?" Zed grins that DECEPTIVELY INNOCENT grin of his. "Come onnn. Just a few and I'm sure you'll be hooked...!"
AND THEN YOU'LL BE JUST LIKE HIM.
AND DEVET.
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
Here, at least, Noeline has to admit to a moment of surprise when Riesenlied picks out Claude's weapon as being something unusual; she pauses, and then turns towards the winged woman with a slightly wide-eyed look. "I-- hm," she tries first, and then tilts her head a little with an amused chuckle. "And here I was prepared to simply chalk it up to being an ARM, same as Zed. There are enough odd ones out there that I suppose I didn't think any more of it - is it a particularly rare phenomenon?" she asks, apparently earnestly curious about the power involved.
She turns as if to follow Riesenlied, but hesitates - and huffs as she rounds on Zed with a flick of her hair that certainly edges towards prideful. "I hope I do not have to say this, but-- be careful," she warns, her frown a thin line. "Keep an eye out, but at the same time watch what you say. Asking around too heavily about something like this would be an excellent way to end up right in Berserk or Alhazred's gaze, I do not doubt it for even an instant." She doesn't have to say any more, knowing the understanding involved in a warning like that.
She pauses at the offer, and while she doesn't say anything directly either way, her eyebrows do go up in quiet disbelief. "Do you /really/ think it would be something suitable for myself?" she puffs up, planting her hands on her hips. "Besides, we do have some work to be done yet, after everything that happened."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Fortunately, /fortunately/, for all of her dainty softness and willowy goodness, Riesenlied is a master planner in some accord.
Which is why Odjn zooms in at about this point with a fresh bag of popcorn and choco-injected churros, with her 3D glasses on going, "ZEEED I heard you found the next complete season?! /Tell/ me that Yuna gets what's coming to his jerkface-face!!"
Riesenlied kind of lithely steps around as she says, "Indeed, but we have a lot of work to do. Thank you as always, Zed. Let's go, Noeline."
And then there's a Riesenlied-shaped cutout where she was a moment ago.