2019-03-23: A Busy Evening

• Cutscene: A Busy Evening
• Cast: Emeralda Kasim
• Where: Luca Harbor
• Date: 23 March 2019
• Summary: Emeralda is swept up in the wave from the Sorcery Globe.

Emeralda was supposed to be asleep.

She wasn't. She didn't actually sleep very much; a couple hours a night to refresh herself, but she didn't feel much need for more than that. She'd already slept enough for a lifetime and more, she figured, so why worry about it?

But because everyone else thought she was asleep, she tended to be quiet in the evenings, before she actually felt tired enough to shut down for a while. Kim - Fei - was in Krosse, not here, but she'd promised to be good in his absence, and that included not making too much noise. And so Emeralda had been very quiet indeed when she had snuck out the window in her room to go exploring.

Emeralda became slightly vexed when she felt herself vibrate weirdly and a man's voice came out of her. That wasn't her fault and she was going to get in trouble for it anyway when they caught her! Ripples that were trying to resolve into a face chased each other across her back as the metal making up most of her body vibrated in sync with the voice. It was distorted but still audible.

"To all the living souls of Filgaia - I bid you greetings."

Emeralda compressed her body slightly, becoming denser and firmer, but that only made the voice louder and clearer. She relaxed, stretching the other way, puffing her hair out to take up more volume and lengthening her scarf. The voice wasn't only coming from her, either; she ambled over to a horse trough to look into it and see the face of the man who was speaking; she figured they couldn't yell at her for making noise if everything was making the noise. She didn't understand most of what he said, though a word - Zeboim - struck a chord with her she couldn't explain. But the rest of it didn't mean much to her; even though she knew at least most of the words, she didn't understand the politics, the philosophy. She did understand that the man - Vinsfeld Rhadamanthus - was angry, and that he would fight. And Emeralda didn't like that. Maybe she understood more than she thought.

But as the light faded from the horse trough, it did not fade from her. She felt the vibration in her body increase even though there was no voice any longer; she felt like she was being stretched in all directions at once... and then the tension vanished as if her body snapped back to normal - and she was somewhere else. Specifically, she was now in the water, displacing a bunch of it as she appeared underwater with a thumping pulse she felt through her body.

Emeralda didn't actually swim very well, but that was fine, because there was nothing wrong with her legs and she didn't feel an immediate urge to breathe. As soon as she hit bottom, she looked around for a moment, turned, and walked a ladder she saw projecting down into the water. Hopping up a few feet to reach it, Emeralda pulled herself out of the water with a splash, practically throwing herself onto a stone pier and landing on her back with a wet splat.

"Oh my! Did you fall off the dock? I didn't see you fall! Are you all right?"

Emeralda looked up at the older woman who addressed her. She wasn't dressed like anyone Emeralda had seen before, but she wasn't the only person around dressed like that - in fact, it was a lot busier here than it had been where she'd left, and a few people were looking her way with confusion or concern. But she was also on her back, and she could see something else in the sky, distantly: a planet. Emeralda narrowed her eyes, zooming in. She knew that planet; knew that, minutes ago, she'd been there and not here. She felt confused more than anything else. She had no idea how she'd gotten from there, but it didn't occur to her to deny that it had happened. Obviously it had, because she was looking at Filgaia.

"I'm okay," Emeralda assured the woman, still flat on her back. She rolled to her hands and knees and spat out most of a gallon of water over the edge of the dock, mostly because she didn't like the waterlogged feeling of it sloshing around inside of her, before pushing herself up to her feet. "I just got here, and I don't know where I am! Can you tell me?" Emeralda looked around while she waited, past the woman at the projecting docks that pointed away from a strange-looking city to an equally strange-looking structure at the end of the long pier. She didn't recognize any of it, not even the designs. And she didn't see Fei or Elly - well, they hadn't been with her at the time, but she didn't see anyone she knew.

"This is Dock Two," the woman says, misunderstanding. "Are you all right, after falling? That was a lot of water... Did you come with someone to Luca - your head!!"

Without thinking about it, Emeralda had looked around her in all directions, rotating her head most of the way around her like an owl. "Oh! No, it's supposed to do that, see?" Emeralda turned it *all* the way around, spinning through degrees before facing forward again.

The woman shrieked, and then fled across the dock. Now it wasn't just bystanders who were looking, but what Emeralda was pretty sure was a city guard, attention attracted by the shout. He had a helmet, anyway. Helmets meant guards, right? But there wasn't anywhere else to go on this dock...

ONE HOUR LATER

Emeralda walked away from the jail they'd brought her to, after they couldn't figure out what to do with her. She had been absolutely sure she hadn't done anything wrong, and the guards had to agree; she hadn't stolen anything, she hadn't hurt anybody, and the woman who'd screamed and ran wasn't there to say what she'd done, after all. All they'd made her promise was not to cause any trouble while the tournament was on, perhaps assuming that with her slightly ragged outfit she was a refugee or a thief.

That was fine. She didn't want to cause trouble. What she wanted to do, right now, in Luca... was find someone she knew. And then?

She was going to explore.