2019-07-02: In Out Of The Rain
- Log: In Out Of The Rain
- Cast: Josephine Lovelace, Lunata Croze, Isolde, Seraph Lanval, Shalune Amira
- Where: Thunder Plains
- Date: July 02, 2019
- Summary: Out buying a Sphere at a hefty mark-up, Josie crosses paths with a number of familiar faces -- and makes a new friend or two. Lunata and Shalune discuss the former's decision. Lanval defers credit. Josie buys a round. Isolde talks business.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Rain batters atop the roof of Rin's travel agency, a proverbial if not literal oasis to those travelers unlucky enough to need to pass through the Thunder Plains. Every now and then, thunder rolls in a low boom outside. Bad luck, for anyone who needs to travel outside.
Which eventually, is the situation for everyone who darkens the doorstep here.
A certain pale-haired archaeologist is reluctantly paying up at the counter. Josie's attempts to negotiate a lower price for the Sphere she's in the process of obtaining have born little fruit. So it goes, sometimes...
There have been rumors of a particular disturbance on the plains of late -- hand in hand with the conquest of Luca to the south -- but neither are the reason the archaeologist has come to this particular place, here and now.
Whatever happens to Spira, her interests appear to be strictly business.
She mutters something under her breath once she parts from the counter. It's not strictly audible but it didn't sound very kind...
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
And indeed, how fast news travels. Within the western end of the plains where a great numerous pile of Machina scrap have gathered around a long-broken lightning tower, a sizable number of Iron Giants have been seen, moreso than usual. The errant and occasional gigante of metal is no unusual sight within the Plain, and yet...
That's probably why Lunata's here -- not because she has an interest in that herself, but because the OTHER Lunie is probably bouncing up and down about the news.
Plus maybe... maybe...
"Iron Giants are like... Gears, right? So maybe if I get friendly enough with one I can... you know, to fight off the Guard Golems...?"
Lunata is trundling in sopping wet as she posits her incredibly flawless logic.
It's logic that absolutely won't end with her getting squished under a sword. She doesn't appear to have noticed Josie yet, still wipiing herself off at the entrance.
<Pose Tracker> Isolde has posed.
There are other people here under the sheltering embrace of Rin's Travel Agency even as thunder rolls out across the thunder plains. Thunder rolls...
It rolls a two.
The woman called Isolde is wearing clothing she does not usually wear: an undyed linen singlet and some red pajama-style trousers which are probably well loved given how wrinkled they are. She has her leather belt on but everything else isn't present. Probably it's at the laundry. Other than the sword, which may be at the sword laundry.
(Somewhere a sword expert looks at the blade, contemplates the extract of eel bones...)
Either way she is sitting at a table, apparently alone other than a big tall pot of something steaming. "Hah," she says, a small bark of amusement at the words of Josie... and then someone else trundles in.
"You're wet," she observes to Lunata. Isolde then gestures to the table she's sitting at...
... which has a bin of towels!? Well, they're more like 'laundered scrap rags,' given that they're a service for the weather, but they beat nothing.
"I ran into one of those giants once," Isolde muses, though she pauses as if for dramatic emphasis rather than continue the thought.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
What with the chaos of Luca and so much being thrown into the air, Fox Company's still getting a handle on what they're going to do, or how, next. Then there's rumors about weird things going on in the Thunder Plains, and given a somewhat recent encounter there - and how it is probable a whole mess of people will be passing through here...
...well there was a nasty lightning strike that managed to jump past a tower and he got separated, but that sort of thing tends to resolve itself. The Water Seraph wisely decides to take shelter with another crowd that's passing by - even if the presence of one on paper might be contentious.
Emphasis on 'might be,' because he hasn't raised any contention yet. Rather than sit at a table, the barefoot bearded wastrel of a spirit in swankier aquamarine robes since his pact with Schturdark has decided to sit down in a corner. This room has a nearly imperceptible decline, so he feels like sitting there.
That it's the northern corner of the room is a complete coincidence.
"They're a kind of Fiend," Lanval says as he holds his drinking gourd between both hands, "and lemme tell ya - I ain't never met a friendly Fiend."
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.
Immediately after Lunata comes a bundle of bedraggled pink and white and blue. It's pretty impossible to mistake the long, messy mop of hair if you happen to know Shalune, though the way it's gathered around her face might make it a little harder. She's gone native, her robes bridging the gap between 'swordswoman' and 'summoner' and mostly just comprised of things she thought looked cool at the time.
It only looks 'cold' right now, though - plastered to her in a manner that suggests she got the brunt of the rain, even moreso than Lunata, as if she'd been climbing or exposing herself to the elements on purpose. Sure enough: "Hwaaa--! Jeez, what a mess! At least I was able to check a couple more pylons before the rain picked up," she whines, which is kind of at odds with the way she's grinning like a lunatic, the sort of person who'd leap into puddles both feet first.
"Mm, I guess they are!" she responds to Lunata as she stays where she is, directing the grin at Isolda as she leans wa-a-a-ay over for one of the towels, not wanting to leave the doorway until she's made at least a token effort to dry off. "I mean, I guess the question depends on what's actually maintaining them, making them run. Whether there's a central core, or something. But if we can find something, you'd end up with a Big Lunie."
Unless Little Lunie gets jealous and tsunberries it, but even Shalune hasn't quite twigged just yet that Lunata has a follower.
Whatever else she was going to say is lost under her towel as she dumps it on her head, then frantically rubs it against her hair and face. "Brrbbrbbbl," she notes.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie turns her head at the sound of a short laugh, then regards Isolde for a moment, and lopsidedly smiles.
This is without a doubt unfair to Isolde, but what can you do.
"Sitting alone?" she asks, just before the door opens into the wet, revealing a rather singular young lady.
Who, and it should be said, Josie hasn't seen in a dog's year.
"Little bear! Look what the cat dragged in. ...Though, hmm, I suppose cats don't go for rain," she adds, almost contemplatively.
Above, in the rafters, Penelope fidgets, as if unsettled.
"...Heh. Should have expected you, too, kiddo," she says, gazing past Lunata towards Shalune. "Good hunting out there? Heard there's Machine debris on the plain, though I ain't been looking for them myself." She instead brandishes her hard-won sphere. "Maybe I should have been. I tell you, I was this close to closing out a sale on a lot of spheres, when an invasion occurs," she grouses, the last apparently a subject of significant consternation for her of late.
"But enough of that, come sit down and I'll get you a tea." She grimaces, faintly. "Guess it'll be mercenary work for sure, soon. Maybe there'll be a bounty on those Giants, yet."
Her gaze shifts, towards the apparent newcomer.
She pauses.
"Hey, weren't you... back at Love's Cradle?" she asks of Lanval.
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
"I'm super wet," Lunata corrects Isolde and zombie-like (or, in her case, just Lunata-like, same thing) moves to the bin of towels and grabs the rags and starts wicking at her hair and shoulders with a groan. "Ughh. Finally." A sproig of hair immediately pops out of the top of her head.
A pause at Isolde. "... yeah? Did you have a sword duel with him or ..."
Lanval gets a bit of a glance as she bobs her head. "... really, I just want the right tool for the job against those Golems... it's a real pain to not have a Gear around."
She drags Shalune a little closer and starts rummaging her into the towel like, for once, some kind of older sister and--
Shalune dogwaggles water out of her. "Hey! Stop fussing so much!" she grumbles, in turn for her to look up at Josie.
"Oh. Josie," she sounds surprised. "You've been uh... sphere hunting, I guess? I heard that's lucrative." She rummages for the Level-Four Key Spheres in her pocket and pulls one out. "I bought these myself. They're pretty useful."
<Pose Tracker> Isolde has posed.
"Oh, well," Isolde tells Josephine: "Not any more."
The rags are well sized for giving oneself a hair-fluffing. Isolde picks up her cup of what seems to be tea and takes a long sip of it, before offering, "Get a cup and help yourself, if you want. Better warm inside than cold outside."
When the Lunies get a little nearer, Isolde seems to regard them with fondness. This is hard to tell exactly, of course. Her head tilts a little towards Lanval as he speaks, but she seems to cover it with a back-sweep of a lock of hair, before her attention turns back to them.
"What kind of sphere is that?" she asks Lunata, and then to Shalune, she says, "Here's the strange thing: They aren't actually made of iron. At least not mostly iron. Of course I have to trust reports, but it seems they dissolve into pyreflies... usually, anyway. Isn't that interesting? If frustrating, too."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
"Mmmmhmm... yep, shure wash~" Says Lanval, who is having a grand ol' time not really drying off over there, because by his very nature he is... the opposite of dry. In more than one way.
The talk about wanting to find the right tool for the job against those Golems that attacked the seawall and enabled the rapid invasion of Luca has Lanval growing a bit more somber, resting the gourd on his lap as one hand runs through that waterfall-like beard of his.
"Iiii dunno... besht I can tell ya ish that they wouldn't be their friend either," but that's not a silver lining. Fiends are no one's friends.
"...'n yep. Far ash I know, they jusht kinda happen outta thin air when ya get enough pyreflies in a place. Couldn't tell ya how and why they take the formsh they do... or why they'd take the shame kinda form ash another... but if ya hit 'em hard enough, they go back ta being pyreflies, buuuut... ahh, thish ain't new info, but," he laughs, "shure made it hard ta bring back shtuff ta prove they were hunted like we normally would!"
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.
"Honestly--" Shalune gets out between tugs and ruffles and slight 'ow's as she manages to catch her hair, turning a little towards Josephine. "--most of the time I kinda think Lunie is a cat. She's got the same sort of fuss-fuss-hmph to her," she adds as she peeks out of the towel and grins brightly at her sister-slash-something figure, snagging her hand for a moment in silent apology for her teasing before letting go again.
Eventually, she tugs the towel from her head. Where Lunata gets a sproing of hair, Shalune just get a tuft-ridden mess hanging around and over her face. "Mostly, I've been trying to do some maintenance on the pylons any time I come through here. None of them are in too bad a shape, but it never really hurts just to keep an eye on them. And, while I'm up there, I can keep a lookout for any sight of the Giants. You'd think they'd be easier to spot, but somehow they're pretty sneaky."
She chews on her lip as she listens to Isolde and Lanval's tale, her brow furrowing as she glances at Lunata, trying to work out the puzzle of the Iron Giants. "Mmm... I guess that doesn't sound good for our plans, if they're actually fiends mimicing machines. But if there's visible debris out there, that must mean they're close enough, somehow? Maybe you've gotta just keep them alive?" she wonders, a note of curiosity predictably picking up in her voice.
She gratefully gravitates towards the fire, holding her hands out to it with a sigh of relief. The thought of making friends with the Iron Giants to try to recruit them... something tells her she'll keep that idea to herself. But it's incredibly obvious she's thinking it. Besides, she's got a bag marshmallows stuffed in a pocket. "Somehow... I don't think you're gonna be short on that sort of work, Miss Josie," she adds, ever so slightly glum as she says it.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie's response is to provide a wide grin Isolde's way (again: unhelpfully), shake her head, and say, "Guess not."
To Shalune, she murmurs a "Hmmm, I see. I can't say I've much truck with cats." She glances upwards at a certain pigeon, as if to underscore a reason why. "Personally, she reminds me of a bear." She doesn't explain why there, though.
"Huh. Guess you're the one I've got to thank for it not being a complete and utter pain in the ass when I'm through here," she comments next, wrinkling her brow. "Only mostly. I tell you what, it was a hell of a thing to drop in around this place when we arrived..."
Once again, she doesn't elaborate.
"So it was, huh? Guess I owe you a damn tea or something, too. Thanks for that purification trick you and the lady pulled." And she winks, saluting a bit stiffly with her right hand. "Cheers."
"Something like that," she answers Lunata. "Some of these spheres have recordings or other material on them -- I was hoping to find something that might give me a hint of a way home." She pauses for a few ticks worth of time. "No such luck yet though -- just old ruins that've already been picked over. And nothing that'd even sell for a Chapapanga's bounty, let alone two gil to rub together." She smiles lopsidedly, shrugs, and then shakes her head for emphasis. "Hope you're right, kiddo," she says to Shalune, "'cause I'm just about reaching the bottom of my wallet and I could use a good payday." She just sighs, as if to underline the sad state of her finances.
This is, frankly, not a new development for her either.
"So how've you two kids been keeping on? ARM holding up?"
This might... be awkward, depending.
She falls silent as Lanval and the rest talk Fiends. "Yep. That's the lay of the land, according to the folks around here. Pyreflies make Fiends, kill Fiends and release Pyreflies. I made a pretty penny doing that after we ended up around here, I tell you..."
Which involved stealing a Crusader's armor and faking it for a while, but details.
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
"What does it do? Well..."
WEEKS AGO, A MUCH LESS BURNING LUCA MARKETS
Lunata is staring at a small Sphere and holds it up to the sun.
"Hey! Girl!"
She blinks as an extremely suspect-looking Lucan merchant walks up to her. He points to the Sphere and says, "Do you know what that is?"
"... no?"
"It's a key, you see. A key for your bank so that you can safely invest in yourself."
Lunata sags for a moment and stares. "Invest... in myself? What, like a gym?"
The merchant cackles. "You'll figure it out! Hey! Girl!"
NOW
"... ... let's just say I think I'm beginning to see the appeal of Spheres," Lunata enigmatically says. She sags further as she grumbles, "Guess I'm not shaking off that 'bear' nickname, huh..."
She listens to Lanval's explanation. It exploding into pyreflies in the midst of battle would sure be annoying. So they need something else then...
"Also, Lunie's not as benevolent as you think. She's been fixing pylons, sure, but when I told her about the giant swarm, she was bouncing off the walls wanting to 'give 'em a five finger discount'. Whatever happened to that Elw Golem's arm from the Garden?" she casts a suspicious glance at Shalune.
She scratches her head and listens to Josie further. A way home... she shakes her head with a sigh and frowns quietly. "... ah. Um." The question with the ARM gets her silent.
"... I left all my ARMs with the Carakin. I'm with Yevon now," she awkwardly says, scratching her head again as she shuffles aside. "Trying to... find a way to get Sent, I guess... ...?"
<Pose Tracker> Isolde has posed.
"I couldn't tell you," Isolde says, "not in detail... I suppose if you could somehow control them, that would work out. From what I've gathered alongside my various comrades, sometimes there's a piece of whatever-it-was inside... a fang or a twisted piece of rusted metal, something like that. It's got pyreflies or something still stuck on it."
She sips her tea. "You can throw those towels on the floor, by the way, when you're done," Isolde says, with an air of very mild mischief. She straightens up for a moment and crosses her legs with a faint rustle of the pajama trousers. "If it doesn't happen right away, my lady, then you're still doing a service. Sort of a thankless one, though, like hauling away the night soil."
Lunata then speaks of joining Yevon and seeking a way to get Sent. Isolde's usual sunny, faintly-blank smile fades into a thoughtful frown. Her brow knits a little.
"You seem very cheerful for someone with that sort of plan. Are you sure you've gotten the idea of 'Sending' quite right, my darling?"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
"Ya could keep 'em... alive, shure, maybe," Lanval realizes he hasn't thought so much about the long-term lifespan prospects of a given Fiend as he continues scratching along at his chin as he carries the theories with Shalune, "but they wouldn't be sho compelled to keep ya among the livin' in turn. Besht I can tell, a Fiend ish reaaaaal shingle-minded 'bout bringin' harm on thoshe who shtill live." Still, if there were some way to control Fiends in general, that might be handy, wouldn't it?
As things go towards the Purification trick, Lanval puts on his best cryptic middle-aged dude smile, which isn't too bad, but it's always stupid and a little cat-like as he brings his drinking gourd up to his lips. "In the end... that one wash all you. All of ya, yep." He has a sip. "...I'd never shay no to a free drink! Ha ha ha!"
"Mmmm," he goes back to contemplative a bit as Isolde talks about the idea of leaving towels on the floor. It's not that wet in here, is it? Sure, everyone tracks in some rain and mud because it's the Thunder Plain, and he's... himself.
Lunata talks about going with Yevon, to find a way to get Sent, and Lanval's contemplation goes to silence. One eye opens half-lidded to something he already has sort of recognized being in her presence, but it's the sort of thing that earns a sideglance.
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.
"Naw, I'm not the one who made them in the first place. You'd have to thank them. I just noticed one shorting out one time and thought I'd help out," Shalune explains as she rubs her hands together for the warmth, rooting through her backpack for a blanket immediately afterwards. "Turns out, y'know, electronics getting hit constantly by lightning tends to need a bit more maintenance than you'd think."
She glances at Lunata, puffing out her cheeks. "Muu. I'm just-- intellectually curious what makes them tick! If we could find out, it'd really help people, right? It's not like I steal everything for my research!" she whines, before offering over the bag of sweets she's recovered. "And the arm was for a good cause! If I didn't have it, I wouldn't have been able to get Diablo working! He's looking after it right now!" she pouts.
She softens when Josie asks about Lunata's plans and her ARM - the answer to Isolde's question is clear enough when she bites at her lip, resting a hand on Lunata's arm just to be close by. "... it's a long story. Kind of," she chips in, but at least her funk doesn't last long. With the air cleared between them, she's much faster to pick herself up back up. "But I made sure everything left behnd was packed away carefully, so it's not like anything's going to happen to it."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
"Not unless you've got a better one," Josie comments, smiling like a cat. "And you can't both be 'Lunie'."
She shrugs, smiling blithely. "Sure, but it wouldn't be nothing without you and the lady. Credit where credit's due, waterboy," she concludes, her smile broadening. Then she turns. "Hey! Could we get a round of the hot teas! Put it on my tab," she calls out to the person at the counter.
She then considers, ducking her head in a short nod, what Lanval has to say. "Makes sense. Even monsters back home just want to eat or are scared, or something, when you get down to it. These things... kind of reminds me of Wels, you know? They just do one thing, and that's being a goddamn horror show." She laughs, a dry mirthless sound. "Heh. By comparison, Fiends are almost friendly-like."
"Yeah, but they're not here, are they? And any of them being a little less broken's a blessing by my figuring," she adds, stiffly jabbing her bad hand Shalune's way. At Lunata's comment on Shalune's particular bent of charity, Josie just shrugs. "Nah, that's just being practical. I'd do the same thing if it weren't for the storm 'round here -- some of those things could have useful parts. I wonder how they'd play with the Nostos..."
It's unclear if she means 'integrate new parts into the cannon' or 'shoot at Giants with the cannon'.
It could be both.
Lunata hems and haws when put on the spot. Josie tilts her head slightly to the right, arching a pale eyebrow. "Cat got your tongue, kiddo?"
And then out comes the truth of it.
"Ah. Huh. Well, don't that beat all." She glances at Shalune and smiles lopsidedly... while also shaking her head. 'Thanks', that look almost seems to say.
Long story. She bets it is.
To Lunata then: "...It's your ARM, it's your call, kiddo."
Though she does narrow her eyes. Isolde's not the only one pulling a similar-enough reaction to the girl's declaration.
"But ain't you a little young to be thinking like that? C'mon." She deposits the sphere on the table where Isolde is seated and approaches Lunata, planting her one good hand on the girl's shoulder. "Buck up."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
There's a 'whoof' as Lunata nearly gets non-existent air out of her lungs when Josie pats her. She scowls a little bit at that comment, before pausing to say with a bit of that traditional teenage venom:
"Well, when I get my way, there won't be two Lunies to fight the nickname over."
A loooooong pause.
She winces a little. Ooh. Ouch. She rubs at her head and says, "I mean. No, I know what I'm doing..." she looks again at Isolde. She wonders if the silk eye wrap is a choice or whether she's one of those people that can strike, sight unseen.
"But... I already tried. It hurt, but it failed. Tried walking into the Farplane too. No dice."
She shrugs again with a kind of blithe smile as she says, "Also I'm demanding enough from Lunie here already. It wouldn't do to be a complete sourpuss the whole stretch of the way, right?"
Still, Lanval's comment feels like it touches on something. Bringing harm... 'to those who still live'. Hmm. Well--
"... also, geez, don't just dump them on the ground. I used to be a waitress, y'know," Lunata grumbles as she starts picking the rags up. She pulls up. "Hey, I'll go launder these for you for some coin?" A pause from the response in the back. "Okay, deal."
She pads on out to the back with the laundry at that.
<Pose Tracker> Isolde has posed.
Why would someone just want to keep Fiends alive? Some kind of Fiend colosseum? Nah. Too ridiculous. Isolde finishes off her tea cup and fills it back up, saying as she does, "What's an electronic exactly?"
She takes a deep breath and lets it out as the topic of getting 'sent' comes up as well as the truth that it is in fact a Long Story. Isolde has a look as if she would be raising an eyebrow, even as she looks - well, turns her face - towards Lunata.
She doesn't get up as Lunata moves on.
"... So," she says, to Shalune: "Lunie."
(Isolde hasn't heard any other name beyond this.)
"Is she well? I understand that life can be difficult, and sometimes it can seem pointless. When we have duties and roles and everything falls apart, living can seem like a dreadful burden. But I hope that you can... Oh, I don't know; I have no idea what I'm saying, really."
She sips her tea again. "It's just terribly sad." Towards Lanval, somehow directly towards Lanval, Isolde asks: "Don't you think?"
Then, in a somewhat less sorrow-tinged voice, Isolde says, "I can't help but compare these Fiends to the Hellions we had back in the old country." Is that what they're calling it now? "But beyond the obvious connection of, they're bad and would like to eat you, I feel that the connection is minimal. I can be quite glad, thank you, that we didn't run into too many Hellions like the Iron Giants! They're really quite unpleasant; I was lucky, Lunie," towards Shalune in this case, "because my technique is already largely about penetrating the gaps. If I was more of a slasher or a chopper, I'd have been the one getting chopped. You're familiar with the creatures, in the general sense?"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
'It's a long story,' Shalune says about the chilling acceptance - and high valuation - of death on behalf of the other Lunie, and Lanval's just sitting over there, thinking. (Thinking also important things like 'oh yeah, I guess if I want in on that round of hot tea I should sit at a table but this bit of the floor feels nice and even nostalgic,' such are the struggles of being a water elemental.)
Josephine calling for credit where credit's due gives Lanval some laughter, and the concession that maybe they'll be here for a long time if he keeps pushing it... but that might also mean more rounds of hot tea in celebration.
He thinks to get up in that shaky way he does as the discussion veers along towards Lunata's well-being (well ex-being?). He's having a hard time of it, because this part of the floor really is that comfortable for him.
Then Isolde looks directly at him. It's a bit stunning and sudden. "...Findin' joy at not existin'... yeah..." A certain underlying intensity to that focus has him off-guard as he staggers along back towards a table once Isolde goes to talk about comparing Hellions and Fiends and then her experiences with Iron Giants. (More apt to say 'has himself a slump forward on top of the table.')
It looks terribly indignified on his part! (This is nothing new.)
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.
"Ah, um," Shalune blurts, only now realizing that the woman with the silk wraps might actually be blind. "There's a bunch of metal towers set up through the valley? They're machina that help redirect the lightning away from the main roads by attracting it to them." She doesn't say more than that, mostly because she knows nothing about their history.
"Honestly, I've thought about trying to shoot lightning at things. But it's a matter of trapping the energy and then generating it again. I don't think I've got a battery big enough," Shalune notes thoughtfully at Josie's comment, about the only one in the room to actually take the suggestion in stride. "Or, rather, it's not the amount of charge it could hold, so much as how quickly it can shoot it out again. It'd be really sluggish lightning, otherwise.
Sooner or later, Shalune is going to learn about plasma.
She also winces at Lunata's rather blunt line, though it's in sympathy more than it is in pain. "You'll always be a Lunie to me, though-- you're not demanding, jeez," she grumbles more softly to herself as Lunata escapes, picking at her hair briefly with a quiet frown.
She only answers Isolde - and Josie - once she has a cup of tea cradled between her hands. She looks a little older in how thoughtful she is, though she still has the habit of curling around anything she's eating or drinking. "She's thinking clearly, I promise. She's not doing this just out of despair, or anything like that. It's to get her out of a situation a Guardian tossed her into," she mutters - then hesitates as she glances upwards at her audience, obviously not certain how much more she should say without Lunata nearby.
So instead she latches onto Isolde's comment, perking back up. "I've seen them, sure - um, but I should really point out I'm not much of a swordfighter or anything. I usually fight dirty, or with gadgets. Kinda figured we'd have to tear plate away to get anywhere important, though, yeah."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie makes a face at Lunata's remark that's a bit of a smile but more of a grimace. "Kiddo... I'm not kidding. You're too young for this," she sighs, shaking her head. Which, perhaps, is when she casts a look Shalune's way, as if to silently query after the other girl's acceptance of this whole situation.
And to lift an eyebrow at the remark. Not look aghast, given Josie's Guardianist leanings, or anything of the sort, but simply just... 'huh', would be a good subtitle for her expression right now.
"Well, if you say so, kiddos," she says at length, shaking her head. "Still. There's more than one way to skin a cat, if you catch my drift."
Drawing back a seat as Lunata hies off to attend to the laundry -- her gaze tracks the younger woman for a few moments -- she settles herself down at the table, apparently permitting the awkward subject to fall far far by the wayside.
It's a long story, indeed.
"So. Tell me more about these Giants. Might as well make the most of it, eh?" She hooks a stool out, as if to indicate that Lanval should make himself comfortable too. If he wants.
She's putting together a thing or three about water elemental beings today.
It is pretty humid out, considering the storm.
"So, let's say if you had a really large gun, where would the best place to shoot one of these things be?"
So begins, perhaps, a discussion on the best weak points of the fearsome Iron Giant...