2019-07-07: So I'll Chase

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  • Log: 2019-07-07: So I'll Chase
  • Cast: Lydia Seren, Ivan
  • Where: Mi'ihen Highroad
  • Date: July 07, 2019
  • Summary: After some fun with roller skates, Lydia reveals that she learned the meaning behind a message Ivan hadn't meant for her to decode.

=============================<* Mi'ihen Highroad *>=============================

Many years ago, a man named Lord Mi'ihen, commander of a mercenary group known as the Crimson Blades, was summoned by the Grand Measter to Bevelle to answer the challenge that his group was a threat to Yevon. Though his followers suspected he would be executed and begged to follow, Mi'ihen ordered them to stay behind and walked along an old path to Bevelle, without stopping to rest. 

Moved by the display of piety, the Grand Maester formally adopted Mi'ihen and his soldiers into Yevon as a defensive force, known now as the Crusaders. In recognition of the momentous moment, the path Mi'ihen walked now bears his name.

...except not really, because the original one was wrecked by Sin a few hundred years ago. You can still see bits of it as you pass along the Highroad, on which the Djose Temple can also be found.

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8tfe_H7bzw
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

After that much time in the caverns, especially since the group has to cart some goods right back out of the cave if they really want to get out of here with any treasure, well, that means carting those goods out even if it isn't exactly the more excting of treasures (though Kaguya is likely to be happy with them if they elect to give them to her. Lydia isn't sure about that. She is thinking of bringing what she's found to Ethius who she imagines will disassemble it and get mad at Kaguya even more over.

But that's a problem for tommorow. Tonight it's a peaceful evening on Mi'ihen Highroad. Lydia had volunteered to take guard duty over the camp since she wanted to get some work done anyway.

And what is she working on??

Uhh, it seems like she's whistling to herself as she sits by the fire, noisily hammering away at a pair of ... pair of shoes? A pair of thigh high shoes that are also high heeled. And she is adding wheels to the bottom of these very shoes which seems like something someone who is high would do so there is a lot of 'high' content going on here.

Naturally Lydia has never been very considerate as to people's sleeping needs and has done pretty much nothing to dampen the noise she sends out into the world.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Ivan was only a little bit weird about the whole camping out together idea -- after all, they do have lots of treasure(?) to carry, and the sun did set before they got back to their respective home bases, so it's not like there were a lot of options besides continuing to trudge onward through the night like idiots (which he did suggest, though not in those words.)

Anyway, it's business camping. Business camping is fine!

Or is it fine...? After the banging has been going on for quite some time, eventually Ivan rises up like some sort of vengeful spectre of sleeplessness, hovering ominously over Lydia and even getting a sort of flashlight-under-the-eyes effect from the fire.

"I think I misunderstood this watch-taking arrangement. I'm supposed to be sleeping, right?"

He squints down at her project. "...are you making shoes?" Lydia forgetting to tell him she was a cobbler in addition to everything else sounds about right for her.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

Lydia decided to not trudge onward through the night like an idiot, largely because seeing all the guns made her like 'ohh wow I sure haven't done anything with my hands like this in a while!'. This explains the hammering apparently.

She nearly drops the shoes INTO the fire when Ivan sneaks up behind her (he might not have been sneaking, Lydia, you're just not really good at the whole 'guard' thing but after some fumbling she merely drops the hammer into the fire which she quickly pulls out. She then pats out the resultant flames on her hand so automatically it might make one wonder if she's done that before.

"Oh, yeah, it's your turn to sleep." Lydia says. "Are you having trouble? Bad dreams?"

She holds up the shoes so Ivan can get a better look at the wheels she fixed underneath them in a clear contradiction of logic and maybe even good taste. "I didn't make the shoes, I'm just adding wheels to them!"

Why? She does not answer that unasked question no matter how good of a question it is. "Trying stylish but practical!" Lydia it doesn't look practical. "Though to be honest I'm never going to wear them anyway."

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Ivan makes a face as Lydia sticks her hand into the fire to get the fallen hammer and then pats out the flames on her hand like that was all very normal. He wonders if there's something he ought to be saying about that. In some ways, Lydia's relationship to fire is even stranger than his own. He's still in a bad mood from the prolonged and inexplicable hammering, though, so he lets it pass.

"I was trying to sleep, yes, but there is this mysterious sound that keeps happening, almost like someone is striking something with a hammer over and over again. Do you know of anyone who might be doing that?"

She explains her project to him in more detail, showing him the wheels. He blinks.

"Yeah, can't you just make wheels happen whenever you want them? Does it bother you to do that?"

Maybe she is trying to be more manual about the skates rather than just turning her body into stuff she needs so often. But she also said she probably wasn't going to use the ones she's making...

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"That sounds really obnoxious," Lydia admits as she studies the shoes, giving the wheels a bit of a tug. "Do you know where it's coming from?" tug. tug. She grins sharply and starts to set down the hammer.

Then she frowns thoughtfully at the hammer for a long moment as if she's about to make some kind of connection in her head.

"It isn't Talia, is it?" She asks. "I thought she left earlier--" Or maybe not.

She does turn to look back over to Ivan. "Anyway, yeah, I can do it. And nah, that at least doesn't bother me. Because that was a Lydia innovation on the situation. It feels pretty 'me' to run around on skates, so." She pauses and then looks over to the shoes. "I like running fast, skating. If you move fast enough you forget you're in your own body."

She sets the shoes down and tilts her head to check their balance. "But I can't pull heels off. I feel like I'm towering over everyone--I mean subjectively speaking."

She looks to Ivan. "I just wanted to make something because I hadn't made a thing in a while. Do you want to try 'em on?"

Casual as ever.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"I wouldn't put it past Talia to secretly follow us to pull a prank, but I don't think it would involve mysterious late-night hammering," Ivan says, folding his arms.

"Maybe it's a mystery and we'll never know."

He looks at the skates as Lydia explains why she doesn't mind the wheels transformation. It's a little sad to think of skating as a way to outrun your body, but maybe that's a better way to deal with it than the time she looked half ready to pull parts of it off.

"Yeah, it's..." he searches a moment for a word he feels like he's allowed to use. "It's nice to move fast. But why skates if you don't want skates? If you don't want to use what you're making, how do you choose what kind of thing to make, if you could make anything you don't want?"

He's not entirely sure he grasps the concept of making a thing just to make something. Shouldn't it have some use? But maybe he's overthinking it. If you're tinkering for fun, you would want to use junk you wouldn't miss, right?

"Oh, were you trying to get rid of the shoes since you don't like the heels?"

Do you want to try 'em on?

"Me?" He looks at them. He looks at Lydia. "I've never worn skates before."

Honestly he's not even sure if his world has invented skates yet or if he just happened not to encounter any before meeting Lydia. His life experiences are limited enough that there's kind of a gray area like that on some stuff.

He squints at the heels sitting on top of the wheels.

"They look especially hard to balance on. Not that that would be a problem since I'm especially good at balancing..."

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"Hm... I feel like the answer is staring me right in the face, but maybe I'll figure it out later. Seems to have stopped now at least." Lydia says.

It's a little sad, but it's not sadness Lydia is unused to so in a way it's kind of a comfortable sort of sorrow that she just manages to deal with. Still, this doesn't explain why make skates that she can't use but it doesn't seem like that one is going to be easy for her to explain. "I just like tinkering. Keeps my mind busy." Instead of busy thinking about things she can't actually help or fix. "Plus I was talking with Ragnell about how--"

She stalls for a moment, silvering faintly. "Aw geeze, didn't mean to mention that. Anyway, uh, yeah! They're tough to balance on, I mean, so are skates usually right? So what's the difference if they're high-heeled shoes rather than flat heel shoes? I do not know!" She tilts her head curiously at Ivan as he admits that he's very good at balancing.

"Sweet! That makes you perfect for a test!" She offers them to Ivan, perhaps eager too avoid the whole slip up she made there.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Testing skates Lydia has no intention of using... seems legit! And Ivan must admit (or, actually, would absolutely refuse to admit) that rolling around on wheeled shoes looked fun, based on watching Lydia do it.

He accepts the skates and starts to change out of his regular boots into them.

"I didn't realize you knew Ragnell, too," he says. "You've heard that she's alive, right?"

It sounds like yes, and that this may have even been a very recent conversation, but he feels like he ought to mention it anyway.

Once the skates are on, Ivan sets about finding his balance atop them. After a brief interlude of precariousness and wobbling, he starts to wheel around.

"I feel extremely tall in these," he observes, rolling past her.

With no further preamble, he starts doing little things to test his balance, and then attempts a rolling backflip. He does not stick the landing.

Lying on his back, he announces, "That's going to take practice."

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

Seems legit! This is absolutely nothing to do with Lydia wondering what Ivan looks like in these things and it is purely a matter of mechanist curiousity. The same sort of curiousity that led her to making these abominations we mean technological marvels.

"Oh uh. Yeah. I mean. Uh. She's got some complicated stuff going on and I understand half of it otherwise I'd fill you in." She shrugs both her shoulders at that. Oh well! "She says I'm a good judge of character, by the way, though she tried to destroy Filgaia so maybe that's not really counting for much. I didn't know she was alive until she uh showed up being alive."

Yeah she's still kind of on both those things mentally.

When Ivan says he feels tall, Lydia is immediately beset with concern. "Good tall or bad tall??" Height is important okay.

And then Ivan does a friggin' backflip. "Holy shit...!" She says. "I did not test for backflips! I did not test for backflips!!"

But of course it doesn't matter because Ivan lands on his back anyway. "Oh Guardians did I kill you?"

She runs over to check on him. Ivan says he needs more practice as Lydia checks his pulse.

"You're still alive!"

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"Just 'different' tall," Ivan says. Mostly he was thinking about the tallness in terms of how much more difficult it would be to pull off the backflip he wanted to attempt.

"Wait. Ragnell tried to what??" Ivan's surprise at Ragnell having attempted to destroy Filgaia may or may not be a contributing factor in the unsuccessful backflip landing, but probably not. Landing a backflip in skates is not really an attainable first-time-in-skates goal.

The backflip occurs, and Lydia rushes over with concern, going so far as to take his pulse(!)

"I'm fine and alive!" he tells her, sitting up and reclaiming his wrist from the pulse-check with a bit of a fluster.

He stretches a little and moves about experimentally to confirm nothing is broken, and then rises to stand on the skates, immediately starting to make little balance checks like he's going to do the same stupid thing again.

"If I shift my weight at exactly the right time, I should be able to land it," he explains.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"Oh good! I was worried!" Lydia says though the smile on her lips clearly means she rebounded quickly from it if that's the case. "Well I mean until you talked then I was almost certain you weren't dead."

She sits back a bit and adds, "So." She says with a cheery expression on her face. "Are you saying you want to hold onto them so you can keep practicing? You can hold onto them if you want. In fact, you can even have them if you want!" She tries to subdue her smile a bit because honestly the last thing she wants is to put Ivan off of wearing them by being too happy about it.

"Though uh. hmm. Maybe we should have a mat or something? I don't know how easy it is to hurt yourself by messing up a backflip because I don't do backflips."

Pause. "Because I can't do backflips." She tilts her head to the left. "I mean not usually. If I cheat I could probably."

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Lydia never clarified about Ragnell... did he mishear that? Are there multiple Ragnells? The one he met seemed like she was having a pretty good time existing in the world -- although to be fair, it's a different world. Could she have hated Filgaia in particular...?

Ivan contemplates Lydia with a bit of suspicion as she makes an offer to borrow the skates and immediately upgrades it into an offer to keep them.

"I guess if you'd be throwing them away otherwise... or did you mean to sell them?" But it does feel strangely like he's being tricked into accepting a gift. They couldn't have been for him from the start, could they? Why would she make him high-heeled skates? ...Does she want him to be taller...?

No, no, it's really presumptuous to think Lydia would care how tall he is! She's probably just glad someone is excited about the junk skates she felt like making but doesn't want!

He has turned a little red in following this course of speculation. Fortunately, Lydia has meanwhile gone on to speculate about her own backflipping abilities.

"It's pretty easy to hurt yourself doing backflips, but not for me because I've been doing them forever." This logic may not hold. "What does cheating mean for backflips?"

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

Lydia was more worried about Ivan possibly having his neck broken than people trying to destroy the world but it's possible that between all that and her hidden objectives (hidden is putting it kindly) she kind of has forgotten to clarify. or maybe she didn't realize Ivan actually wanted clarification on that.

Lydia is actually very forgiving of the heights of other people, she just is pretty much very good at giving herself crap over it. That's just how it is sometimes! "Well, I didn't really have a plan in mind." Lydia says which is often somethihng she says after she does something like putting wheels on thigh highs. And also upon really doingn most things. She then adds, "I didn't know you knew Ragnell." She mentioned it off the cuff so she might as well go all the way here. "Well I mean she said she knew you but before that I didn't know. We used to be coworkers back when I was palling around with Ginny," the hellion she mentioned before. Who is uh no longer one but did Lydia remember to mention that? Well anyway.

"If you're sure it won't hurt, then it's fine!" It's obscure enough that she doesn't immediately compare it to the time Ivan said he was totally okay with going back into a war and wasn't.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"...She mentioned she knew me?" It's hard to imagine himself being mentioned in other people's conversations, but apparently that's a thing that happens now.

"How did that come up?"

He hopes Lydia wasn't trying to get advice about giving him another cake! ...or about giving him high-heeled skates?

He attempts another acrobatic maneuver, but this time flips backward onto his hands and goes into a back walkover, from there. That turns out less violently than the flip did, though there is a bit of uncontrolled rolling at the end while Ivan is trying to find his center of gravity again.

"When you're learning to do a flip, you usually do these for a while first," he explains, in case she was actually interested in learning flips.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

Lydia says, "Yeah! She did! It came up when--" She asked about something strange Ivan said and Ragnell said it was something she told him to say to get girls after him and all that. But that sounds like Make Ivan Flee the Camp Site territory so Lydia pauses a bit and adds, "Oh I had...a question. And it reminded her...of you."

YEAH THAT'S THE TICKET. That should satisfy Ivan's curiousity completely, she reasons.

"Anyway, cheating is more like--" Lydia begins, having again been playing catch up a bit here as she draws out a strange looking medium.

"I've been using the Mediums. One of them is Celesdue, and she is the Guardian of the Moon. And I guess that means she is responsible for gravity too so--" She gestures vaguely with a hand as she puts the medium away. "You actually can use the mediums to augment your abilities in a lot of ways beyond just summoning them, but that's what Shamans learned to do back home. How to summon Guardians and worship them and all that jazz. It's a pretty rough religion though, I mean, there aren't really any kickbacks to being a Baskar Shaman. Plenty of people have mediums nowadays, even some Hyadeans!" Pause. "Riesenlied and Noeline."

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Lydia's explanation of how he came up in the Ragnell conversation receives a confused blink, but Ivan doesn't manage to formulate a follow-up question before the conversation moves on.

"You were a shaman??" Ivan sounds somehow distressed about this. He either didn't know it or forgot he knew it because he was already trying to know so many things about Lydia. It isn't being a shaman specifically that's the problem so much as being a shaman on top of the many other things she's been, or done, or gotten involved with!

"How have you done... so much stuff!"

Ivan, beware, the answer may involve something about not systematically avoiding all experiences because you've decided they are illegal.

He... also doesn't understand what a Hyadean is but that doesn't rank high enough to exclaim about.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

Lydia says, "Well I still am a shaman--I mean I finished my studies and everything." She rolls back and forth on her feet. "Like that's my job, it's just--I didn't really mention it because uh... you probably don't know what a shaman is? So I thought maybe it wouldn't be something you were niterested in knowing really. Heh heh... if you met me a couple years back I probably wouldn't have shut up about it though."

She rubs at her neck a bit and then adds, "Anyway, uh--what's the matter? I'm sorry I'm not really a believer of Althena--"

Oh it's not that.

"Oh." She says. "Yeah. I mean. I do stuff." Lydia says. "You could do a lot of stuff too. You could probably join the circus even. I know someone who is really into that sorta thing but I don't know if she can do backflips or rolling flips into handstands and all sorts of stuff like that, especially nnot in roller blades and high heels."

She considers Ivan for a long moment.

Then she considers the shoes he's wearing.

She quirks her head thoughtfully.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"You're still a shaman! How could you have been a shaman this whole time!"

Ivan has at least a working understanding of what a shaman is, if not necessarily the particulars of the kind of shaman Lydia is. He understands it as a religious thing, like a priest but for heretical unauthorized divinities. He hadn't even realized her weird summons had to do with gods! Or with so-called gods, anyway.

"I guess you're pretty relaxed about being a shaman," he says, at a bit of a loss. He's been hanging out with religious fanatics for a few months. It's a weird thing to learn someone you know is a conflicting religious authority and it just never came up.

Lydia suggests he could do lots of stuff too, like joining the circus.

"I don't think I can really do something like that, though..." he says reflexively. But somewhere in there she gets distracted by the shoes.

Ivan follows Lydia's gaze down to the skates as she contemplates them and then back up again, blinking back at her with a questioning look.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"Well I mean I ran away from home so I haven't really done much proper uh ritual or ceremony or anything. I mean I did while I was in training but--" Lydia stammers a bit herself because she's not used to people thinking she has done a lot in her life. In fact, for most of her life she figured she wasn't really doing anything. "I don't know, I wouldn't havee been happy just doing that for the rest of my life even if my parents weren't jerks."

She is faintly silver faced as she avoids looking directly at Ivan perhaps because she looked at the shoes directly for too long. Anybody can be a shaman anyway. Do you want to be one?" Boy these are a lot of occupations that don't involve murder. Well maybe Shaman does if you're over in the Aquvy region but Lydia is completely ignorant of that bonkers society.

She glances briefly back to Ivan and sees his questioning look. Her eyes widen slightly.

"Oh! Uh. I was just thinking about---how everything looks good on you and it's kind of unfair!"

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"I guess it was all a little complicated..."

Ivan says, as Lydia mentions leaving home and having jerks for parents. But she did say that even if she ran away from that life, she still considers herself to be a shaman today...

She suggests that Ivan might want to become a shaman.

"I don't think it's a good idea for me to be a shaman in the Guard...!" This sounds a little less bummed than the dismissal of joining the circus did, earlier. There's actually a little flicker of amusement in the outrageousness of the thought.

Everything looks good on you and it's kind of unfair!

"It does?" Surprise hits before embarassment, but the embarrassment is not too far behind. He looks down at the skates again, reddening. "I figured they probably looked a little silly..." It didn't completely escape his notice that this was a women's style of shoe.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"I thought that wasn't your real job," Lydia points out. She blinks a few times though her expression isn't all that incredulous because in truth she HAS noticed that Ivan has been getting along great in the Guard for the most part, except in so far as the Guard doesn't seem as squeaky clean as reputed and yet, strangely for all that, he seems offended by that despite being a guy who is totally doing murderse as part of his non-paying job.

"Yeah," Lydia says. "Well, everything I can envision at least. I mean, I'm not a fashion designer and I'm sure there's something that wouldn't look good on you, but I don't know what that could be so it might as well not exist within the realm of Lydia's thoughts."

She does look down at the shoes again before looking back at Ivan. "Well yeah, but they're supposed to look silly." Pause. "I mean they're wheels on high heels, but you still manage to make it work, somehow."

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

I thought that wasn't your real job.

Ivan flusters, as he generally does when it is brought to his attention that he's forgetting he's not really in the Guard.

"Just because it's my fake job doesn't mean I can show up with extra gods!"

Someone would probably take issue with that.

Lydia responds to Ivan's incredulous query about the shoes, fixating perhaps overmuch on the 'everything' portion of the comment while Ivan was mostly grappling with all of the other words.

Telling him he looks good in things!!

But, come to think of it, she said it was unfair that he looks good in things, so before he gets carried away with thinking it's about himself, shouldn't he consider that this is about Lydia wanting to look better in different kinds of clothing after getting her body turned into an unusual metal contraption?

He tries to think of something reassuring to say to her that wouldn't awkwardly hit some sore spot by mistake and would in no way insinuate that he had any positive feelings toward her, and is eventually rescued by her saying something that embarrasses him again.

They're supposed to look silly.

He looks down at the skates again. "...Oh. Yes. That was definitely... a thing that I knew."

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"That's true." Lydia says. "But I mean, like, unless you are intending to do the fake job forever--or want your fake job to be your real job which I totally get, you've still got options in the god department. And honestly I wouldn't blame you for picking a non-Guardian option." She may be the worst proselyte ever. "But it is still an option, just so you know."

She kind of connects the phrase 'you look good in this' and 'it's supposed to be silly' upon Ivan's reaction because, as usual, Lydia tends to speak before she thinks rather than the other way around but she does stammer, "I...I don't mean it like that, I mean like... people don't generally wear things like this, but that doesn't mean it's bad to put wheels on thigh high heels." It KIND of is bad to do that, Lydia, unless of course the person you're giving them to is some kind of super assassin who can (almost) do backflips in them in which case maybe it's just a question of 'why though?'.

Of course, Lydia can't read Ivan's mind so she can't tell that he's kind of reading hers. It's entirely possible that Lydia would TOTALLY wear high heel skates if she felt like she could pull it off or whatever but her own insecurities are stopping her from going as outrageous as her instincts whisper to her.

Also Lydia is NOT a super assassin and totally would probably break her ankle if she tried to wear those but she hadn't thought of that problem until Ivan nearly assassinated himself failing to do the backflip (but almost getting it!).

Maybe she should just... speak on the Ragnell in the room. She has kind of danced around it but even though she is attempting to avoid speaking on it directly, it KIND OF demands to be spoken of, mildly (or superly) embarrassing or otherwise.

"Do you remember what you said to me back in Luca when you were standing watch?" Lydia asks.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"Oh, but you know, the type of magic I use is supposed to be Althena's gift. I don't want my flames to dry up if the Goddess gets jealous of me double dipping in divinities..."

Also Lydia's asteroid summon was pretty spooky if he was going to he honest about it. Is that thing a god in her religion??

Lydia attempts to reassure him about the silliness of the skates, and makes what could be a fateful callback. Ivan tenses.

"Oh, uh...did I say anything all that memorable?" he asks, looking a bit uneasy.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"Does it really work that way?" Lydia asks. "Because I've seen the Vile Fiends use her gift and she is literally sending an army after them. Maybe she can't take it back. Or at least, not all that easily." She considers for a moment. "But you know, there is a Guardian of Fire. Its name is Moor Gault. He's pretty cool." She frowns. "Well I mean not cool and honestly pretty hot tempered but like, superpowers wise hard to beat the primordial flame right?"

She pauses a moment and though she can't read Ivan's mind she does get this question enough to anticipate it. "And yeah Rigdobrite is totally one of the Guardians. He's the Guardian of the Stars. It says he can travel through space because--well because he's Light." She smiles. "So I bet he gets along well with fire right? Anyway, Rigdobrite looks a little strange but he's always been there for me. I guess I couldn't give that up either."

She nods once to Ivan. "Oh yeah." Lydia says. "You said..." She considers making this sound as dramatic as it ought to, reconsiders, then decides 'fuck it' and goes for it anyway, placing the back of her hand against her chest and saying, "It's the least I can do to compensate for my sins...!"

She lets her hand drop. "It was kind of cool," and also a little silly okay but Ivan's also suffering a bit there so she need not torment him extra especially if what Ragnell said was behind it was true.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"Yeah, a primordial flame god-type being is probably pretty..."

Not cool. "Awesome."

Ivan feels a little guilty for mentally slamming Rigdobrite after learning he is the GUARDIAN OF THE STARS who has ALWAYS BEEN THERE for Lydia.

"Oh yeah, Rigdobrite is, um... impressive?"

He can respect the spooky asteroid god, if nothing else. "Does he ever talk to you or anything or just kind of... loom? ...benevolently loom."

Okay, but...WHY DOES SHE REMEMBER THE SINS LINE WORD FOR WORD.

He waves his hands like to try to dissipiate the words from the air.

"Yeah, that was a little weird, I should have just said 'you're welcome,' probably... I think I was trying to save some face after all the stuff that had happened..."

He doesn't seem to have processed, or to be able to process as a thing that is true, the fact that she called it cool afterward.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

Lydia has great love for Rigdobrite. Even if she is a little uncertain of other Guardians from time to time, her faith in Rigdobrite does not waver. When she looks at it, it's a little different from other mediums as it's silver though, of course, this might not mean anything to Ivan and that's a-okay.

"Oh yeah Guardians can talk." Lydia says. "Not often, but you do hear them from time to time. Even Rigdobrite. He sounds kind of echoey, but usually---yeah--it's benevolent looming." Pause. "And benevolently crashing."

Why DOES she remember the sins line word for word?

Lydia is smiling a little again. "I don't think it's weird." She says which is an outright lie because she totally did think it was a little weird, precisely that.

That is, until Lydia adds the following line of her own. "Once Ragnell explained it, I mean."

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"Benevolently crashing," Ivan repeats, fighting the quirk of a smile so he can deadpan it.

But fun and games and Guardian banter are over, because Lydia drops a certain bomb:

After Ragnell explained it. The words seem to echo for a while in his head.

Ivan experiences a singular panic, akin to watching something valuable smash on the ground and desperately wishing to reverse entropy in order to un-smash it, cursing the arbitrary chain of unfortunate events that must have caused it to smash in the first place. What is the valuable thing? Is it his pride? Hasn't that gotten smashed a lot of times already?

Okay but not like this.

He swallows.

"Well, obviously, that is not a thing I expected to happen..." His voice kind of cracks during that line.

"So here's your skates back, it was very nice knowing you--" Ivan tips over in the process of trying to hastily get the skates off, but somehow still does not break his ankle or otherwise seriously injure himself. Why he doesn't use the skates to hasten his escape is a mystery of Ivan rules.

Meanwhile, he is still rambling in a panic: "I mean not nice, I would never say that anything is nice, I mean, you know. We don't need to talk about that. Or anything! Ever again. Where are my boots. They're over there." He scrambles over to them. "You can have all the machina parts, I don't really know what they are anyway, and I'll be going..."

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"Even for a Guardian, he's a little weird like that. I guess that's why we get along." Despite Lydia's whole everything, she still has managed to keep hold of some kind of spiritual faith. It may not be the devotion shown by the Guard to Althena, but there's still something there and she does seem intent on keeping that fire stoked even after all the periods of doubt and despair she must have had. Even if it's a bit like worshipping that has such a common physical presence that at times they can seem simultaneously overbearing and apathetic. But Rigdobrite is a little like Ivan over there played out over a long time. When she needed him, he was there. And maybe in terms of actual time spent it isn't much, but it still means a great deal to Lydia.

Maybe caring about someone is smashing that vase of pride and maybe Lydia smashes that vase so often it's kind of ducttaped together and the cracks are showing, but there's something in that vase, you see.

Normally she would go into a panic over Ivan's panic, but instead it's not until the skates are in Lydia's arms that she says something. But when Ivan starts to scramble, Lydia grabs for his hand.

"Ivan," Lydia says, looking up to him. Words fail her for a moment but she presses on.

"I know there's no argument, just like you said... but there doesn't have to be. And what you said doesn't have to mean anything. But it's okay if it does, and--I don't mind chasing."

Lydia is quiet for a moment before she says, "There's a whole world out there waiting for you," eventually. "More than one. It's dangerous, and if you weren't at least a little alarmed by it all, I'd figure something was wrong with you." She tilts her head down a bit and then adds, "But you have to live eventually. Even if living kind of sucks sometimes, you gotta. Otherwise what's the point?"

She lets go, reluctantly, there.

"But you can stay here for a bit if you want and I won't say anything else." She says. "If that's what you need right now. If you need to leave, that's okay too but...my own feelings won't change that easily."

"So I'll chase." Lydia promises.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Lydia catches Ivan's hand.

He freezes as if that grip has real power, staring back at her with open fear, because maybe he really is going to run away forever, and if that happens, he wants to know what the last thing is she had to say to him, even if it turns out to be something that makes him want to run away faster.

She tells him that the world is waiting for him. She tells him that he has to get out there and live in it. She tells him that if he keeps running, she'll chase.

These are things he has always wanted to hear. And at the same time it's terrifying and he doesn't know what to do with it and he doesn't even know if he can blame that on being an assassin or if it's just him.

Then he can't look anymore, or be looked at. He turns his back to her before he can get choked up or something.

"...I do think I need to run away, so... sorry... but maybe if we can pretend it didn't happen for next time, it doesn't have to be... forever."

He lingers long enough to let her respond, but regardless of what she might say, he leaves, trudging onward into the night (like an idiot).

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

And Lydia believes all of these things too, especially the part about the world waiting for Ivan. Of course it is. As far as she is concerned, the best thing about Spira is that Ivan was sent to it. Yes, on a dumb mission to kill her friends but she hasn't forgotten what Ivan had said about never really leaving home even as forgetful as she can be, she has (eventually) grown to learn that being abroad and technically free to make his own choices (perhaps not effectively) is probably the best thing (as far as she's concerned) that has happened to him. It's a lot of parentheticals but that's how it is. And maybe Ivan doesn't realize it yet, maybe he never will, and maybe it will suck, but it's all still very true. The world has never been shy to Lydia about its dangers, but nevertheless it has managed to show Lydia something that in spite of the world slaying Mother Goddesses, the machinations of K.K and Solaris and Janus shooting her in the head, being set on fire repeatedly, and even having her own will stolen from her--

--Well, she found something that made all of that worth it somehow because if it wasn't worth it, she could have easily returned home to her village and made a little dot of a refuge for her people.

What is Lydia's expression? When one's back is turned you don't get to see it, but her voice is a touch hoarse when she says, "Okay." to Ivan. "I'll give you...a head start."

Not forever, though. The light of stars is ever distant, Lydia supposes as she curls back up in her bag and covers her face as if Ivan can still somehow see what's on there.

Lydia is not the star just as Ivan is not the fire, but perhaps light can yet catch the flame someday.