2019-07-14: Could You Hold Onto This?
- Log: 2019-07-14: Could You Hold Onto This?
- Cast: Lydia Seren, Ivan
- Where: Kilika - Jungles
- Date: July 14, 2019
- Summary: Lydia tricks Ivan into accepting a gift.
=============================<* Kilika - Jungles *>============================= The island of Kilika is filled with a massive jungle, which is no stranger to Fiends. The recent attack by Sin has made the jungle a dangerous place indeed; powerful Fiends patrol, and a few Sinspawn are rumored to be sighted. Much of Althena's Guard, having arrived, is devoted to making headway into the jungle and protecting the route to the Temple, which is nestled up in the mountains beyond the jungle. BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHw2V0C-D-o
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia is not one to visit Kilika casually but sometimes she just ends up doing so anyway because A) She didn't actually attack the Guard or anything and thus isn't on any hit list aaaannd B) where else is she going to be certain she can probably find Ivan on most days? Naturally, she tends to go as incognito as possible because the Guard is fucking crazy lately (her words, not mine!) but anybody who actually knows her could pretty easily recognize her. Those horns can't be hidden.
She doesn't bother the locals at the moment since she actually has a goal here. She walks around the town and squints about as if looking for someone. And uh. Honestly Kilika is prettydang small town so it's not like it's impossible for her to be able to check out the whole place within a reasonable amount of time though there's also the possibility that, you know, Ivan is moving around too or might not be present which could make it pretty difficult to find him.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan really does seem to find his way all around Spira, but today, he is, indeed, in Kilika. He just finished a patrol and is off duty for a while and heading back into the town proper, wandering around unsure what to do with a stretch of Terrible, Terrible Freedom. He finds himself gazing at flowers as he walks by them, idly trying to decide if he would have noticed any of Kilika's gardens if he was a random citizen of the town. He looks up from some greenery and spots A Lydia.
Briefly freezing with a startled look, he quickly winds his scarf around his face and pulls his cloak up.
"You're in Kilika!" he tells her, like maybe she doesn't know that.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia freezes because somehow despite looking for Ivan, Ivan was able to spot her first. She has no idea that Ivan is gazing at flowers for any particular reason because Lydia at least does not recognize the flowers as some kind of new addition to the town because Lydia might be the worst shaman ever. Or at least the worst Lunarian shaman ever. Look, her patron Guardian is not the Guardian of flowers okay.
Lydia may be a little embarrassed by shamans who are a little more traditional in nature. Even if there isn't a playable shaman like that in any Wild Arms game.
But she does look up when Ivan startles and pulls his cloak up and says she is in Kilika which is true! She is in Kilika!
"I am??" Lydia says. "I guess I must have ended up here on accident when I randomly walked onto the ferry that...still comes here because you control the port city now!"
She approaches Ivan, turning her head slightly so she isn't looking DIRECTLY at him in some kind of vague attempt to make things easier on him despite this being pretty riddiculous.
She starts fishing in her pocket but continues to gab as she is fishing around for it. Lydia keeps all sorts of random crap in her pockets. "So what brings to Kilika? Wild Guard business? Just walking around the city making sure folks are at ease with the new leadership?"
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan fidgets a bit. Does the fact that she is going on so pointedly about coincidences mean she's trying to appease him by speaking his language, or that there's some other, more accurate version of why she's here that she's not saying that would super embarrass him? Somehow being accomodated and catered to in his weirdness makes him even more self conscious -- why is he like this!
"Just Guard business, sort of, I've been away a lot so I have to check in sometimes and give reports so they know I didn't run off. And while I'm here I'm just... helping them keep the town in 'order' I guess." There's a little grimace as he says that since yeah they're occupying the town, it's not cute.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Unfortunately it's hard to notice Ivan fidgeting when you aren't actually looking quite at him in an attempt to appease Ivan about his weirdness. It may be a Catch 22 situation here but Lydia seems content to throw herself into it again and again because there may be something wrong with her. Nevertheless, she seems pretty happy about it so it works out. The reality of the situation seems to be one Lydia is trying desperately to look away from because A) She doesn't WANT to end up on the Guard's hitlist and also B) Ivan is in the guard and the last thing she wants is to be really awkward about that. She has at least been helping with evacuations so it's not like she isn't helping but she seems disinterested in actually getting torn apart by the Guard in the process of doing her part.
But she says, "I'm sure if you treat the people with dignity and actually beat Sin somehow they'll accept it. Though that's kind of a big 'beat Sin' in there."
She draws out a small box and offers it to Ivan. It's not large, and it's wooden and there's a stylized flame on the front of it etched in there. "Could you hold onto this?"
Yeah she's totally trying to sneak Ivan a gift by just acting completely chill about it and not calling it a gift and also acting like it's some sort of occupational request. It's really not her style but she can pretend it is in short bursts.
She then continues talking as if that will somehow help Ivan fall for her nefarious plot. "Thinking about taking up floral arrangement?" She asks.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
In spite of himself, Ivan honestly does find it a little more comfortable that Lydia is trying not to look right at him. He finds himself looking at her a bit more in curiosity, paying more attention to her expressions.
"Do you really think so?" Ivan isn't know what the big endgame plan is here, beneath the speeches and rhetoric, which he finds kind of confusing anyway. Will the Guard just conquer Spira and keep a bunch of soldiers out here forever and in a hundred years expect them to have long forgotten about the local religion? Or if they beat Sin would they move on and expect the Spirans to follow Althena on their own out of gratitude?
"Yeah, beating Sin is... ... who knows, I guess. Maybe there are more big plans that will make it more realistic."
Lydia hands Ivan a box.
"Okay..." he takes the box with a puzzled look, thinking maybe she needs him to hold it while she does something else with her hands before she takes it back again, but instead she asks him about flowers.
"Not really. I met someone who's been taking care of the flowers here and I realized I hadn't really noticed that there were flowers. So I guess I was trying to notice them."
He hadn't laid it out so explicitly in his own mind when he was doing it, so he sounds sort of skeptical about whether that's even what he was doing.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia thinks the Guard's gameplan is to put the Veruni in charge of managing the Spirans so they can continue to live lives of nobility while also not being afflicted by a death curse.
Lydia is trying to come across as a cool customer but she seems to be fidgeting herself. zher hands are being held behind her now that she has handed off the mysterious box without explanation and is holding one of her hands by the wrist with another and her fingers are wiggling about anxiously.
"Oh well I mean probably not for a while if it happens but I don't think its impossible. This isn't Kislev ghetto bad or anything even if its not great. Right now, of course, pretty much anything you take over right now can be destroyed by Sin attack so even if it looks like you are kicking butt right now Sin has to show up once and you're back to square zero or less."
Lydia had just been trying ti distract Ivan so she seems surprised to hear there actually is a reason that Ivan is looking at the flowers.
And its weirdly one of the sweetest ivanisms Lydia has experienced. So rather than dwelling on it she tries to help Ivan enjoy it by not saying its sweet or anything like that even though it totally is. She does smile a little because she can't stop herself.
"Huh." She says instead. "Cool."
A thought occurs to her. "Hey... Could you give Leo a message for me when you see him?"
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan, who is watching Lydia more closely now that she is watching him less closely, has noticed she is uncomfortable. Possibly because he's been looking at her too closely. He kind of averts his gaze in the opposite direction. "I'm sorry if this is like unfair. You can cover your face too if you want."
Ivan that is the opposite of a solution. No one but you wants to live like this.
He nods through her explanation of the Guard's situation and their chance of losing the ground they've gained through Sin being an unstoppable force of random destruction. He doesn't... not care about it, but he's kind of oddly disengaged from its success or failure except insofar as it may get him killed or if someone orders him to do something really egregious like murder civilians. One of the major perks of being Ivan is mostly letting other people decide on his behalf what he's supposed to do and letting them worry about whether it makes any sense or not. And although he realizes what they're doing isn't as righteous as they seem to believe, being under Leo's oversight insulates him from getting the kind of orders that are just abjectly horrible from any angle.
She asks him to bring a message to Leo. "Sure, I can give him a message. I think. What is it?"
He is still holding the box up in exactly the same pose as when he first accepted it.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia considers Ivan's offer and places her palm on her face and turns to look at Ivan like some kind of Jojo character. "Is this better?" She asks, leaving her hand there for way too long like a Lydia character. Maybe it is the opposite of a solution but Lydia seems willing at least to go along with it if only because it's getting her neck cramped to always be looking askance at someone.
"Oh cool," She adds when Ivan says he can pass on a message. "Can you let him know I appreciate what he did for me and that I still trust for him to do what's right by his people? I don't know what's going on but--well maybe hearing it will help."
She pauses. "It's only the first part I want to share not the 'I don't know what's going on' part."
She glances briefly down at the box, hand still over her face. She doesn't otherwise call attention to it.
Lydia starts to say something else but then Ivan hears a faint clicking noise from within the box he's holding and it starts playing tinny music box tones on its own.
"Huh." Lydia says, genuinely surprised. "That's not supposed to happen."
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
"What? No-- no, that was for you, if you were uncomfortable. I don't mind seeing your face--" Ivan reddens, but has a degree of protection from this damning fact due to how he is, in fact, currently concealing his own face.
Lydia's message! He shifts the box to go under one arm and gets out his notebook so he can take down the actual words.
"All right, I'll tell him that," he says. Lydia may or may not choose to pretend she doesn't notice him crossing out the part she said she didn't want to include.
Maybe the sudden movement was what sets the box off, and it starts to play some tinny music.
"Oh --" he says. "Your box is singing?" He offers it back to her, like maybe she'll need to soothe it or something.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia says, "Oh okay." She lets her hand drop. "Are you sure? I can keep my hand up there. I mean not forever but like for a while at least. The duration of the conversation." She brings her hand back up, then lets it drop as if to ask Ivan to judge which he prefers.
She pauses as she notices Ivan crossing out the part that she said she didn't want to include.
She decides to pretend she didn't notice him crossing it out. It's for the best for both of them to be honest.
"Uh..." Lydia says, "Just hold...onto it." If she takes it back she might not be able to get him to hold it again so instead she just lifts the lid so she can take a look at it, sweating silver bullets right now.
Inside the box is a spinning metallic reendition of a cactuar twisting around in a circular pattern while its spines push in and out of its own body formed from tiny thin needles.
"Looks like it's working the way that it's supposed to--"
The cactuar suddenly stops. Smoke drifts out of the music box and then--
--it catches fire.
"Shit!" Lydia says. "I must've messed it up somewhere!"
At this point she DOES pull it free from Ivan's hand and franticlaly takes to it with a set of tools, rapidly disassembling it. "Stupid stupid stupid Lydia grgghhh messing everything up." She mutters as smoke billows from the machine as she works.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
"Yeah!! Yeah, no, I just thought it was unfair if I got to hide but you didn't, I wasn't trying to make you hide..."
This is an awkward situation but they are saved from it by whatever mysterious thing is going on with the box. He puts his notebook away and holds the box more securely so she can inspect it. She opens the lid, revealing... a music box with a cactuar!! That's pretty amazing! And such a specific theme? Maybe Lydia grabbed it from a shop to remember her cactuar-related adventures by?
But Ivan sort of puts a few of the pieces together, in stages, as Lydia takes responsibility for the fact that it caught on fire. "Wait -- Did you make that??" He looks at her like she has done magic, although both of them have done literal magic.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
"Oh I don't need to hide just yet maybe later." Lydia says. "Right now I gotta fix this!"
She hurriedly disassembles and then reassembles the device before clamping the box shut down once, replacing one of the gears within with a slightly smaller gear. She looks back up to Ivan and then offers him the box once more. "Okay, now hold it. And uh. It shouldn't combust again. Probably."
She hesitates a bit because uh she might figure the jig is up here a bit though instead Ivan says 'did you make that???' as if she had cast a spell instead of accusing her of trying to give him a gift so maybe the jig ISN'T up.
"Uh well. Yeah." Lydia says. "I made it. Well most of it. I took some parts from junk I picked up because I didn't know how to fabricate them, but I put it all together and made the cactuar and uh--"
She puts the box back into Ivan's hands if he hasn't actually taken it by now.
"Um... Yeah it shouldn't burst into flames again so..."
Pause.
Pause.
"Was nice seeing you again and thank you for helping me in the caverns when you uh talked me through the panic attack or maybe I was just giving it to you because I didn't want it anymore? Whichever works okay bye!"
And with that she starts running off as well.
CONCLUSION OF TODAY'S BOUT: VICTORY: LYDIA SEREN FOR SUCCESSFULLY HANDING OFF HER GIFT???
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
"A panic what?" Ivan is left. With a box.
"...But what do you want me to do with it?"
Ivan calls to the departing Lydia. It's like ten minutes before he realizes what happened.