2019-07-16: A Soccer Lesson and a Sneaky Star

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  • Log: 2019-07-16: A Soccer Lesson and a Sneaky Star
  • Cast: Lydia Seren, Ivan
  • Where: Besaid
  • Date: July 16, 2019
  • Summary: Lydia teaches Ivan to play soccer.

==================================<* Besaid *>==================================

Besaid is a small tropical island at the southernmost point of the Spiran archipelago, almost as far south as one can get and still be part of Spira. The island features a large beach and seaport, a small village surrounded by forests and waterfalls, and a temple of Yevon. Its relative isolation from the outside world has resulted in a pastoral, almost idyllic life for its few inhabitants; if not for the few Summoners traveling to pray to the Fayth, Besaid would see almost no visitors at all.

It is also home to the lowly Aurochs, a blitzball team of which the less said is better.

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxJE6SSX-aw
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

Lydia Seren honestly would like to live in a civilization that isn't full of judgemental tree people so she largely has been hanging around Besaid for the most part rather than living on the plains the whole time. It hasn't been conquered by the Guard (yet) AND doesn't seem to be very Fiend heavy, almost as if it's one of the starting zones! Never live in the first zone, of course, always settle down in the second. Safe from being completely obliterated AND monster attacks aren't so bad!

Lydia is presently bouncing around a blitzball on the beach with her foot, evidently attempting to keep it up in the air as much as possible. She seems completely recovered from her DASTARDLY SCHEME to GIVE IVAN A PRESENT without telling him to TRICK HIM INTO ACCEPTING IT.

What a monster.

Of course, with Luca conquered, is there really a proper avenue for her to play Blitzball as it is? She's not sure but she finds the practice relaxing.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

An Ivan approaches! Not only is it a Complete and Total Coincidence that he is in the same town as Lydia again, but it seems he doesn't even see her there as he approaches, looking off distractedly at something while he's walking. He bumps right into her, and stumbles a bit!

"Whoa!! Lydia!! What were you doing right there!! Where I was going!"

He backs up and re-scarfs himself. When will the madness end?! Apparently not today.

"Hey, so, uh, are you sure you don't want your box back?"

Like maybe she made it for him and gave it to him... by accident, somehow.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

Lydia doesn't quite fall over, but she was so focused on her own business (the bouncing of said ball) that she ends up not seeing Ivan and when he bumps into her her face bonks into the blitzball and it bounces away from her.

A single tear appears in one of her eyes that she wipes away. It's okay. She can just... start over from the beginning. Ha ha ha. HA HA HA!!

Lydia says, "Oh hey Ivan!" and then frowns because Ivan is saying its a coincidence and Lydia doesn't seem to believe that at all, but she does say, "Oh no I need you to hold onto that." with a deadpan gaze. "That's ok, right?"

She places her hand on her face because fair is fair. It's the exact same pose as last time too, as if an animator had refused to draw this pose a second time.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Ivan seems not to have prepared a defense for that question, and is immediately defeated. "I ... guess," he says. Or maybe he just wasn't trying very hard?

He retrieves her ball and offers it to her. Hopefully she will take it back. She wasn't trying to give it to him, so there should be no reason for her to make him hold onto it indefinitely unless she's just testing her power to get Ivan to accept objects. Anyway, it's his fault it bounced away, not part of any Lydia plan.

He sees her covering her own face, and while perhaps he may recognize the callback, he's still uncertain, given that he just caused her to bounce a ball into her nose.

"Um, did you hurt yourself?"

Were his face not scarf'd, you would be able to see the warring impulses over whether to take responsibility and melodramatically apologize for causing harm wherever he goes or to brush it off indifferently like a proper villain. Both impulses are ridiculous.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

Not part of any plan... THAT YOU KNOW OF.

Actually, Lydia isn't testing Ivan's power to hold onto objects. At least not YET. She takes the ball back quietly with her free hand and spins it on a single finger idly as she observes Ivan and though she uses her MASK HAND to spin it she quickly returns her hand to its original spot after.

"Nah I'm okay." She says, muffled because of hand. "I was trying to see how long I could keep the ball in the air." She then pauses and pinches at her nose as if to make sure.

Then she nods, still pinching. She starts to say something, unpinches her nose, and says, "Nah I'm okay. Confirmed."

She can't see through scarves so she completely misses Ivan's internal war with herself but she does say, "Have you ever played any uh 'sports'?"

Even with the reasoning of being a utensil, it seems like 'sports' is a good way to help stay in shape on the days you aren't stabbing people but she supposes there's other ways to get that sort of exercise.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Ivan raises his eyebrows at the mask-hand-spin maneuver, and seems to consider her question earnestly, without regard for where it might be leading.

"Not like a real sport with teams and stuff, I guess," he says. "Talia and I used to make up some games when we were little. And I've done some competitions at random things to try to win money, like 'make a ball go through a hoop from really far away' kinds of stuff."

He considers. "I'm really good at darts. Is darts a sport?"

Darts is kind of just knife throwing without the murder, but that's why he likes it.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"I don't know if there are any competitions of it," Lydia says of darts. "But I'd consider it a sport!" This seems to get her to cover her face a little as she tosses the ball into the air repeatedly. "Were you evenly matched? Like did you win like 50 percent of the time?" She stops tossing the ball.

"Hmm... so you know a fair amount about that sort of thing. Especially if you were playing for money. Even I haven't played for money yet." She seems to consider this for a bit before adding, "Ball in a hoop from far away... That actually sounds pretty familiar."

Her eyes widen and she says, "Oh that's right! They used to play that on Filgaia too! It was a pretty weird but fun game that Cyre's ancestors played. They couldn't use their feet or hands to touch the ball but they would try to get it through a hoop!" She frowns. "Though I am not sure that was purely a matter of...uh...getting it in from far away..."

She considers Ivan. "So are there any rules with that? Besides getting it in the hoop from far away?"

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"Talia and me? No, I won all of the time. It was very sad for poor Talia, never winning at all."

He nods confidently to emphasize this obvious lie. Don't fall for it, Lydia! If you ask Talia for confirmation you will just be used to enable the twins have an argument at great distances from one another.

Although, from another angle, maybe he's making a joke! If that's a thing Ivan ever does.

"...They couldn't use their feet or hands? I haven't heard of a version with rules like that. What do you use, then? Like your elbows and your head?"

Ivan figures he could probably accomplish this if he had to, even if it might look silly.

"The version I was doing didn't have any fancy rules. It was mostly drunk people in a tavern playing it so they probably couldn't handle a lot of rules. You just weren't supposed to step over the line on the ground."

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"For the darts or the ball shooting? I guess it works either way." Lydia says as she steps back a bit and elects to show Ivan how it works.

She tosses the ball into the air and bounces it off her head a few times, just leaping right into it. Her horns at least turn in before curling back out so she's unlikely to puncture the blitzball this way. Eventually she lets the ball drop and curls her arms in to bounce the ball off her elbows before letting it drop to her knees she manages to bonk up a few times before tossing it high enough into the air that she catches it with her head again. This time she lets it hang there, supported by her horns, rather than bounce it again.

"The one I played most is actually an ancient art of 'futball' or 'soccer'. In that one only the person protecting the goal can use hands everybody else can only use everything except hands."

She grins. "We could even have a match here on the beach if we draw lines in the sand, maybe."

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"Both, but the darts had more complicated scoring," Ivan says. "Mostly you wanted to get it in the middle, though, same as the hoop."

Lydia demonstrates the ways of this ancient form of soccer she has been speaking of. Or, well, also the ways of regular soccer, as far as the scope of the demonstration goes. Though her horns aren't as much a danger to the ball as they could be if they were oriented differently, they do seem to reduce the surface area she has available for manipulating a blitzball with her head, and she still manages to control the ball quite accurately. She seems experienced at this, he concludes.

Ivan squints at her silently for a bit as she Invites Him to Play a Game. Yes, that does make sense that something like that was coming. There may be kind of a run of these headed his way. Is this what 'chasing' looks like...?

"What kind of stakes?" he asks. Introducing stakes may make it worse for him and not better, but Ivan's intricate internal rule system has some special exceptions built in for cases of necessity and gambling.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"Well come on, you didn't think I wouldn't ask about that, didja?" Lydia reaches up and pries the blitzball off of her head. She promptly tosses the ball to Ivan with no warning. Can his assassin reflexes catch the ball in time?! Or if he really wants to be stylish, deal with it as a mighty soccer player would! But to be honest, she isn't really trying to trick Ivan here like she did last time.

"Stakes?" Lydia asks. "Hm." She cups her chin in thought. "... ... ... Well," She says, tossing it back to Ivan. "What kind of stakes did you and your sister normally have? Was it just a matter of money? I'm not sure how much you two bet with one another... I don't know if I'm comfortable betting too much for something like this when it's a game I know more about but we could do like a symbolic bet? What do you think?"

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Ivan just catches the ball in his hands, like he's not even trying to learn soccer!! But that's just what his instincts happened to do when the ball suddenly came at him. He hasn't developed any bounce-the-ball-off-your head instincts yet. Lydia asks him what he used to bet when playing with Talia. He blinks.

"Talia and I didn't play for stakes..." Ivan gets a faraway look, imagining himself trying to gamble against his sister at age five, insisting she hand over her beloved teddy bear or something.

No, that wasn't how it was...

Lydia is hesitant to bet real money because she actually knows how to play the game.

"What do you mean? You don't think I can pick it up?" Ivan tries to bounce the ball off his head and it flies off in a basically random direction because it never occured to him to try that kind of maneuver before and he has absolutely no muscle memory for making it work for him yet. He shrugs and goes after the ball, and brings it back.

"I mean, yeah, I'm a natural, I'm gonna have it mastered in five minutes, don't go easy on me. But it doesn't have to be money if you'd like to keep your money."

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"Mm, nah I'm sure you can pick it up." Lydia says, and she isn't even just being nice there. Ivan can kick her ass after all and she's pretty sure that even if he starts disadvantaged he can probably quickly prove to be a challenge in short order. But it still doesn't feel right. "Maybe I'm just worried about forgetting to mention some rule, eheh..." Plus for her it's more a matter of fun, the bet thing is more of a concession to the Ivan Ruleset and she would feel pretty guilty if she took money from a guy who doesn't get paid for his work that is also murder so maybe it's best he is not paid for that for his work. But rewards tend to cost money even if they aren't money, so Lydia settles on a middle ground approach.

"Loser buys the winner a drink. How's that?"

She doesn't comment on Ivan's initial head bounce but she commits that to memory forever. "Feels a little less like robbing you, basically."

She starts drawing LINES IN THE SAND with a stick.

"And sorry I thought you said you and your sister bet against one another but I guess I misheard." Lydia admits.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"A drink?" That sounds dangerously recreational. Ivan starts contemplating ways to make it utilitarian and perfunctory. He could buy and deliver her a fancy juice or request the same? "Uh... maybe. I guess."

Lydia suggests he suggested he used to gamble against Talia. Did he make it sound like that by mistake? "No, we just did it to pass the time." For fun, some might say, but Ivan is careful not to. "I didn't start gambling for money until-" he isn't quite sure how to finish the sentence. "Until I needed money."

...Good enough. He watches her draw the lines and then stands behind a line, because he knows that much about what lines are for.

"So how does it work?" he offers her the ball to show him.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"Yeah. Everybody needs to drink!" Lydia chirps.It's simple," Lydia catches the ball, setting it down in the middle of a beach. "You put your ball down right about--" She judges an equidistant point between the two lines and places the ball on the beach sands there before taking a few steps back.

"Now you can't use your hands--and you can't kick it outside the length of these two lines. But your goal is to get it across the line! It's pretty different from a normal game of soccer since usually that's played with teams, but for a one on one you generally just need to get the ball past the other person playing cause once that happens they'll have a tough time catching you before you knock the ball across the goal line!"

She considers for a few moments before adding, "Does that make sense? Got any questions?"

It is pretty simple, especially with only two players.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"...So you don't have to use your head?" Ivan asks. This is his question. It seems important to determine the answer to this, since the ball is on the ground. He can walk on his hands, but that seems like an awfully silly and complicated way to play Sports.

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

"You don't have to use your head," Lydia says. "That's optional!"

Lydia can also do a handstand but honestly she probably couldn't do a handstand walk like that even half as well as Ivan.

"Just can't use your hands." She honestly isn't sure if elbows are disqualified but she really doesn't want to get bogged down in that sort of thing just this second.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"All right," Ivan says. "Then I'm ready."

He regards the ball with Determined Intensity, and flicks an equally intense gaze up to Lydia.

He must win. Even if... the consequences of loss and the spoils of victory are just going to be flipsides of the same awkward situation for him. It's still the principle of the thing, where he must prove he is not a loser--not at this random no-hands ball game, or anything!

...Alas... when the dust clears, Lydia really has played a heck of a lot more of this type of game than he has and actually knows what she's doing, fairly easily maneuvering past him to get the ball across the goal line.

Ivan, who had contorted himself into a very over-the-top ninja-like pose trying to block her progress to no avail, flops down to the ground in defeat.

"Okay, that's fine. I'm not moping, I'm not going to mope."

<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.

poont. poont. poont. The ball goes across Ivan's line.

"Aw hey." Lydia says. "You did better than I did when I first played!" She putzes around with the ball while eventually kicking it back on top of her head where it rests. "I bet if you practiced you'd be really good at the game! You've got a lot of talent, so I figure that's all you really need since you're already really fit. But it's not just a game of fitness, you also need a lot of fine tuned coordination and even if you are an actual ninja, it's not any techniques you'd learn in that occupation so--just a matter of practice."

She wonders for a moment if Talia could play soccer any better? She is much more outgoing than Ivan though so she's bound to have a more varied range of experience. Plus she doesn't have any anime diseases as far as she knows.

It probably doesn't help that Lydia seemed to be more playing for fun than to win but ... well, no, that's it really.

"Gets the blood pumping at least, right?"

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Ivan makes a long, wordless complainy noise. He is not pouting at all.

"Yeah, I guess. I guesssss."

He's going to need a while to recover, apparently, despite Lydia's encouragement.

Incidentally, later on -- hopefully, quite later on, after Ivan has moved along on his own way -- if Lydia happens to check her pockets (or whatever she has that is closest to pockets), she will find that some mysterious person reverse pickpocketed a little star-shaped charm onto her person at some point today. Who knows what person could have done this... or why!