2019-08-07: That's 50 Black Mage Points
- Log: That's 50 Black Mage Points!
- Cast: Yue Rohay, Zhang Xiumei
- Where: Moonflow
- Date: 7th August 2019
- Summary: Xiumei comes across the Minder and Yue. A new quest is born...
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
It's important to take a break once in a while, even if you're a lifelong Veruni convict that's been drafted into an unwitting war between the Guard and Yevon because the Veruni had an Alliance with the Guard?! That was a mouthful.
But here is Yue, a somewhat average-height woman in a black ulster coat and enormously long, Rapunzel-length brown hair with enormous shackles wrapping her arms and elbows...
"... aaah."
... babysitting a small girl in what looks like an environmental suit with a black matte helmet currently going >_< as a little panel opens up where the mouth would be. She has a blue robe and a straw hat on.
"P-pweh, pweh!" chirps said small girl, whose voice is a bit tinny due to the presence of unseen speakers on her helmet. "Must the medicine always be so bitter?!"
"There there. You did very good," chimes Yue with a quiet smirk. "You can have a treat now."
"I--I'm not a child, CR-S01!! ... but I wouldn't mind one ..."
Yue chuckles very faintly and shakes her head. "Now where did Acacia get off to...?"
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
Zhang Xiumei is enjoying her time on Spira, and feeling guilty for doing so. This should not be a vacation -- and yet here she is, only marginally involved in the war, and away from the pressures of family and her own war. She is at the Moonflow for another reason today. She is trying to talk to the voice in her head.
"So... you remember Kamui," she says, aloud, as she stands on the bank of the river.
<...After a fashion.>
"You're not very talkative, are you?" she asks.
<It's not my strong suit. You don't need to worry.>
"But, sometimes you're here, and sometimes you're... not, like you're somewhere else," Xiumei says. "And--"
<Kid.>
"Don't call me a--"
==== <No. There's a kid coming up.>
Xiumei's eyes widen -- and she turns to see the girl in the environmental suit approach, with Yue behind her. Her eyes widen as she sees her; then Xiumei raises a hand to her mouth. "I-I wasn't talking to myself!" she blurts out to the both of them.
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
Varius remembers Kamui...! What does he remember? We will have to find out another time.
Yue raises her eyebrows as Xiumei pops up, and the little child in the enviro-suit looks a bit startled too.
The glowing expression on the helmet updates to a :O! as she raises her hands up.
"I--I don't talk to myself either!" the child exclaims. A pause. "Wait, who're you?"
Yue blinks a few times, before chuckling to tilt her head. "No offense taken." She bows her head gently, shackles clinking a little as her chains rattle. "My name is Yue Rohay, and this is Minder Number Seven."
The child -- the Minder -- whines as she goes, "It sounds so lame when you put it that way, CR-S01."
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"Ah... ah, I'm Zhang Xiumei," she says.
She doesn't know how to spot a Veruni by sight; for that matter, she doesn't know whether they are from Filgaia or Spira. She looks at the helmeted child (who is named Minder Number Seven?) and then to Yue. She blinks behind her glasses, and then looks at the rattles.
"It's... nice to meet the both of you?" she almost asks. "I didn't... um... realize you were about."
She pauses, awkwardly, for a moment. "You're not native to Spira, are you?"
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
"Charmed, Lady Xiumei," Yue bows her head once more with a quiet smile. The cucco feather at her lips wags up and down a little, like it were a piece of straw that she were chewing on.
"U-uh, of course we're native to Spira? Don't you recognise me as one of Spira's Black Mages?" the Minder... very unconvincingly tries to lie, but--
"Filgaian born and raised," Yue admits to the Minder whining wordlessly. "I hope that is not an issue...?"
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
'Lady Xiumei' feels a little strange for her to hear. It isn't how she is ever addressed in Meria Boule; the Zhang family was not nobility, despite many of their efforts. She smiles at her, and she pushes a little bit of her hair back. She catches the bangs behind her ears.
And she looks at the Minder over the rims of her glasses, giving her the teacher look.
"No, it's not a problem," she says to them. "I am, too. Ah, from Meria Boule, originally. You ended up here the same as the rest of us...? Thanks to Vinsfeld Rhadamanthus."
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
hiii... the Minder responds in the exact way a schoolchild would when being given the teacher look!! "Okay, so I'm not a Black Mage..."
She'd totally love to be one, though, is the unspoken part of that statement.
"Ah... yes. Pray have you seen an odd black structure in the Mi'ihen Highroad?" A pause. "That was... my cell, which was ripped wholesale from Filgaia. Thanks to the machinations of Odessa... as you say."
A quiet hum of interest, as she gestures for the Minder to sit down and gives her a bottle of water.
"Meria Boule. That is... quite far west, is it not? I have not been to that vicinity in quite the long time. We are natives of Elru."
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"You can't be a Black Mage," Xiumei says, pushing her glasses up with one finger, and then the sun glints off them and hides her eyes. Then, she reveals her inner truth: "...until you've mastered all the skills it has."
Then the glasses slip back down her nose, and her emerald green eyes are visible.
She blinks a couple of times -- then shakes her head. "Your... your cell? You were imprisoned? I--um--I see..." She motions to Yue's bonds. "...you've got those manacles."
Natives of Elru? She closes her mouth for a moment. She knows things are hard, there. "I-I see. I'm glad you're safe, then..."
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
There's a look of alarm from the Minder, gazing up to Xiumei-sensei. "D-do you know how to become a Black Mage? Teach me! What skills do I need...?!" A very impressionable one, this one... but then again, most kids tend to be.
Xiumei also pauses and points out the manacles and...
"Ah... yes. To clear any uncertainties up, I am a Veruni convict," Yue just outright says it.
"And I'm her Minder! I'm supposed to, uh..." A frown. "Make sure she doesn't... go around... wait..."
"You're doing a good job, dear Minder," Yue patiently says.
... what a weird duo???
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"You need at least 50 Black Mage Points, first," Xiumei concludes with a nod of her head. Then, she taps a finger on her chin. "It's not something I can teach... but maybe if you find a Black Mage."
She looks a little proud of herself -- and then, she pauses. Her eyes widen at the words 'Veruni convict.'
"...sh-she is supposed to keep an eye on you?" Xiumei asks, looking from the Minder to Yue. "You're... Veruni?" A beat, then:
"Veruni are real?"
For Xiumei, they were boogeymen; Meria Boule wasn't close enough to the Veruni to know of them, and she didn't learn of them when she joined ARMS.
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
"F-Fifty Black Mage Points!" the Minder looks fired up at Xiumei, taking out what looks like a cute little journal and scribbling a page on it.
- EARN FIFTY BLACK MAGE POINTS
"I'll try to find a Black Mage, then!"
Cue the dread of little Minder looking up at Lulu and munchkinly going, "Teach me, Lulu-sensei!"
But on the topic of the Veruni...
"... ... ah. I'm afraid we are very real," Yue muses after a moment's silence, "Much like how the Metal Demons of yore turned out to be very real when they descended on Adlehyde. Mythologies have a nugget of truth behind them, I find..."
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
Maybe... Xiumei's love of board games and other such distractions has led her astray.
She seems a little more sober, though, when Yue confirms that the Veruni are real. She looks down, then nods. "...that was certainly proven true." It had gone poorly for Ignas and Elru, from what she gathered. She shakes her head.
"...are they, um. Making you... do things for them, as a convict?" she asks. "Or--" She wrinkles her nose. "...I guess I'm not sure how that works."
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
If the Minder knew that Xiumei loved board games, a mutual passion may have blossomed!! Watch out, Xiumei, for the dread of...
Playing boardgames with an impatient kid!
"... that it did. But the Drifters, in the end, sought Mother in her own lair and defeated her," Yue muses. "Are you one such Drifter too, Lady Xiumei?"
A pause, as Xiumei asks if they make her do things.
She ruefully chuckles.
"You could say that. Perhaps things I have no say in the matter of either. So you should be very careful around me," Yue remarks, almost too playful for the subject matter.
"CR-S01 mostly likes shirking her duties," the Minder grumps.
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"I'm not a Drifter," Xiumei says, and there isn't a sense of desperation her voice; this is something she feels is the case. "I am with the Agile Remote Mission Squad, though."
That makes her something like a Drifter -- and yet something different, too. But, she doesn't consider herself to be someone who goes into ruins and wanders the world for its sake. Until recently, though, she wasn't someone who fought at all.
She looks a little more guarded, though, as Varius speaks in her mind:
==== <Someone imprisoned... someone made to fight. She isn't kidding. We're the most dangerous sorts.>
She does, however, smile at the Minder's words. "...I'll keep that in mind, then."
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
Yue's eyebrows rather raise with a smile at Xiumei's clarification that she's with ARMS. "ARMS? Do you happen to know Marivel and Acacia, by any chance?" She chuckles rather faintly as she tilts her head, remarking, "They are friends of mine, one way or another. I am sure Acacia will give you a right earful about me."
She doesn't know of the voice speaking in Xiumei's mind of what she has in common with Varius, though, but...
The Minder frowns and says, "You're the guys fighting... Odessa, right? So we don't-- have to necessarily fight each other."
... is the Minder already developing a teacher role model out of XiumeI??
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"Ah... y-yes, I know them both." Xiumei isn't sure she would call them friends -- she likes Acacia, to be sure. Marivel, though, is still an enigma. Her ose wrinkles for a moment, and then she bobs her head.
"We do fight Odessa," she adds. She looks at the Minder for a moment, and then tilts her head. "...well... I hope not. I'm not sure," she admits, quietly. "You do seem nice, though. Both of you."
She looks between them, and then back to Yue. "How do you know the two of them?"
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
"... ... ... well, Marivel and I have something of a checkered past, but suffice it was rekindled when my cell crashlanded in Spira and then she set it on fire with a rocket launcher," Yue speaks rather plainly of this ridiculous story.
"And... I happened to have taken a riveted interest in Acacia's journalism," she smirks quietly.
"I--I'm nice? I mean-- of course I'm nice!" the Minder tries to hide her surprise and-- you could hear the low burble she thinks is underneath her mic's sensitivity but... isn't...
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"...ah--I see," Xiumei answers.
She isn't sure that lowers her opinion of Yue. Xiumei's own relationship with Marivel could best be described as "strained" at times. Something about her approach rubbed Xiumei the wrong way. She looks down for a moment, and then she nods her head.
"Acacia is a talented writer. I like her pieces a lot," she says. "It's not... the sort of thing I usually read, before I joined ARMS, though."
Then, she looks up at the Minder. She blinks once, before Xiumei smiles, and nods to her.
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
"... may I venture a guess that Marivel is a handful at times? I suppose I cannot argue with that..." remarks Yue with a bob of her head, her ahoge foipping to one end like it were trying to scan for the Crimson Noble.
"I find it is most beneficial to speak your mind firmly. She may be an ancient creature of whims, but it is other perspectives that she often finds useful."
She cracks a grin.
"As Acacia often does, with her sass."
A hum of thought as she then remarks, "But, ah... may I ask why you chose to join ARMS, then? If memory services, it is a nobleman's private army in a sense, is it not?"
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"She's a handful... and I don't think she really likes me," Xiumei admits, with a shrug of her shoulders. She doesn't explain why she thinks that, though.
She looks down for a moment, and then bobs her head. It's true of both Marivel and Acacia; it's something that Xiumei doesn't tend to do. She keeps a lot of what she thinks to herself, so it won't hurt others.
"I--well... I bonded with an ARM." She holds her hand up, with the bracelet with a relief of Model V's helmet on it. "And I could help, then. And... my family thought it was best, to make ties, and I agreed to join them."
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
"Hmmmm.... if you are convinced of it, I will not argue otherwise. But perhaps allow me to say that even after many a years of kerfluffling and cavorting and fighting, neither of us have truly managed to hate each other," Yue muses as the Minder stares sidelong towards her.
"You only make friends with the weirdest of people, CR-S01."
"Still! You say you bonded... with an ARM?" Yue raises an eyebrow. "Synchronisation is one thing, but I sense you mean something else..."
The helmet reminds her of something, but she's not quite sure what...
"'Tis not an easy thing, to choose to fight. Less easy still, when it is forced upon you."
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"It's... not like she hates me," Xiumei says, with a sigh. "But... I don't know."
Her nose wrinkles for a moment, and then she looks between the Minder and Yue. Then, she smiles a little -- and she bobs her head once, in agreement. "I suppose, technically, it's synchronization. But not the sort that you usually see. It's..."
'When it's forced on you.'
Xiumei glances to the side for a moment. "No one's really forced it on me," she says. "It's just... not what I might have done. I just sort of fell into it."
She forced herself to -- or, maybe, circumstances more than people did.
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
The Minder seems to have much simpler and more blunt questions, as she kind of gawks around the bracelet to go, "Aren't ARMs supposed to be like... guns? What does a bracelet around your wrist even do?"
A pause.
"Does it give you Black Mage Points?!"
Oh no...
"... one way or another, I feel no one quite chooses the life they live," Yue remarks, perhaps sounding like she's kind of on a tangent. "'Tis not voluntary that I remain a lifelong convict, after all!"
... the fact that she still remains there kind of suggests otherwise, in this weird relationship where she could walk away ...
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"Not quite," Xiumei says to the Minder. She smiles, and shakes her head at her. "I can use an ancient armor, from the past. Black Mage Points are unique to Spira, I think."
She tilts her head -- then she nods, looking a little embarrassed. Her own situation pales to someone in literal chains.
She sighs, finally.
"You're right," she says. "No one... really picks how things will be for them. Well... I hope, um, that maybe you won't have to stay one forever."
She can't really ask how she ended up here. Xiumei thinks that would be terribly impolite.
Zhang Xiumei has reconnected.
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
"O-ohh... is Heavy Armour a skill Black Mages have to learn? I hope not, because it's heavy," the Minder furrows her brow in confusion. Her face expression updates to ?_? for a brief moment.
Yue chuckles very faintly and shakes her head. "Forgive me. I do not mean to make a tit-for-tat competition of it. Merely I sensed some unhappiness... but... an ancient armour, you said? So it lays dormant in that bracelet, if I were to venture a guess?"
"Like a transformation sequence..." the Minder muses. "That's so cool..." A pause. "B-but not as cool as a Black Mage!"
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"N-No... um..." Talia sighs. "...but I'm not a Black Mage, so I'm not an expert. I'm just an expert on points."
She bobs her head once, and then she looks up at Yue. She blinks -- she is surprised that Yue got it in her first try -- and then smiles, a little awkwardly. "Yes, that's it precisely. Model V is the armor's name."
She looks down at her bracelet.
Then, her cheeks color. "I-It's not a transformation sequence, not /really/..." It is absolutely a transformation sequence.
Complete with swirling, flashing lights.
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
"I want to be a Point Expert too... I could set up a Demerit Point system for CR-S01, then she'll really be sorry!" the Minder beams.
Yue tucks her head down with a quiet, humorous sigh. "Goodness, whatever will I do...?"
Model V... that's a strange name, for a layperson. "If it is a 'Model'... does that mean there are others? Starting from 'A'?"
The Minder seems to already be set on it being a transformation sequence too, though. "And music, and your body glows..." she knows what's up, fantasising already.
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"You have to learn a lot of different games," Xiumei asides, "to become a Point Expert."
She rubs at the bridge of her nose -- and then she blinks. She does fluster a little at the mention of music (no) and her body glowing (well... yes). But, she shakes her head finally.
"I'm not sure," she admits. "There's no other Models that I know of. I just... learned that this one is called that, when I bonded with it. I don't think there's a Model A..."
<...>
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
"True. Just because I am a CR-S01 does not mean a CR-S02 exists... well, anymore, rather," Yue muses in turn. Poor guy. She hardly knew him, then he was gone the next day. Alack, the life in solitary confinement.
"A--a lot of different games... will you show me some, someday, then, Teach??" the Minder speaks up and-- holds onto her 'mouth', before grumping for a moment. "I-if you'd like, of course!"
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"Ah... y-yeah," Xiumei says. Varius is quiet, then -- offering no more than that initial murmur, and leaving her unaware. She glances down for a moment, eyes on the ground. Why does she feel sad, to think of it? Who is it that, suddenly, she feels the absence of?
She looks up, then, and blinks at the Minder. Then, Xiumei smiles at her once, and nods.
"...sure," she says. "I'll teach you sometime."
<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.
"I--it's a promise, then?" the Minder lights up, and you could just really tell this kid doesn't really have many people to hang around that she can share hobbies with...
"We'll try to find Lady Xiumei again. If she is with ARMS, it shouldn't be impossible," Yue tries to reassure. ... is she a convict being watched by a minder, or a mom-figure looking after her daughter?? The mind boggles.
"T-then I'll show you a game I know too next time... and I'll work hard to get some Black Mage Points!" the Minder exclaims.
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"It's a promise," Xiumei agrees. She pushes her glasses up with her finger, and the light shines off her glasses, halfway obscuring her eyes. She smiles, though -- wondering at the strange relationship between Yue and her Minder.
She can only guess what it is, or what why they're like this.
"I'll look forward to it, okay?" she says. "And I'll have a few games when we do!"