MUSHI DISASTER

[dontpokethat]

Who: Anyone and everyone; it’s a mingle-style log!
What: A sudden spike in the mushi population brings some trouble to the carnival.
When: Around day 87-90
Where: All around the carnival
Warnings: Illness, potentially some minor body horror, and so on



[Following the recent disappearance of Ginko and Tanyuu’s mushi repellent, there will be a sudden increase in the number of mushi in the carnival this week.

This is a mingle-style log, so just post a toplevel, tag out, and have fun with mushi disasters! Event information and questions are here.]

Comments

[stillwinningthehardway]

She gives him a look. "Of course by choice. It's all I've ever wanted! If I'd wanted to be something else they'd have wanted to be sure, but they'd have let me go. One of my best friends did that." Okay, yes, people have said that all Jedi were either stolen from their parents or given up by families that didn't care for them, but that's overblown and she's not getting into it now.

"I don't know how many generations. We evolved from a different order twenty five thousand years ago." Space past history is very long. "It's changed back and forth a lot in that time. Obviously. Our biggest enemies have existed for just as long."

[whattaprick]

'All she's ever wanted,' huh? Lambert can't imagine anyone ever saying the same thing about becoming a witcher. Twenty-five thousand years ago, though? That's a hell of a long time, and he makes a face just hearing it. However, his next question's more to the point:

Said you were in training. Did you finish?

[stillwinningthehardway]

Scout does something indignant and expressive with her eyebrows.

"No one ever finishes. The Grand Master is nine hundred years old and even he's always learning." Yoda is still alive, out there somewhere. She'd know. She's known when others on the Council died. "But I'm not a knight, if that's what you mean."

[whattaprick]

That's just gonna get her huff of amusement -- helpfully telegraphed by the way his shoulders rise and fall -- and a roll of his eyes. Sounds just like something Vesemir would say. Nine hundred years old, though? He can't help squinting at her suspiciously at that.

How old are you? Forget asking more probing questions about the rest of that, this seems more important to answer at this time!

[stillwinningthehardway]

Silence is a good look on Lambert, it makes him appear however falsely to have attained some reserve.

"Seventeen. If I don't get killed I could make it to three hundred." The way Scout says it makes it sound like a very outside possibility. As a Jedi, even if she's not a knight, she ages better than a lot of people. Then again where she's from humans with good medical care regularly make it to a hundred twenty. "People like me last longer sometimes. There was another human who made it to eight hundred, but... not in the kind of shape the Grand Master is, still smart and strong."

She still admires Yoda, and misses him. The best thing about being in the Carnival again is not feeling it as old friends and teachers die far away, not waiting braced for the dwindling list of those who are left to shorten further.

[whattaprick]

That's enough to get Lambert to cock his head, trying to figure out how to phrase the question forming in his mind with wasting the least amount of effort. (Look, he's written more in the last few days than he really has in an age, it's not fun.)

The training changes you? he writes, slowly. 'Another human,' she says, implying she is human, but ... the only humans Lambert knows who can live that long are magic users and witchers.

[stillwinningthehardway]

He really needs to get keys to type on, she thinks. Growing up in the space past she'd probably have at least as much trouble writing at length.

"The training teaches you to change yourself. Ah... just being connected does a little, it makes it harder for you to get sick. But the training helps me deepen that and let the, the breath of all things help sustain me." The last time she was here she'd come up with several translations for the Force, but she's rusty on using them. It's been a long time. "I can't specially heal, but I can get my body to heal more completely. I can keep myself from wearing out too quickly, if it comes to that."

Her lips compress a bit. She's known so many people who could do as much and so much more. It hadn't saved them.

[whattaprick]

It might be even more painful to watch him type, honestly. Lambert is almost definitely a hunt-and-pecker.

Regardless, what Scout's describing sounds more and more like what witchers have done to them... only a whole lot more voluntary and deliberately directed. Closer to being a druid than a sorcerer, from the sounds of it. He's no idea what the expression on her face means, though it won't stop him from writing back.

Handy. Witchers can't get sick either. Or knock anyone up, but you know what, that's probably not a conversation to be having with Scout. Instead, he'll circle back to the point that started this line of questioning in the first place:

So why are these trying to eat you?

[stillwinningthehardway]

If only Jedi were sterile, she might have said, if she'd heard that and had any way of knowing any of Anakin's motives. If only.

Instead she stares at him because she has a theory after talking to Ginko but. "I have no idea how to explain this. You... have you ever heard of cells? Bacteria? Organelles? Should I just say everyone's crammed with little animals too small to see and some of mine are special?"

[whattaprick]

Lambert snorts. It's not audible, but it's not hard to tell, his actions make it easy enough to tell.

Know a bit. Cells make up living things, you can mutate them. Bacteria infect wounds, cause diseases. Not an expert, though.

Thanks, magic, for introducing concepts that would be anachronistic in an otherwise medieval world.

You were born that way?

[stillwinningthehardway]

"Wait, what?" Scout is surprised, her eyes flicking from Lambert's paper to his face, and makes absolutely no effort to hide it. "How do you know that? -no, that'd take a long time and you're going to get cramps writing. Tell me later."

"Anyway bacteria are a lot smaller than animal or plant cells, some of them help you digest food and do things, billions of them live in your cells and help you turn food into energy. I have those, but I also have billions connected to that presence I talked about? They're basically cells of it, but everything's all meshed together and connected and stuff." She can see old teachers wincing at this incredibly blunt, biological explanation. At the Temple when this came up it was caked in reverence. The Force is sacred. Scout just can't bear the thought of presenting it as special and seeing it scoffed at.

"And I was hearing mushi feed on this giant current of tiny, primitive mushi. So maybe they think what I've got is similar, so even if they're not interested in human flesh, there's something. It's like I'm a bowl of dirt mixed with sprinkles. Some of them are going to want to sift through."

[whattaprick]

It's probably the right call. Sources of power Lambert can accept exists, but that doesn't mean he has much reverence for it as a concept -- witchers don't have much reverence for anything -- only what can be accomplished with it. And he wouldn't pass up the chance to tease Scout, who expends so much effort on acting older than her years and worldly, for genuinely holding something important close to heart. For caring about something so intangible.

Sucks. Is what he finally settles on, frowning. Could she go into the lake, maybe? ... No, chances are there's mushi there as well, and who knows if they'd be any better or worse than these things. He's kind of glad being a witcher hasn't made him any more attractive to these things.

Is it dangerous? If they're trying to eat at something inside her, that sounds pretty bad, but she also doesn't seem that concerned. Bravado, or is it just hard enough to sift the dirt from the sprinkles that she doesn't have much to worry about there?

[stillwinningthehardway]

Scout's spent a year with Mandalorians. You can't do that without learning to hide things mercenaries don't love to see. People who knew her from her previous year with the Carnival would be surprised at how much more reserved she is and how this is as close as she's come to gushing about the Jedi and the Force. But that's the great thing about the turnover here.

She shrugs. "It's mostly kind of like being chased by bloodflies, you know? It's annoying and you don't wanna get bit in the face but it won't kill you, and wearing heavier clothing makes it harder on them." She's definitely downplaying it. Scout's been relying on the Force a lot to avoid the many things that normally would attach to humans and have more severe, lasting effects, but the things she attracts aren't all harmless.

"Usually if I just keep moving they don't bother following far, but there's too many to do that now. Some of them would hurt me. I've got it under control." Scout puts a hand on the holster to her blaster. See how competent and independent she is? That's another thing reinforced by being around Mandalorians. They'll help but get so superior and condescending about it that it's often not worth it.

[whattaprick]

Gotta sleep sometime, Lambert points out. All the posturing is impressive, yeah (mostly in terms of Scout's dedication to it), but that is a practical concern. Besides, Scout is sort of one of his people now, for better or worse. He's not her minder, but with the next Carnival stop coming up, it would probably be better to make sure she's in good shape and not fighting off anemia.

He's starting to run out of paper, handwriting getting more and more cramped in the small space. Whoops.

[stillwinningthehardway]

"Actually? I've got techniques for that. I can do awake-and-asleep, or I can concentrate sleep so I don't need as much." The first is one every child in the Temple learns, even if some of them forget. She's legitimately proud of mastering the second. It's one she'd researched and managed with only a little guidance. Considering how hard she'd worked to keep up with the more powerful kids, being able to cram nine hours of benefit into three hours of deep sleep had been crucial. "You get kinda... I mean, I can't do both at the same time and I kinda shouldn't keep it up too long. But if this is a temporary situation, I'll be fine."

That she's talked this much about the Force and what she can do with it, even in utilitarian terms, is a thin branch of trust, but she only trusts anyone so far. She has to be self sufficient.

Yeah that page has become an awful welter. Scout shakes her head at it. "You're too easy to talk to when you can't actually talk, you know?"

[whattaprick]

That rhetorical question gets a slow blink of incomprehension to start -- then a scoff, the witcher's nose wrinkling in amusement before he glances back at her. You saying he's not a perfectly easy to talk to guy normally, Scout? Please, he's an open book.

Rather than tease her about it further though -- something that will have to wait for later, along with her questions about his anachronistic familiarity with basic biology concepts -- Lambert elects to scratch out a last cramped message on the paper and hold it out to her, sentences and topics running across a range of different topics just for the sake of getting them all out without the back and forth.

All right. Need someone to swat them away for a while, find me. Don't need much sleep either. Going to keep looking for the repellant.

[stillwinningthehardway]

"Cut my thrusters and I can't fly," she says in a singsong. Scout's heard 'cross my heart and hope to die' but only once or twice and doesn't quite remember how it goes, why not change it? "That means 'yes, honestly', by the way."

Scout raises an eyebrow, not sure why he offered, but decides not to press the issue. "All right, good hunting! I'll be glad when this is over."

[whattaprick]

Altruism, looking out for his own, or just looking for the excuse to blow off some steam with a little violence? With Lambert, who knows. He stuffs the papers back in his pockets, gives her a little smirk and a jaunty wave -- his tail, too, twitches in an idle goodbye before he turns and heads off.