lostcarnival | ⇨ INTERLUDE: A Continuation

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⇨ INTERLUDE: A Continuation

Who: The Ringmaster, all Supervisors, and any rule-breaker onlookers.
When: Twilight on D40
Where: The woods surrounding the grounds.
What: The Ringmaster found something threatening and has decided to share it with her supervisors.
Warnings: Wannabe satanism.

CATCH A FALLING STAR↴

The Ringmaster waits for all of the Supervisors to arrive before continuing onward. She doesn't say much about what they are doing as they wait for everyone to arrive, simply explaining that she has found something concerning that she needs to show them. Once everyone is together, she will lead the pack into the woods - with or without any snoops who may be trying to follow after, against her wishes.

The forest is far more accommodating to her than it is to anyone else who tries to navigate it. Instead of getting wound in circles by its path, and running into dead ends, it's as if the trees have moved themselves to intentionally create an easy path for her to follow. It's stretching into the twilight hours as they travel, and various phosphorescent flowers and pods have begun glowing among the leaves with the shift to night, faintly illuminating the way. The sun is low in the sky when they arrive at the spot, still present but swiftly fading as its light cuts through the trees in beams.

They reach an area that is not so much a clearing as it is a small space, tucked away between trunks and branches. In the center of that space lies a large, black mark, cut into the earth like a ritual sigil. The dirt and rock is blackened along its lines, and all plant-life within a few feet of its presence has died out completely. As the dark approaches, the black of the lines will seem to paradoxically glow, as if the void within it somehow creates a light of its own.

The Ringmaster kicks a few last leaves off of the mark - it seems that she's been clearing away mess from this spot already today, and indicates the digit with a snarl of disgust.

"I told you I was cursed!" she insists, putting her hands on her hips.

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"...I see."

Koel understands what that means. She can almost smell the blood and venom dripping from the Ringmaster's words, from the intent. Whatever happens, it will not be clean.

"Then, we will need to be prepared for that, I assume?"

"Warding the blast?
I could do that, fast."

Zecora lifted her head slightly, looking from the mark up to the Ringmaster. Her words held no censure, only caution.

"But haste
Might waste
The opportunity
That we now see."

"Wait wait wait. So, what you're saying is that instead of just 'breaking the chain,' you're going to follow it back towards danger?" He holds his hands out in front of him, looking to the other supervisors present (the ones that haven't flown into the trees). He knows someone here besides him has to have a problem with this. This is most definitely not what Signless would do.

"No, right now I'm planning on blowing the chain out of the ground!" the Ringmaster asserts, a bit haughtily at that. "However, if this doesn't work, I have my own ways of sending a message back to the spellcaster... no need to go there ourselves."

It's called magic, Psi, look it up.

Okay, so he really doesn't know anything about magic, but he does no quite a bit about hideous revenge cycles. He knows the ringmaster isn't a human, but when she acts like a troll it still surprises him.

"As long as this is here we are in danger, right? So wouldn't pissing off the people that put it there seem like a really bad idea?"

She looks at Psi, frowning as if she's taken offense. It's not really about the concept that starting a fight might be a bad idea, but that she wouldn't be able to come out on top.

"What do you take me for?" she asks, her words sharp but not yet angry. "A prey animal? A rabbit forced to flee from the jaws of a fox? Hardly! I am more powerful than this specter could ever dream of!"

"I know that! And so do you." Psi says back just as sharply, for a moment forgetting his place. There wasn't anything to prove here, and he needed her to see that. He doubted the vampires took them so lightly as destroyed as they were after that battle.

"Doesn't ignoring them say as much about their inabilities as destroying them?" He'd tell her to be the better person here, but he already knows that argument is doomed to failure, instead he appeals to her ego.

"If you respond you're acknowledging that they are a threat. Ignore them as you would a bug under your foot."

"Now, let's all just relax a bit, shall we?" Joker calls up from above, a tinge of reluctance running through his otherwise lax tone. The last thing they need to do is start bickering, especially over something so serious.

Still. Everyone has a point here.

"Ma'm," he starts, trying to get the Ringmaster's attention, "while yer a terror ta behold, make no mistake, I do think Zecora and Psi have somethin'. Ya could destroy whoever put this here easy, I know, but that sorta thing has a bad habit of... escalatin'. And some of our workers, now, they ain't as fierce as yerself."

He raises his hand and spreads his fingers out. "Of course, yer right that we need ta make sure that they don't get the stupid idea of doin' this again ta us in the future after we get rid of this thing, but are there any.... other routes for how ta go about that?"

"Destroying it may give alarm
To those who'd cause us harm," Zecora mused, seemingly to herself but quite pointedly out loud so that all could here.
"What if we left it here
And made it seem we were near?
Our foes would still look
In the place we'd forsook.
That would buy us precious time
To see the second line of this rhyme."

Mari's silence is kinda calculated.

It's not like she knows much about this kind of magicspecifically, but magic and science usually mimic each other so closely they're basically the same thing. Metaphysical science is still science. Magic is still energy and shit. So you'd think she'd be running her mouth already.

But so far she's been oddly willing to keep her mouth shut and take it in.

... she's not really the best at home security. And she's been the cause of its collapse once.

So with that in mind, her track record isn't good. It makes her pretty reluctant to speak. But Joker's protest raises too many red flags.

"That's our job, Joker." Her eyes--all of them--narrow. Most of them only remain that way for a second, though; only the ones on her face remain so. "The enemy already made the first move. You don't quit a chess game after moving--or losing--one pawn."

She crosses two mismatched arms. The other massive one rests on her hip. The last touches her glasses, pushing them up a bit.

"Blowing it up, not blowing it up, that part doesn't matter right now!" Although she's always behind any plan that involves exploding a problem. But that's not the point! "The game's already started, right? Pawn to E4. The really stupid thing would be to sit here with our thumbs up our asses until the timer runs out."

Psi scoffs, his temper starting to show in the sparks of red and blue that flicker to life and die in an instant around his horns. He turns to Mari, his own eyes narrowed.

"This isn't a game. It's real life and real lives that could be at stake if the wrong decision is made." He steps forward, moving closer to her in a subconscious move of aggression. "It wouldn't be the first time innocent people paid for your mistake either."

The Ringmaster has actually been sort of caught offguard by the volume of different opinions coming after her. Is ignoring this threat truly the best way to show her superiority? She isn't sure, but she can follow the logic of the idea. So she's actually contemplating Psi's advice when other people start chiming it, which inevitably results in Mari speaking up (with an opinion similar to her own) and then Psi snapping back accordingly.

"Oh my," she says under her breath, leaning back a bit and watching the two of them. Maybe she'll just see how these two sort it out and use that information to inform her own opinion.

Wow. Okay. Excuse you!?

It's not because he's throwing her mistakes in her face. Which, hello, she does that just fine by herself if she's feeling in the mood. It's because he's missing the point. Her free hand--the one she'd adjusted her glasses with--actually makes a fist as she plants it on her hip.

"It's not literally a game! Grow up!" Psii should hopefully know better than to think Mari actually feels bad about people dying. If that were what got her down about that whole debacle... well, honestly, there isn't really a closer to that. She'd obviously be a much better person, and she probably wouldn't have been Night Rider, so who cares.

"If it's that bad, innocent people are gonna die anyway. That's just how it is. Everything has consequences! If you don't like it... honestly! Think about how pointless it'd be to die from something because someone felt bad about all the solutions!"

I mean, look at Second Impact. The world's population was halved, but if they hadn't initiated it artificially, then humanity would have just ceased to exist entirely. And the rebirth of human life wouldn't have been possible at all.

Edited 2017-01-09 03:21 (UTC)

Grow up. Speaking to him as though he's a child, nothing is surer to set him on edge. His lips pull back from his fangs in a scowl, and he's growling by the time she's finished her tirade, a deep thrum like a cicada's echoing out from his chest.

"You can't just not care! You can't say 'oh well someone's going to die,' and throw your hands up without even trying! You can't see the future, you have no idea what could come of this. You're just spewing shit as usual not caring what happens to anyone else!"

His fingers are curved at his sides as though he's about to strike out with his claws. He knew there were consequences for every action, maybe better than most! That didn't mean innocent people had to pay for the actions of something they hadn't even been a part of.

"If there's a way to get rid of this without putting our kin in danger, than that's the way we should do it."

He wants to take Mari down, to show her she's wrong and stupid for even thinking something so ridiculous, but he's used to fighting down such ridiculous violent urges by now. Even if the ringmaster wouldn't listen to him, even if it made Mari feel like she'd won, he was going to be the better person, and he was going to do it without resorting to violence.

His gaze turns towards the ringmaster once more and he swallows back his scowl.

"I mean no disrespect. I only ask that you think about the people here who cannot defend themselves as we can."

Edited 2017-01-09 03:51 (UTC)

Oh boy. Joker had wanted to just stay up in the trees forever, at least until they were all relatively certain that blowing up a demonic sigil wouldn't cause a frankly horrific backlash, but this is getting... fiery. To say the least. Even from up above, disregarding Psi's anger, he can still see how tense his friend is getting. The Ringmaster won't do anything unless murder or serious maiming happens, he knows that for a fact (and maybe with Zecora there, the maiming thing is up in the air), so he guesses someone is going to have to play peacekeeper.

So there's the flap of wings again as Joker carefully hovers himself down, pointedly making sure he's in a position where he could easily step between Psi and Mari if need be but not yet directly there.

"Whichever route we go- ignorin' or fightin'- I think we can all agree that the first thing we should do is figure out who exactly is responsible, ta know who ta go after or who ta keep an eye on in the future," he says, keeping his voice calm. His eyes are also going to the Ringmaster. "Ma'm, ya said ya could trace it back ta the source, right, but, forgive me if I'm wrong, but ya haven't done that yet, have ya?"

Edited 2017-01-09 04:15 (UTC)

She was sort of content to watch this play out, but Joker's intrusion into the conflict does perk her interest. She hums, and taps her finger against her chin, looking out over the sigil burnt into the ground. She nods her head.

"I suppose you are right... there isn't much to be said for either option without knowing more information. I've given it some preliminary examination, but the type of magic is not my own, so there are ways it is unfamiliar."

She kneels down next to the mark, looking at it more closely. She waves her hand low and close to the earth, feeling the residual burn against her fingertips. Hellfire, she assumes.

"Demons... they are widespread among the multiverse, as a concept and a power. Many of the worlds I have visited know them in essence, the same way they know of the fae. Individually, a world may have creatures that resonate with that same spirit - the same make-up as the ones we see here. However, they are not quite the same."

"The fae of my blood reign over the entire multiverse, their domain scattered in small degrees to every world we've ever touched. Lesser fae may spring up in our image, just as the lesser demons. I suppose the important thing, at the end of it all, is just how deeply this demon is seeded into the multiverse. I hadn't even realized they were there, on that planet, until during the attack. I'm sure they never would have interfered with my realm's wards, otherwise."

"Demons..." Koel is quiet, at this. "Demons potentially connected to those vampires...then we might be dealing with something more potentially dangerous than just those beasts."

She frowns.

"We can't ignore this, but there will be consequences when we figure out the source and you do hit back, madam. As I'm sure you're aware." She looked at Psii and Mari. "As we're all aware of, I hope. Consequences I'm not sure many of our new kin are able to even grasp, much less defend themselves against. Mari's right, we can't ignore this - and we'd sure as hell better be ready when the rest of the chessboard comes gunning for our pieces. And when I mean we, I mean we need everyone ready. Not just the ones who know how to fight already."

Edited 2017-01-09 14:01 (UTC)

"If you care what I am feeling--
I'd prefer to do less healing."

They'd already written her thoughts off, obviously. Fine. But if she had to patch up after some terrible idea that was readily foreseeable, she'd be angry indeed.

"I'd prefer less injury, myself." Koel looks over at Zecora. "But whatever we do presents danger. I want our people to be able to protect themselves whether the Ringmaster acts or not."

"I said 'less', not none at all.
We must somehow answer this call.
But whatever response is to be our fate
Think 'surgically precise' -- not 'amputate'."

That was a message for the Ringmaster, even if it wasn't directly voiced to her. Zecora had never blamed her for the vampires, nor was she certain any blame accrued from this current mess. But a reprisal that put the carnival in unnecessary jeopardy would cross a line.

Psi has made his arguments. Though his frustration is palpable, he stays silent. There's nothing more he can say to convince anyone either way. All there was to do was to wait and see what was decided. He crosses his arms in front of him, turning away from Mari in an attempt to effectively end their conversation. He steps to the edge of the clearing, waiting for Sans and Peridot to return.

Mari takes a deep breath, then lets it out as an aborted half-sigh. She's frustrated too, although a lot less emotionally so than the Psiionic. She's itching for a decision. Waiting has been a big part of her life. Like... a majority of it, actually. Now that she's in a position to take action more regularly, she wants to.

Psiionic's really been pretty rude, though. She didn't say she wanted people to die! And of course she can't see the future. Neither can he! But being afraid of taking action because it might have consequences, while simultaneously assuming inaction doesn't have consequences... he's not avoiding casualties, he's avoiding responsibility!

He really needs to get born.

She lets Joker get between them, but continues staring a hole into Psiionic's bicolour, pupilless eyes until he turns away from her. Then, and only a few seconds AFTER then, really, when everyone else is done talking... she looks at the Ring Master.

Jeez... Talk about a mess and a half. Once it's certain that neither Psi or Mari are going to go after each other, Joker eases back with a low whistle of a breath. Mouth twisted, his eyes flick back down to the sigil that's got them all worked up.

"Well," he says after a pause when it seems like no one else has anything to say, "the most important thing s'far as I can tell is ta keep our calm and get as much information on the buggers. I'm with Zecora on that." Well, probably. Sometimes figuring out rhymes is a little tricky. "Would ya send the Nightriders out ta figure out how in deep they are and who they are, all that, or do ya have somethin' else in mind, ma'm?"

As he talks, he shifts a bit, one wing stretching out to brush conciliatory against Psi's back. He knows you're not happy, buddy, but he's not sure how to help right now in the moment.

Just then, Sans's and Peridot abruptly return with no knowledge of the tension in the air, only to be basically clotheslined by it upon arrival. Sans glances around curiously, and then offers a vague salute in greetings.

"Is this a bad time?" he asks.

"Nope!" Joker says with the kind of aggressive cheeriness that says he's not going to let anyone say anything to the contrary. At this point, he thinks he might prefer the thing just blowing up instead of dealing with this anymore.

"Bring soda?"

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