⇨ GREYSOL

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 155 - Day 169
Where: Greysol
What: The carnival resumes its tour, this time heading to Greysol, a city tied deeply into the fabric of the multiverse. Here, everyone has an animal companion from birth that is the second half of their soul - and thanks to the Ringmaster, so do you. (Remember, joysweeper is our guest event runner for this location, and location specific questions should go to them.)
Warnings: Individually marked!

THE CITY OF GREYSOL↴ The carnival arrives in a manicured park in the center of a big city that sprawls out along where the river reaches the ocean. It’s spring, early enough that nights are chilly, warm enough in the days that people and their souls savor the weather, and sometimes shelter together from the rain. Greysol was designed from the bottom up to accommodate the human-dæmon bond. Go out and see! ► THE SHAPE OF YOUR SOUL: The dæmon-forming spell kicks in at about four in the morning. Most characters will wake up with their souls in some small form, curled against them. Even if they were awake, they became dazed and unfocused while their souls were being drawn out of their bodies and have little memory of how it happened. Until that evening every character's dæmon is able to change shapes, and children and some teens will continue to do so. Most will settle on their permanent forms by evening. Characters without dæmons will just look on, and the few who are thousand-pound bears have to handle being really big. ► IT’S GOOD TO SETTLE: Elaine Tavis Aracari, sixteen-year-old daughter of two actors and a moving pictures sensation herself, just ‘settled’ - her dæmon Tavis stopped changing shape - as a stunning blue peacock. Settling is a major coming of age milestone and celebrated as such in different ways all over the world. She and her family are throwing a massive party in the central park and inviting the public to join in! Enjoy easy access to free catering, live music and showings of moving pictures, and displays of mostly trivial magic. There are also form readers from across the country setting up booths, happy to accept a small fee to inspect your dæmon’s settled or most favored forms and tell you what they mean. Is there anything to these analyses? Eh, maybe, but they’re flattering and fun. ► WITCHING HOURS: Characters who are clearly witches for this event will often be assumed to be in town for a lover, and people, witches and not, may want to know who that is. Humans usually regard them with wary respect and interest. Real witches living with their human families or on business quickly suspect that something’s up, but without clear and present danger take a relaxed wait-and-see attitude. Wait for long enough and any possible decision will come around again, they believe. There isn’t time to learn much witch magic, but witches, real and carnival-made, have an inherent power: the ability to fly using branches of “cloudpine”, an attractive soft-needled tree common in the park. Witches usually ride large branches as if they’re steeds but can use even short sprays, and you’ll probably see the few witches in the city coming to the park to do so. Why not try? ► BEAR PUN: Human-panserbjørn relations have historically been troubled, but have warmed in the past century. It’s the 65th anniversary of the breaking of the Siege of Bertin, a much-mythologized time when Spectres flooded Greysol and a company of panserbjørn arrived and directed efforts to get the survivors out of the city. A statue is being erected and many florid accounts of the story are being told. If you’re in a panserbjørn shape for the duration of the visit you will probably get thanked and celebrated by people trying to hide their nervousness of you. Expect someone to ask if your dæmon would be a human - it’s a common supposition. ► KERNER ISLAND: From the harbor you can see a wooded island. Although there are no rocks to speak of it sports a tall lighthouse, and nearly all boat traffic avoids it carefully. On a clear day someone with binoculars or a particularly sharp-eyed soul can see loads of trash, birds and various other animals that don’t seem local, and… children? Adults and settled teenagers will see tall vague shapes moving about too. When asked about it the most important thing adults will tell other adults is don’t go there. They’ll hold their dæmons close and tell you that on that island are things that eat souls. They may also admit with mixed pride and shame that it’s been a source of wealth and innovation for the city. There’s a facility there that can open windows into other worlds, and the children who can reach it can cross through and bring things back. Many of the children are recruited by research and development teams on the lookout for items they can use, but there are also kids out to have adventures or who’ve run away. More on this later.

Comments

[anti_nonsense]

As Strange slips away, Rita shoots a look at Krios, who's already scanning the room for signs of Strange's daemon. "They're both gone," he reports. Rita groans with annoyance. Well, at least she got one good punch in before the coward bolted.

Sighing, she makes her way over to join 9S. It looks like she's about to say something, perhaps comment on what just happened, but instead she suddenly swings out her fist in a sucker punch to his nose.

"Hmph! You're both pathetic," she says through gritted teeth, as she tries to pretend that didn't just hurt her hand a whole lot. In fact, it really, really hurts.

[dressedtothe]

It actually feels awful seeing Strange get punched. 9S' expression twists. Why does he feel so terrible? It's just a punch! Strange is clearly not hurt that bad! He's so preoccupied with examining this odd feeling that he doesn't realise Rita is rapidly approaching until it's too late.

He backs up, but it's not enough to save him from the punch to the nose. "Ow! What was that for?"

It hurt, but. Well. He's made of metal underneath. The punch definitely hurt Rita more than it hurt him.

"Geez. You know I'm metal underneath. Of course it's going to hurt." He has the grace to look concerned, a tendril of guilt in his voice. This had all started off as a joke played on both Rita and Strange, but now he just feels awful. Unusually awful. It's so weird. Yet Pod 153 isn't commenting on any sort of anomaly. "I don't have medicine for humans, but I could bring you to the medical tent."

[anti_nonsense]

What was it for? "Don't play innocent. You were obviously baiting me." Of course, she doesn't doubt that Strange is to blame, too, which is why she went along and showed up despite knowing that.

And... speaking of acts that don't fool anyone, it looks like 9S sees right through her tough act. Offering to get her treatment seems overkill, though. "No need. It's fine," Rita insists, but since the cat's out of the bag anyway, she gives her hand a few shakes - an impulse she suppressed moments ago. For a few seconds, it looks like she intends to leave it at that, but remembering that 9S might not perceive pain and injury the same way humans do, she clarifies. "It stings, but that won't last long."

[dressedtothe]

Well, if she says so... Rita doesn't seem hurt too badly, so 9S tries to put it out of his mind.

"Strange started it!" he pouts, kicking at the ground. "He really did say he thinks I have a crush on you."

Which he doesn't. That would get into weird territory real quick. He can't be equals with a human!

[anti_nonsense]

"But why would he say--" Krios starts to ask, but Rita turns and shoots him a look, prompting him to shut up. She's a little curious about what prompted such a claim, and how their conversation got to that point, but right now she's trying to end that line of talking, not start it up again.

She waves a hand in a dismissive gesture. "Strange says a lot of stupid things. You just have to learn to punch him and get over it." At least, that's how Rita deals with people who gossip or tease her.

[dressedtothe]

"But he's a human!" he protests. "It would be like punching my commanding officer."

Which would be bad. Not that he knows what would happen if someone did because no one would ever punch the Commander but it would probably be very bad if they did.

"Besides, I'm not a combat unit. I'm not supposed to be able to fight."

Says the guy who had met Rita while having a sword hovering at his back.

[anti_nonsense]

Just because he's human...? At first, that response surprises Rita, but she quickly gets over it. "Please. You don't need to give Strange that kind of respect. It'll just go to his head." Sure, this might be less about Strange himself and more about humans in general, but Rita never passes up an opportunity to take a jab at someone she knows.

And that aside... "What do you mean, you're not supposed to fight?" He did say his primary duties were scouting and the like, but considering how dangerous his work apparently is, and his equipment... "What's with that sword you've been carrying around, then?"

[dressedtothe]

Yeah, buuut...

Besides, despite the way the entire affair had panned out, Strange still had been pretty generous with his time and energy. 9S would respect him that, at least.

"Scanners like me aren't supposed to be able to hold a sword." He rubs at the back of his head. "I might have, uh, modified myself? But even so, I'm really not good at fighting. If a combat model was to come here, you'd see the difference immediately."

[anti_nonsense]

He modified himself? In a way, that's kind of amazing. But it's hard to imagine just what that's like, or what it really means for him. "You normally can't hold a sword... you mean, you wouldn't know how to handle one?" Something about his wording strikes her as odd. He shouldn't be able to?

"And why shouldn't you, anyway? Even if you're no front-line fighter, you still end up in dangerous situations, right?" It seems odd that he wouldn't be expected to defend himself.

[dressedtothe]

It's definitely against standard protocol but Command lets him keep the modification, which is fortunate. It would be a lot harder to support 2B when she keeps getting into fights with machines! Just watching her makes him feel anxious. Trust a combat model to not get what keeping a low profile means!

But he wouldn't trade that time together with her for the world.

"I'm not supposed to get into dangerous situations in the first place." 9S gestures towards Pod 153. "Both of us are designed to detect the signals of nearby machines." He waves a hand as he speaks. "Don't worry, even without a weapon, us Scanners aren't totally defenceless. The machines have simple logic circuits, so I can disable them with hacking. If there's too many for that... a sword I can barely use isn't going to do much."

Well. Barely use is a bit of an exaggeration. But compared to the fluid movements of 2B, his own technique seems highly erratic in comparison.

"I'm more suited to sneaking around and disabling enemy systems than fighting the face to face." He flexes his fingers. "But I really mean it when I say I normally can't hold a sword. It's kind of like... you wouldn't be able to see if you didn't have eyes, right? Scanners are usually missing the chip and supporting systems that lets an android use a weapon."

But even with an NFCS chip installed, he just can't have the same level of power and control that a combat android has; he just doesn't have all the required hardware to sufficiently support usage of the chip. Kind of like trying to run software on hardware that barely fulfils the minimum requirements; it'll run but jankily and with several problems.

"I was... curious, I guess. About what it was like. I'm just lucky Command let me keep the chip installed on my models." He lets out a sheepish laugh. "It'd be a pain getting it removed after all that effort."

[anti_nonsense]

Rita cups her chin thoughtfully as he explains. "I see. So even though you have the capacity for learning, there are... or were, limitations on what you can do." She wonders, are there other skills restricted in the same way?

"The sorts of enemies you might run into out here won't be vulnerable to hacking, so it's probably for the best to have some capacity for hand-to-hand combat." In other words, Rita approves of his modifications.

[dressedtothe]

"I'd rather not into a fight in the first place," he grumbles.

His hand to hand is especially bad. At least a sword is separate from his body, so that strange disconnect isn't so bad.

Stretching out his arms, he asks Rita, "What are you planning to do now?" It only occurs to him now that he might have interrupted Rita from her research. "I recorded Strange's magic show, so if you want to watch that..."

[anti_nonsense]

Rita shrugs. "I've seen it. Not from the bleachers or anything, but I've handled lighting and special effects for all the performances." For a few weeks, Rita was the only lighting and SFX specialist on staff, which meant she was doing a pretty hefty portion of the backstage work. Fortunately, the Ringmaster recently hired a new coworker for her, so she can take it easy from now on.

"Wait... you recorded it? How?" Just like that, her interest goes from low to very clearly piqued. Is that another thing androids are capable of?

[dressedtothe]

Wow Rita, way to slack off!

9S gestures at Pod 153 hovering by his shoulder. Is that answer enough?

"I didn't have to use Pod 153, but pulling a specific instance from my memory storage units is a lot harder."

[anti_nonsense]

Rita looks to Pod 153, and while she can't tell how it was used to record, it does sort of serve as an answer. "I see... of course. If people on Earth were able to use their phones to record audio and visual data at their convenience, it only makes sense that more advanced mechanisms would also have that capability."

Which makes her reconsider her earlier answer, because now she's kind of wondering what that technology looks like in practice. "On second thought, let's see it."

[dressedtothe]

"Sure, okay."

9S walks over to the nearest seat and settles himself down for what will be the third time he's seen the show.

"Pod, play back the recording of Strange's show."

[ooc: seems like a good place to end the thread?]