⇨ FAERIE TALES

[ringleaders]

Who: Rescue Teams!
When: Day 61
Where: The Athenaeum
What: The carnival goes to get their kidnapped comrades, and use the Athenaeum's magical power of narrative asspulls to guide their way.
Warnings: Two out of three of the fae here are deeply unclean.

TELL YOUR STORY↴ Five of you have been lost, and it's time to get them back. Below, we will be threading the encounter threads one at a time. Put on your best improv hat and feel free to join in.

Comments

[scientificist]

"Can we please do this in the Medical Tent!?" Herbert finally says, loudly. "We have no idea what that Lady did to, those two women and I would prefer to start that examination as well as treat this entire, fighting party while you two reunite instead of all of us just standing here!" He makes a big, sideways shooing gesture with both of his arms. "You can hug as much as you want once we're there."

[osteothropy]

Sans watches Alphys squeeze out of his ribs, vaguely lifting a leg to accommodate her doing so. He hadn't actually realized she was still there when shaking, whoops.

Most importantly, though, it seems like he has a chance to make everyone shut up, at least for a little while. With a rumble, he moves towards Lapis and Peridot.

Without any interruptions, he'll teleport the gems and Herbert to the med tent. A moment later he'll disappear and then bring the rest with him in a second trip. He wavers just a little bit after doing so.

"Everybody good?" he asks, but he isn't really looking for an answer. "Cool. I'm crashing here."

He loudly flops onto the ground next to the tent, curling up to sleep.

[periphrasing]

It's a good thing Sans does something because Peridot looks about ready to bite Herbert's head off when he interrupts. Like, she opens her mouth to say something nasty, and then this big ol' skeleton wolf is moving towards them and totally derails her train of thought."

"Wha--"

Bwip. And suddenly they're in the medical tent. ALRIGHT THEN? She's been so worried, why can't you people just let her have this moment!? Peridot clings a little tighter to Lapis, and resumes scowling at Herbert, deciding to lay off Sans and just let sleeping bone-wolves lie for the time being.

"Do you mind just giving us a moment?!" she snaps. "It's not like there's a whole lot you can do for them anyway! Jasper was just destabilized, I have her gem right here, so we can just set her aside until she decides to refor--"

Peridot doesn't finish the rest of that thought, because when she holds the gem in question up for Herbert to see, she finally catches sight of the nick in it, and her eyes bug out in horror.

[mirrortide]

Peridot isn't the only one who catches the sight of the nick in Jasper's gem, but Lapis, apparently, is the first to react verbally. "Jasper!?" Forget crying, Lapis feels just downright awful now. Like, she felt awful but relieved before, now it's just circled back around to awful.

It's her fault Jasper is like this. She wasn't fast enough to grab Jasper in time.

Lapis covers her mouth in horror.

[textsfromhotland]

Alphys has approximately five million questions for Sans, but he falls asleep before she can open her mouth. Well, fine, she also has five million questions for the gems, and they're still awake. Mostly.

She squints at the orange gem, unable to see anything different about it, because even if she wanted to study the giant's nose in any detail, she doubts Jasper would have let her. "Is...s-something wrong?"

[stompadour]

As if on cue, the damage to Jasper's gem shifts and expands. Clock's tickin'!

[periphrasing]

"H-her gem is. Damaged," Peridot stammers, as if that explains anything. Jasper's gem is cupped in her hands now, held it up for closer inspection, when the crack worsens. Peridot leans back and sucks in a breath through her teeth, quickly moving her hands around it in an odd motion; a translucent green bubble forms around it, with the gem suspended in the perfect center.

"I-- I don't know what to do," she stammers in a small voice, glancing around helplessly at the group.

[mirrortide]

"Steven can help." Lapis pipes up, very suddenly. "He healed my Gem when it was cracked, remember? Where is he-? Does anyone have a radio?" She's suddenly frantic, and she gets to her feet.

Guess what! Lapis doesn't know about what happened to Steven!

[scientificist]

Sans is thankfully better at herding cats (and teleportation) than Herbert. He's about to let Peridot know that he does mind, actually, because the world doesn't revolve around Peridot and her emotions--and then apparently something is wrong with Jasper?

Walking forward a little to try and get the same angle on it as the two other gems have, he just manages to notice the flaw in time for it to get worse, and for Peridot to create a bubble around it.

"Steven was also kidnapped," explains Herbert, "he's also being rescued right now--does that...bubble, pause the damage?"

[periphrasing]

And now you know why Peridot is so extra freaked out, Lapis.

"I don't know!" she squeaks in response. "I've seen it used to put gems into a kind of stasis to keep them from reforming, but I have no idea if it will delay shattering or not!"

THIS IS LITERALLY THE SECOND BUBBLE SHE'S EVER MADE.

[mirrortide]

"Steven's what!?" Lapis is now significantly less invested in Peridot and Jasper, mostly because Peridot is fine, and for Jasper to be fine, Steven needs to be fine.

"Then what are we doing here? We need to go save him!" Why didn't they save him first?

[scientificist]

"He's being saved," Herbert repeats, loudly. "It's under control--and for all we know...you've had something put into your mind by the fae and swooping out to save Steven will just make things worse! Sit down on a cot and..." He turns back to Peridot specifically and advances a bit more to frown more effectively at the gem.

"Do your people not have any methods for healing gems?" That seems like an oversight to him, honestly, if true. A lack of appropriate research. "Bring her over here and I'll see what I can do," he says, beckoning as he heads into the tent, grabbing a towel as he goes to fold and set it on a low table, patting it demonstratively after. "De-bubble her."

[periphrasing]

Peridot would counter that but, Herbert doesn't actually sound like he's looking for an answer, and now seems like a bad time to get into the whole 'if we do have a method for healing I'm not privy to it because on Homeworld sometimes broken gems just aren't worth the trouble of fixing' conversation. She just pops the bubble and places Jasper carefully down on the towel.

[stompadour]

Almost as soon as she's set down on the towel, Jasper's gem starts to glow and rise into the air.

A few seconds later she's fully reformed, and she falls back to the ground and crushes the table.

She winces. "Rrgh -- what --"

She tries to push herself back to her feet, except that both of her feet have reformed as hands.

[worldlyafflictions]

"Oh hey, she's... mmostly fine?" Glancing down at those... fhands..

[scientificist]

"Don't exert yourself, I need to look at your nose: you headbutted a sword," Herbert says, which isn't a great explanation but it's all he's really got, now. Jasper is an idiot, but--ah, at least an idiot who will listen to the two supervisors in the room. Who fixes tables around here? Engineering? Maybe he'll ask Ginko, he seems folksy and useful and might know how to make tables. He doesn't know.

The nose is kind of out of reach, though. He's actually closer to her gorilla feet situation. "Hmm," he goes and turns slightly to make a face at Peridot. Is this aftermath of fusion or damage related? Well. Whatever. "Go and sit--carefully--on that cot."

[mirrortide]

Lapis, who had been just about to sit down on a cot, instantly jumps up and makes her presence known as soon as Jasper reforms. Because she's still running high on emotion right now!

"Jasper! Don't exert yourself, they're going to find Steven, he'll fix this and you'll be fine again!" Lapis tries to reason, also mostly with herself, because This time Malachite wasn't nearly as bad as the first! Surprisingly enough.

[periphrasing]

Jasper why is it that you're always the one that Peridot witnesses having weird gross physical form issues. What the heck.

There is just A LOT HAPPENING right now, and Peridot is pretty out of her depth. "Her gem is damaged, I don't know what you expect me to say!" she snaps at Herbert with an exasperated gesture, automatically assuming that face he's pulling is some kind of criticism to her own method of handling this, even if it wasn't meant that way. "We can take damage to our projected physical forms just fine, but gem damage? Literally the only thing that I know of that can fix that is Steven and his weird, saliva-based powers!"

As if she wasn't worried enough about the rescue mission to retrieve Steven, they had to go and put a time limit on it.

[stompadour]

"I -- what --" Jasper is kind of overwhelmed by trying to come to grips with this situation while Herbert and Lapis are both speaking to her at once. She stumbles backwards to the cot on her extremely bad hand feet, which are much worse for balance when you don't have four of them, and then grimaces as the crack on her nose widens again. Her hand -- one of the ones that's where a hand is supposed to be -- flies to her face. "My gem--"

She's a soldier; she's seen this happen before. She knows how it goes. Her eyes, staring out between her fingers, are wide, the pupils slits.

"Steven?" she grits out sounding immensely dubious.

[scientificist]

"I don't know what state he'll be in but...possibly well enough to spit in a glass?" Herbert grabs a marker and a stir rod from the table beside the one Jasper destroyed and walks over to the cot. "I should have kept samples on hand..." This, muttered more to himself as he lines the stick carefully up with the crack without touching the gem and draws a line for both non-invasive dimensions.

"My current supplies are only tested on various forms of organic and magic life," he admits, "how quickly will this progress? I'm...worried destablising Jasper and attempting the bubble as an option will hurry along the process." It's going a lot faster than he had assumed, based on when the nick happened and when they returned.