Poppin' Arms ~ Study

[Negrek]

True that it was helpful to have somebody who at least recognized whatever species Silver was; Nate wasn't so sure about how they'd get along as roommates, though. He was having some trouble picturing it. "Well, that's good. So long's you ain't, like, stuck sleeping in here with the books or nothing." Presumably the party was still in full swing out there. At least, the guildhall still seemed quiet. Probably best to get gone while the getting was good. "Anyhow, I've gotta go find food. Good luck with the training and all. And... watch out for charizard, I guess."

 

[Namohysip]

The very name of the species seemed to annoy him somehow, and he nodded. "Right. Good luck, see you around." Nate seemed like the sort of person he could actually tolerate being around. None of these happy-go-lucky adventure types who seemed eager to save the world. It wasn't that easy.

 

[Dragonfree]

<><><><><>

Mia had a lot of questions. Everything that had puzzled Dave for the months he'd been here, and more besides, was buzzing around her brain (she probably didn't even have a brain, and she had questions about that, too), and after a while he just had to throw up his hands and suggest they check out some Cibusian books.

He had to admit this was more productive than he'd expected, one way or another - there actually were books on how they made utensils work for limbs without opposable thumbs (telepathic technology, still kinda bullshit but at least it was science to them). Mia powered through the relevant chapters of that one while he read over her shoulder, then went and found one on telepathy in general. The books themselves must use the technology too - her scythe-arms flipped pages neatly and naturally without problems. Could people get papercuts in Cibus? If not this shit was worth it just for that.

By the time she was off on some tangent or other in yet another book about psychic powers, though, Dave was starting to have trouble following the exceedingly bullshit-sounding terminology and losing interest in the material. He stepped back to leave her to it, looking around the study.

 

[TheGOAT]

“Sooo. What are we doing here?” Myles(?) whispered.

Astrid poked at a particular book on a higher shelf, eventually tipping it backwards and safely into her paw. “Reading,” she said with her nose practically pressed into the pages. “I need to figure out what’s going on with you and my ultra stone.”

“…What?”

Astrid whipped her head towards him, eyes aflame, locked onto the core. “Stoney is in there. I’m responsible for him and, and I need to make sure he’s alright after this—” She gestured to the familiar as though he were a stain on the wall. “—stuff happened.”

“…What?”

She looked at him, nothing profound dawning in her eyes. “What?”

“Seriously? Do you not realize—?”

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave noticed the Vulpix and her shade in passing at first, but then heard what they were talking about. She seemed to be... wait, what?

"Uh, you do realize that is your shade?" he said, squinting at her. "This is what they do. They hatch into these black blob things." He gestured towards Mia, who was still absorbed in her reading. "That's what happened to mine."

 

[TheGOAT]

“Yeah, duh. What he said.” The silhouette gestured forth with a paw, then dropped the same paw to the ground in contemplation. Why hadn’t he just said that?

Astrid gawked at Myles, or, well. She supposed it couldn’t really be him then. “Stoney? I-is that… you?”

“Stop calling me that,” he grunted. “It’s weird. Call me something else.”

Astrid nodded once, breaking eye contact briefly. “Oh. Alright. Like what?”

To both her relief and confusion, he answered, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t kn—?”

Frustration buried long ago flared up suddenly as her familiar cut her off. “Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know how this naming stuff works.” His eyes trickled from left to right, towards the windows, then the books, then the carpet. Frowning, he elaborated: “I don’t know how to be real. That’s pretty crazy, huh?”

“Mhm.” He was right. This was definitely pretty crazy. In the midst of it, Astrid realized Dave was still standing there. Dave and…?

“Hey Dave, uh. Thanks for the help!” Her burning embarrassment hid behind a friendly smile. “How’ve you been? Settled in alright?”

 

[Dragonfree]

He raised his eyebrows. She was just going to pretend that didn't happen. Okay. Really that was good. People who actually went for chitchat rather than immediately dumping their emotional issues on him seemed few and far between in this place. "Yeah, I'm doing fine. This place is a bit more like home. Got my hands full after, uh..." He inclined his head towards Mia again; she had not looked up from her book. "That's Mia. Don't mind her."

Come to think of it, Astrid was someone he'd sparred with. Maybe Mia'd like a try at her sometime? He opened his mouth to suggest it, at the same time as he fleetingly imagined Mia's goopy form Freeze Dried into brittle crust, shattering, and his stomach clenched.

...Maybe later.

He looked for something else to say instead. "I guess you recovered okay from the, uh. The exploding?"

 

[TheGOAT]

“Ahaha, yeah. The explosion.” Astrid spoke as though it had been an uneventful outing she’d gone on weeks prior, fading in her memory.

That act didn’t get her far, and her ears fell slightly. “There’s… still a dull ache in the back of my head that comes and goes. Kinda like I banged my forehead on something.” She shrugged and bounced back to the tone from before. “It’s inconvenient but easy to ignore most of the time. Ever since I started training my Radiance, it’s felt a lot better.”

Astrid turned to introduce Stoney to her friend, but he was busying himself spinning the miniature Cibus globe that had been placed on a table by the far wall. That was fine, she supposed; he didn’t have a name to be introduced with anyhow.

So, her attention instead turned towards Mia. “Hi! I’m Astrid. Nice to meet you.” Do you also not know how to be real? she wondered.

 

[Dragonfree]

"So... you're training your Radiance more after it blows you up and you've still got what sounds like some kind of fucking brain damage after it?" Holy hell, the idea of having had this shit foisted onto him was not improving. Not that he hadn't made use of it, since he had it, but he was not letting it fuck with his head. "No offense, but that doesn't sound very healthy."

Astrid had already turned to greet Mia, though. She looked up from the book, face expressionless. "Hi." She looked back down at the book and showed no sign of further interest in Astrid.

"Yeah, she's, uh, not very sociable."

 

[TheGOAT]

"Hi." She looked back down at the book and showed no sign of further interest in Astrid.

"Yeah, she's, uh, not very sociable."

Astrid nodded, unable to avoid staring at the unique head shape. Is that what Scyther from Dave’s world look like…?

"So... you're training your Radiance more after it blows you up and you've still got what sounds like some kind of fucking brain damage after it?" Holy hell, the idea of having had this shit foisted onto him was not improving. Not that he hadn't made use of it, since he had it, but he was not letting it fuck with his head. "No offense, but that doesn't sound very healthy."

“Brain damage?” Gosh, that would be bad. She didn’t know how many brains she could run through. If Diyem wasn’t around to revive her, perhaps she’d only get one. Yikes. “Hrm. I don’t think so. It’s just like a headache, you know? I get ‘em sometimes in warm places. It’ll go away.

“But you’re… I don’t know. I know you’ve always been skeptical of Radiance, but you also have a point. Truffle described us as having ‘unstable’ auras, which is kind of a huge red flag.” She pawed at the ground. “I’ll be honest Dave, I don’t like the feeling of exploding. It kind of hits you everywhere at once.”

 

[Dragonfree]

"Yeah, somehow I'm not surprised that exploding is less than pleasant." Dave gave her a critical look. Headaches in warm places? Well, he supposed she was an Ice-type. "What kind of training is it you've been doing with it?"

 

[TheGOAT]

“Containing it,” Astrid said a little proudly. “Truffle was helping me. I was gonna approach Maple about it too, but… she hasn’t been feeling too well as of late.”

Her head tilted slightly. “What about you? I’ve seen you use yours once or twice to summon Protect shields.”

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave scowled at the mention of Maple. Well, at least containing it seemed like a step in the right direction. "Yeah, sure, it can be useful. But I'm not fucking using it until I explode. You have to stop and like, focus? With this thing it just takes like ten seconds of concentration to go from kinda buzzed back to sober. Life hack. Kind of cheap, honestly. Wish it was that easy to drive home from the bar."

 

[TheGOAT]

“Maybe.” Astrid frowned. “There just isn’t always time to stop and do that in battle… which is why I’ve been training.”

Astrid supposed there would always be a disconnect here. Dave’s Poocheyena legs could carry him far and fast in battle, but the vibe she usually got from him was one of caution and care—if somewhat temperamental. Or at least, easy to irritate. It was no wonder he didn’t get along with Radiance.

“I just don’t know how to feel about Shadows yet. Like, how we can tap into it without being possessed by a shade. It’s nice I guess, but I feel like it’s one of the main reasons we’re being challenged by that Lucario.”

She looked around, and—where was Myles?

Through sheer luck, she caught the back of his tails turning the corner towards the exit. “Oh criminey. Hey, I gotta run. I’ll, I’ll think about what you said, alright?”

<><><>​

 

[Negrek]

"Every time I come here, I swear it's going to be the last time," Nate said. He wasn't exactly striding down the hall, since mudkip don't stride, but he was moving about as fast as he could without actually running. "Every fucking time. And then what happens? Three days later I'm back here again for some stupid fucking reason. I swear I'm visiting this place in my fucking nightmares. When I die, they won't even have to send me to hell, they'll just dump me back here to deal with somebody's personal drama a-fucking-gain."

Rocky giggled. The familiar was keeping up a fairly normal walking speed so he wouldn't outstrip Nate. Nate fucking hated that, but he hated getting left behind more. "Of course you keep coming back here. This is where everybody lives! You're the weirdo who'd rather steal somebody else's house instead."

"You mean I'm the only one with a fucking ounce of taste. Dignity. Whatever," Nate grumbled. The corviknight at the desk had said the smeargle was hanging around where Silver used to be all the time. Reading a book or some shit? If she really wanted some peace and quiet, Nate had no idea why she'd pick the Guild of all fucking places.

He poked his head around the doorframe and craned his neck, trying to see. It was such a pain in the ass to survey a room when your eyes were less than a fucking foot off the floor. The smeargle had better be here after they'd come all this way.

 

[Namohysip]

Maple was busy reading through a book in silence, speaking softly. She was alone in the room, and there didn't appear to be anybody there with her...

". . . think that could be relevant? ...Well, I suppose so. I'm not as confident."

Perhaps she'd finally gone mad with grief. From Nate's angle, it wouldn't be easy tot see what she was doing, but for Rocky, it was. There was an Ultra Stone rolling on the table, rocking left and right depending on what Maple said.

"Mm. Right." There was a hint of sorrow in her voice, and she finally closed the book. "Oh." She caught them in the corner of her eye. "Hello... Nate. Rocky."

 

[Negrek]

"Ooh!" Rocky rushed past Nate, nearly knocking the mudkip head over heels in his haste to get over to Maple's table. "You have a shade! That's so cool! What's its name? You already named it, right?"

Well, at least Rocky's blathering might distract Maple enough that she wouldn't notice Nate's struggle to get onto the chair across from her. One leap and he'd got about half his body onto the seat, but it took some real kicking with the old hind legs and a couple more half-lunges to scramble all the way up. Fucking assholes around here making everything so fucking tall.

Once he could properly see over the edge of the table, Nate regarded the shade-stone uneasily. So that was either, like, a fucking piece of the smeargle's boyfriend in there, or a piece of whatever the fuck had infected him, right? Probably the second one, because the necrozma presumably didn't shoot slugs all over the place back home. Either way, it had to be an actual slug fresh off the guy, right? Picked up during that fight against the fusion dragon thing.

Nate watched the stone rock fitfully back and forth. Either way, it was also pretty fucked up. And just a little bit fucking sad.

Rocky was crouched down so his eyes were at tabletop-level, his tail held high and waving while he watched the stone. "It's so cute! I wonder if it's gonna hatch soon."

 

[Namohysip]

The smallest smile crept up Maple's expression. "I do wonder," she replied. "But for no, he has shown no interest in developing into something further. I... do wonder, though. I do wonder..." She shook her head. "I don't even know how it happened. I was observing one, and then... and then I'm not sure. Perhaps I was curious, or..." She trailed off, hand clutched to her chest without her realizing it. "...And what are you doing here, Nate? Last I heard, you weren't interested in returning to this study."

 

[Negrek]

"Oh. Well, I guess that's okay. They can stay the same if they want to. But it's boring being a rock!" Rocky reached out and poked the stone. "You should come out and play!"

"Rocky, leave it alone," Nate said without taking his eyes off Maple. Last I heard what? Where the fuck was she hearing this shit? He couldn't remember ever saying shit about the study out loud, except maybe to Rocky. Had she heard him outside in the hall just now? That probably made the most sense. He shouldn't go getting all paranoid now. But goddamn, the ears on this asshole.

"Yeah. I wanted to know when you were gonna head out to this Isle of Light dungeon place."

 

[Namohysip]

"Isle of Light... You mean based on Darkwhite's words on where the hideout is." Maple looked to the books. "I am currently reading about this world's Isle of Light for possible differences or other things to look for. But given what little I'm finding that's different from what I know... perhaps in a few days. I already sent Truffle to scout for abnormalities until then."