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Characters: Skulduggery Pleasant and YOU (but specific starters for Captain Amelia, fellow turtle-parents Hawke and Akito, and Monet)
Date: Catch-all for April before the bombings and console crash events
Location: Throughout Keeliai
Situation: Various! These will include futzing with unused consoles, discovering the turtle baby, and also intercepting kedan informants. But Skulduggery’s going to be all over the Shell throughout the month, so feel free to chime in with your own.
Warnings/Rating: None for the moment. Well, there’s some lock-picking.

I usually start with prose, but I’ll adapt to any style. If you want a specific starter, PM me at

Amaraq!

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"Our systems must be very different indeed, then, despite some superficial similarities," Raine concluded, idly tapping her fingers. "The majority of our magic is encompassed in eight elements, and while true mastery of any craft may take a lifetime, it certainly doesn't take centuries for high levels of proficiency." Her brother was evidence enough of that.

She was quiet for a moment, turning the idea of something over in her head. "If Adept techniques are based in imagination, what prevents an Adept from simply using imagination to produce elemental effects? Is there a fundamental difference between the approaches that would render use of an element without proper understanding pointless or hazardous?"

For all she knew, it might be an incredibly obvious answer, but she'd rarely gotten anywhere by not asking questions.

"It helps that sorcerers have a longer lifespan," Skulduggery said with a nod. "We can easily live to be eight hundred. Mastery isn't quite so terrible in the grand scheme of things."

Eight elements. Skulduggery couldn't quite fathom what they might be. He knew there were schools of thought counting more than four, but it was usually only with one or two extras - wood, or metal, as Keeliai was good enough to demonstrate. In Skulduggery's world, they were both forms of Earth-based magic, an element that by its very nature would always elude control.

Well, unless you were Skulduggery.

"Quite possibly," he answered her. "I'm sure there are people who've tried. But mastering the elements requires an understanding that most Adepts can't achieve, for some reason or other. Some are born already proficient in an Adept discipline and never have the need for anything else. Others don't see a reason to put in the work. It comes down to what you're suited for, more than anything."

It was significantly easier to be certain of your conception of the elements when you'd met the very cranky manifestations thereof.

"Yes, I'd imagine an extended lifespan would help," she said, a little dryly, otherwise taking the number well in stride. His answer to her other query made sense, as well, which was more than she could say for some magical systems. A person's natural inclination would show through, she supposed, something that so far she'd found seemed to hold across multiple worlds.

"Although I have to wonder: do many sorcerers age quite so dramatically, or are you an exception?"

Skulduggery chuckled. Conversations like this inevitably came around to the question of how his existence was possible; the question being put so lightly was certainly a breath of fresh air.

"I'm an exception, fortunately," he admitted. "Most of us stop aging around twenty. Regular use of magic rejuvenates the body, you see. It slows physical aging down. It would have done the same for me, if I hadn't gotten myself killed almost three hundred years ago."

Three hundred years. The realisation of time passing was still enough to put Skulduggery in awe. He barely remembered what it was like, having a beating heart in his chest.

"Ah," she said, for lack of anything else sensible in the moment. It was stranger than she'd like, contemplating that. Mortality or reasonable lack thereof wasn't by any means an uncommon topic to ponder, with the company she'd kept and indeed her own projected lifespan, but sometimes the reminder of exactly how long the years might stretch out hit her with unexpected force.

Raine shook her head at that, annoyed with her lapse in rational judgment. "And now?" she asked. Probably a rude question, though she did wonder if he would simply continue to persist as he was. Hard for a skeleton to age, after all. "No, never mind. Thank you-- your elaboration has been fascinating."

"And now," Skulduggery answered, despite the woman's almost immediate withdrawal of the question, "I'm... not entirely sure. One would think I'm effectively immortal."

He'd certainly tried enough times to be relatively sure of that fact. And he'd tried often enough for questions regarding it not to be conceived as rude.

He unfolded his limbs and stood with the sort of grace only a person with no muscles could achieve, and bowed his head. "Of course. I'm always happy to answer the questions of strangers who interrupt my meditation." If there was a hint of sarcasm in Skulduggery's tone, it was very difficult to find; she hadn't interrupted anything, after all. He extended his hand. "If I might be so bold as to offer you a name, as well, I'm Skulduggery Pleasant."

"My apologies," Raine said, without other preamble, and also stood. Being towered over was rarely enjoyable. "I'm Raine Sage."

A beat, as she tried to decide whether or not that had actually been sarcasm. She didn't think she'd interrupted, at least, except perhaps by staring. "Do you often find curious strangers interrupting you?"

"No," he admitted. "Certainly not here. People seem to prefer keeping their distance and staring." A fact he hardly complained about, although on rare occasions when sentimentality got the better of him, Skulduggery did occasionally miss when people were shocked and tried to punch him.

He tilted his head. "The only other time I've been interrupted, a small pack of goblins nicked my skull. Compared to that, your questions were very welcome."

She stared at him for a few seconds, blankly. "Nicked your skull," she repeated, and shook her head. "I don't even know where to start. Was this more than an inconvenience to you?" It sounded almost casual, when he said it. That raised all sorts of other questions -- she'd have assumed his consciousness was localized to his head like most sentients.

"Well, I couldn't speak for a bit," Skulduggery remembered. "Or see. That was an inconvenience. I needed a little help for a while, and then I won myself a new skull in a game of poker, and there all of my problems ended."

Most of his problems. Most of the important problems. Alright, only some of his problems, but it was the principle of the thing.

"This," he went on with a tap of a finger on the skull he was wearing, "is my original skull. It was a gift from a friend."

"That would be inconvenient," she agreed. An understatement, to say the least. "Your friend is a thoughtful one. I don't know about the goblins, but I can certainly appreciate the effort in tracking down stolen-- objects."

A pause, to consider something. "I take it you had help with the poker game, as well," she added finally, as poker without being able to see the cards sounded like an exercise in futility.

Your friend is a thoughtful one. Thoughtful, Skulduggery agreed, but suicidally brave. Not to mention stubborn as a halfway-intelligent mule.

"I did," he confirmed, amused. "Another good friend of mine. One with a gift for knowing the potential outcomes of certain events. He was a little help, but I did make him promise he'd let me do most of the work."

Raine wasn't sure, exactly, how a headless skeleton would have been able to do most of the work in that situation. "Only a little help?" she repeated, lightly, intending it more as a joke than anything else, though she really was curious about how he'd made that work.

She should also probably do something about her habit of accosting interesting people in the street. "It's been a pleasure," she added. "Unless you've your own questions, though, I should probably go. It's getting late."

It had already been evening when she spotted him, after all, and as much as curiosity drove her, most people would only put up with so much relentless questioning. She was reasonably sure she'd be able to find him again.

"Well, yes," Skulduggery said with an air of confusion, as though he couldn't understand what was so difficult to understand about a headless skeleton playing card games. "He wins at poker by cheating. If we had been caught cheating, I'd never have managed to win a spare head."

Did he have his own questions? Very probably. It was difficult to think of any just then, as Skulduggery was feeling quite a bit calmer after the meditation than he usually did, and the effect tended to stifle his thoughts in their infancy. "By all means," he told her with a nod. "The pleasure was mine. Good evening."

He didn't know precisely where he'd go, but maybe another round of the turtle's circumference was in order.

Raine laughed, a little, at the fact Skulduggery focused on the cheating part, and not any of the parts of the situation more bemusing to average mortals. "Of course," she said, dryly. "Perfectly sensible."

With a brief inclination of her head, she turned to head home. "Good evening to you, as well."

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whoops that took longer than I meant it to, sorry

No worries!

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