tushanshu_logs | TEL VISHAN BEACH PARTY

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TEL VISHAN BEACH PARTY

Characters: OPEN
Date: Saturday, August the 9^th
Location: The Shell 'Coastline' nearest the Water Sector
Situation: Baby Turtle Beach Party!

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At the edge of Asti's shell there are coastlines of natural deposits that make up the closest thing to a 'beach' that they'll ever find in Keeliai. It's here that the official Tel Vishan Beach Party is set to take place. All turtle 'parents' will have gotten a message from their respective hatchlings about said party (perhaps a nice change from the whining and the temper tantrums).

Temporary shaded areas built with poles and sheets for weary parents or hatchlings who do decide to come, and some simple snacks and refreshments have been set up as well. There's a fishing net set up to act as a volleyball net for the day, and a ball waiting in the sand for some players.

The rest is up to those who come.

((ooc: feel free to comment under the headers, or start your own top-level comment!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Since he was obliging, Raine took her time about scrutinizing the sigils, taking note of general and specific details. She didn't anticipate needing the knowledge, but the strangest things had been useful before.

That was the majority of her curiosity satisfied -- she wasn't sure if he was serious about having eyes in the back of his head, and she was, for a change, fine with not being sure. When she was done, she took a step back. "How have you been, by the way?"

She hesitated, glanced between him and the rest of the party again, finally decided it was better to address what they were unsubtly doing head-on. "If you were planning to head back to the city proper, I'll accompany you."

"Planning?" Skulduggery asked as he glanced around at the path they were on. His head jerked back in an overly dramatic imitation of surprise. "Ah. We seem to have wandered away from the party. How about that."

He was joking, of course. It had been a very long time since Skulduggery found himself doing things he hadn't consciously initiated. That was one of the joys of waking up to find yourself a living skeleton.

"I've been well," he answered. "I've been surprisingly well for being a soldier in a war which threatens multiple worlds, in fact. You?"

Well, when he put it that way.

"Yes, how about that," Raine repeated, dry. She was reasonably sure he was joking, and if he felt the need to dissemble on that particular topic, she was hardly one to judge.

"I've been well enough," she said, instead of belaboring that topic. "Busy, but better since Ryder picked out an extra parent." She nodded absently toward the turtles at the beach, as if there were other beings in Keeliai that had a habit of forcibly adopting parents. "The relative peace seems odd, honestly."

"Ryder?" Skulduggery turned to look at Raine as they walked. "I think I know the new parent. Don't be surprised if he starts spending a lot of time in the Hotel straddling Keeliai."

He couldn't agree more about the relative peace feeling odd, however. He'd been experiencing it for months, and he still wasn't quite sure what to do with it - apart from take advantage whenever he slipped a little too close to the precipice's edge.

"How long have you been here, Raine?" Skulduggery asked abruptly. If it was long enough, she might be able to confirm his suspicions regarding the Foreigner population.

Raine nodded agreement. "He seems quite pleased with his choice. The Hotel's probably one of the better places for him to be right now, anyway." Earth sector might be lovely, but the untempered heat was suboptimal for him to say the least.

His question came out of the blue, but it was a simple enough one. Raine looked up to the sky, thinking back. The first day or two had been a little bit of a blur, in the disorientation of the transit and the acclimation to a completely new world. "Since the beginning of March. A little over five months now. Why do you ask?"

With Anton Shudder running the Hotel, it was one of the safer places for anyone to be - not just the turtles looking for some relief from the heat.

Skulduggery was surprised, however, to hear that Raine had only been pulled a month or so before he was. Maybe Eva was careful to take only those people who would acclimatise well to both the transition and their new surroundings. Of course, some of the console messages demanding explanations belied that theory.

It still wouldn't hurt to ask. "Have you noticed a decrease in the number of Foreigners since then? Or a decrease in the rate of their arrival? The turtles all remember at least three parents when they first hatched, and some of them are having to make do with only one these days."

"Somewhat, yes. It's hard to tell for sure -- not everyone introduces themselves on the network when they arrive, for instance, and it's not always immediately obvious when someone vanishes -- but the children likely are the best measure." She had put Ryder's lack up to pickiness, and the fact that she could cope alone, but if others of his siblings were in the same position...

Raine exhaled heavily. It couldn't herald good things. "The same topic came up the last time I talked to Annabeth, as well. She's been here quite a while, and seems to have a fair grasp of both current and past events. Do you know her?" If independent sources were noticing the same thing, it was almost certainly no coincidence.

"Annabeth? No." But whoever she was, she certainly seemed like a reliable source, if only from Raine's description. An experienced Foreigner was exactly the sort of person Skulduggery had been meaning to speak to. "But she's noticed the same thing? Does she have any idea what might be causing it?"

The answer to that seemed obvious, but Skulduggery wasn't one for ignoring those in a better position to see patterns than he was.

"She has, yes. The main points of correlation she said she'd noticed were the death of the previous Emperor, since she used to handle bringing foreigners here, and, if I recall correctly, the destruction of the underwater cloning facility." Raine considered that for a moment or two, thinking back to the last time she'd talked to Annabeth. "She also said, however, that there had always been some fluctuations. I'd recommend speaking to her directly; she'll have a clearer view of things."

It would be tempting to blame the enemy, but there simply wasn't enough hard evidence for that, and for now Raine had to acknowledge that the cause was unknown, as much as it rankled.

There wasn't enough hard evidence to blame the enemy, no, but Skulduggery usually made it a practice to assume the worst. It was better to be pleasantly surprised than caught off-guard.

"I will," he agreed with a nod. "Thank you. If the previous Emperor used to handle bringing Foreigners here, why didn't Evandau take over the duty? As far as I know, he's delegated it to someone else."

Raine had more of the optimist about her than she would like to admit, but she wouldn't be surprised to find it was the enemy's doing, either.

"That much I don't know for sure," she said, with a small grimace. "The most reasonable assumption is, of course, that the magic and the office of Emperor is unrelated. If the current Emperor has very little magical ability himself, the delegation makes sense."

The gap in her knowledge irked her, not least because she should have pursued more about Evandau before now, if only for context. All she'd seen fit to establish was that he was not actively malicious, and then the enemy had taken greater precedence.

"But it does beg the question of why the delegate didn't become the next Emperor," Skulduggery pointed out. "Or how either of them managed to acquire the ability in the first place."

He grew quiet after those comments, slowing his steps as he and Raine approached the city. Apparently, before Skulduggery was brought to Keeliai, the Emperor used to hold question-and-answer sessions with the Foreigners. She was seen everywhere, well-known and fairly well-liked, very much a part of Keeliai's daily affairs. Her replacement, on the other hand, seemed forever busy, and yet subtly hidden from view. It could mean nothing - Skulduggery was well aware of how such a sudden increase in responsibility could run a person ragged. It could also mean the war was coming to a head, but then why not enlist the help of the Foreigners you'd already conscripted into fighting?

Something didn't add up.

"I've heard he does have magic," Skulduggery went on after a moment. "Or a magic-cancelling shield of some sort. Have you ever visited a country where a military leader became the Emperor? Has that ever ended well?"

"It does, doesn't it." Raine's focus turned inward as well, and she was content to match Skulduggery's pace in relative silence while she considered that. If the previous Emperor had selected Evandau to take her place that was one thing, but there was too much about that situation that she just didn't know.

That had been foolish of her, not to follow up on what had happened after Eshai's murder. Well. It was not the worst mistake she'd made, at least, and could be rectified.

At his voice she glanced up again, and after a moment nodded. "Not precisely, but I can draw a rough comparison. And no. It didn't end particularly well. It's a different set of skills, and it takes a rare person to handle military strategy and sound governance all at once. I take your point."

"It does," Skulduggery agreed. "That's generally why the power of the throne remains in royal families, and why military advisors have to stage hostile takeovers and impose unnecessary military law in order to have a chance at it themselves."

Not that Skulduggery was implying Evandau had anything to do with Eshai's death. Well, alright, he was, but he was actually fairly sure that wasn't the case, given how constant and detailed the story of her assassination went. That didn't, however, rule out practically any other form of hostile takeover and military rule. The bombings, Skulduggery remembered, had surprised nearly everyone. There were too many neat coincidences.

"I'm glad we haven't been given an impossible task to accomplish before we're allowed to go home," Skulduggery said remarkably cheerfully. "Otherwise, this would be much harder."

"Have you seen many such situations?" Raine asked, genuinely curious. He spoke of it like a matter of course, and with the years he had lived it might well be. At least religion hadn't been mixed up in the local mess so far as she could tell.

His last statement sparked a short, bright peal of laughter from her. "Yes-- though even if it was impossible, I suspect that wouldn't stop many of the people here." She had seen what happened when sufficiently determined people decided that 'impossible' was more of a suggestion, and several of the other foreigners she'd met she had no doubt would push on regardless.

"I'm over four hundred years old," Skulduggery reminded her, his tone as casual as if such a long life span was an everyday fact. "Yes, I've seen many such situations. Only one where the evil could measure up to this one, of course. Someone I respect once told me the only two human constants are love and greed, and I haven't yet had cause to doubt him."

Actually, maybe that was Shakespeare. Skulduggery couldn't remember anymore. He really hoped it wasn't, for the solitary reason that he would have had to deny all knowledge of the quote. Shakespeare was far too pompous for Skulduggery's tastes, refined though those tastes admittedly were.

"It certainly wouldn't stop me," he agreed. "Or you, if I'm not missing my mark. After these last few months, I'd be surprised if any of the foster parents would happily sit by and let anything terrible happen to their turtle charges."

"Love and greed, hm." The lifespan really was an everyday fact as far as both of them were concerned, and not worth commenting on at this point. She wasn't sure she agreed about human constants-- even the kindest of humans usually hated something. But hate was still a learned behavior, wasn't it? Much like shame or fear, it didn't come from nowhere. "People are born knowing both," she said finally, not quite an agreement, but certainly acknowledgment.

Even if it was Shakespeare, the beauty of talking to a person not from an Earth was that Raine wouldn't be able to accuse him of the quote.

To the latter, she nodded. "Ryder reminds me of my brother, sometimes," she said. Her expression was soft. "Even without that, I would go to great lengths to protect him, and the rest of the children. But the thought that the enemy may pursue our worlds as well, if this one falls-- even if the task is impossible, we must give it everything we can anyway."

"That they are," said Skulduggery as the high walls of Keeliai grew steadily closer. "All sentient beings are, to varying degrees. Knowledge, culture, and belief all change. Greed, unfortunately, does not."

Neither did love. As old as certain wounds were, as well-worn and well-healed as those wounds had become, there were certain words which would always elicit a small tinge of regret in Skulduggery. 'Brother,' annoyingly enough, was one of them. At least it was easy to ignore.

"I'd like to impose a law," Skulduggery decided. "A single law. A very simple law. And that law is this: if your dimension is capable of inter-dimensional travel, kidnapping, or shenanigans of any kind, don't play around with unimaginably powerful evils."

On the point of greed she could not disagree with him, and she simply nodded.

"And how do you plan to enforce that law?" Raine asked, easily following him out of more serious discussion and back into the dry sort of humor with which he seemed most comfortable. "I don't disagree with it, but those inclined to obey it wouldn't be those dealing with unimaginably powerful evils in the first place." The quirk at the corner of her mouth gave the lie to her otherwise serious tone.

Skulduggery nodded. "True. We would need a task force. A group of immensely powerful dimensional hoppers from whom you would need a permit before playing around with unimaginably powerful evils. Perhaps they could be bunnies. Then no one would suspect a thing."

What, precisely, someone might suspect, Skulduggery didn't elaborate on.

This earned him a long, bemused stare from Raine. Skulduggery was hard to read at best, and deadpan humor didn't help with that. But he must still be joking. "Bunnies," she repeated at length, skeptical. "Immensely powerful, dimension hopping rabbits are your solution."

She let that hang in the air for a moment, at a loss for any sort of sensible response. She'd thought teaching teenagers had prepared her for just about all forms of nonsensicality, but there was always room to be proven wrong. "Why rabbits?" she asked finally, wondering if there actually was any logic that had led him there.

"Bunnies," he confirmed. He was entirely used to the sorts of expressions from which Raine had drawn while she stared at him. "No one ever suspects cute rodents."

At her question, he tilted his head, eyeless gaze on the sky while he thought about the best way to respond. Was there any logic behind bunnies? Probably not. But he marked the occasion and let it slip to the back of his mind anyway, just in case. It wouldn't have been the first time Skulduggery said something completely nonsensical in good-humoured jest, and discovered later it was the truth. Or part of the truth. His mind worked too quickly for even him to keep up some of the time.

"I don't know," he finally admitted. "Why? Do you have any other suggestions? Mice might be a little obvious."

"That only works if they're in a place where you could reasonably expect cute rodents," Raine pointed out. She was well aware of the futility of applying logic to harebrained ideas, but felt compelled to try anyway. "Inoffensive as a rabbit may be, it will still stand out in a temple or palace, or an area heavily populated by monsters."

She considered the absurd hypothetical situation for a few moments. "Invisibility might be practical, and lend our theoretical enforcers the benefit of not losing opposable thumbs in favor of disguise. Another option is perhaps the capability to shift forms as befits the situation."

Now this was intelligent conversation. Contrary to popular belief, Skulduggery didn't exclude nonsensical topics from the realm of interesting talking points. Quite the contrary, applying logic to harebrained ideas was one of the surest ways of confirming whether or not someone was intelligent.

Raine certainly fit the profile, but he'd already known that.

"Ah, but opposable thumbs aren't as useful as people believe," Skulduggery pointed out. "What if our theoretical enforcers needed to be underwater? Dolphins or whales might be more effective in that scenario. I think you're right. Shapeshifters would be most logical. Bunnies, of course, would be their first port of call."

"I tend to be fond of them," Raine said dryly, flexing her fingers absently. "They're useful for delicate work. Hmm. Environmental concerns are valid, but if these enforcers have immense power, it wouldn't be a leap to assume they also have the resources to survive in inhospitable places. Still, underwater motion at the least would be made more difficult by a limited form."

Shapeshifters really were the most practical theoretical solution for blending with completely unpredictable environments. But why... why did he keep coming back to bunnies. "Do you have a particular fondness for rabbits?"

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