[Nexus] GLoG 81: Ghostbusters!

[Reinholdt]

{Vidalia's Room}

Of course there are plates.

Butler will set things up and start serving Vidalia breakfast, giving her how much she asks for.

{Lakeside Beach}

"The old man told us how to get there I thought." Hopefully he did. Or maybe there's only one island on that ocean map. That'd make sense too.

[Gullara]

[Up a Tree]

"And cats don't talk. And fire dragons don't fly. And undead aren't ever nice. And the sun sets in the east," Freddie replies with a laugh. "I've started to wonder if there's anything that isn't impossible in the Nexus. I'll bet that if we looked hard enough that we could find someone who knows how to teach a tree to walk."

No doubt they could!

Maybe a druid of some kind?

Or a wizard?

Zee could probably do it.

But Zee creeps Freddie out pretty hard.

[Up a Tree]

"I guess so..." Salix sounds uncertain. It amazing how someone who's lived in the Nexus their entire, albeit short, life without encountering a lot of weirdness.

A thought occurs to her. "What if my tree just doesn't want to walk? Maybe that's why they stand in one place all the time."

[Lex-Kat]

{Vidalia's Room}

With Butler, one can never be sure. He may have intended to only serve the food, and not eat himself.

As Butler is serving the cakes, Vidalia will partake of a strawberry or three. That's enough pancakes. Vidalia says after receiving a third of the stack. She'll use a fork to stab her own sausages though, then proceed to drown them all in butter and syrup.

{Lakeside Beach}

Oh yeah, he did. Well, I'm ready. She says, waiting for Vincent to lead.

[Reinholdt]

{Vidalia's Room}

Even if he wasn't going to eat himself, he'd still bring plates.

Butler serves himself a bit, though not as much as Vidalia and not as heavy on the toppings as he sits down in the chair she got for him.

{Lakeside Beach}

Vincent leads the way to Outside!

[Lost_Deep]

Lakeshore

Jamie just blinks in surprise.
"...wait, what? Are you serious?"

"Yeah. I've heard the word a lot, and I know it's a guy, and an adult, but what is a dad?"

Clearing

Once Kate looks into the "code" of the bird morph, she'll see exactly what's wrong with it compared to most effects she's seen up until recently. Namely, Mintbalm has managed to use so much pixie dust that she's broken one of the fundamental rules of lower class fey magic. All effects, large or small, should be non-permanent and easily removable. In this case, she's created a sort of self-perpetuating curse that reacts to a certain kind of behavior (attempting to remove the curse in most any way) and only undoes itself after a certain "password" action is completed.

The action in question, if she's able to dig that far into the effect, happens to be a kiss.

Mintbalm keeps smiling, wondering when Kate is going to give in and ask so she can brag a bit.

Of course, if Kate wants to go the extra mile, there are certainly ways to mimic a kiss using pixie dust, which would probably fool the bird-curse enough to remove it.

Kate sways back and forth a bit.

"Let me think."

She brings her hand up toward her mouth, pressing one knuckle of her hand into her lips similarly to the way that the classic sculpture "The Thinker" has his hand pressed against his lip. From there, a bit of pixie dust charged to be a kiss on her lips and maybe touching her knuckle with the tip of her tongue should be enough to remove the effect.

If successful, Kate will smile and ask, "Alright, Minty, how did you get so much pixie dust? It doesn't store, we both know that."

[Morty]

Commongrounds

Pathfinder leans down to nip at the nape of her neck. "Thank you. And I'm still recovering, but I'm not blacked out. Next time, I should do better."

Reelshka shivers pleasantly and leaps up to kiss Pathfinder's neck.
Well, don't overdo it. And if you need any help, remember that you did win me for one day, she adds.

[Slii Arhem]

Kate sways back and forth a bit.

"Let me think."

She brings her hand up toward her mouth, pressing one knuckle of her hand into her lips similarly to the way that the classic sculpture "The Thinker" has his hand pressed against his lip. From there, a bit of pixie dust charged to be a kiss on her lips and maybe touching her knuckle with the tip of her tongue should be enough to remove the effect.

If successful, Kate will smile and ask, "Alright, Minty, how did you get so much pixie dust? It doesn't store, we both know that."

Clearing

Despite Kate having a beak rather than lips at the moment, the trick works just fine, leaving Mintbalm puzzled as to how Kate managed to get out of it without even asking her. The pixie blinks a few times, stunned, and then a moment later she's rationalized it as Kate being awesome and she moves onto her explanation.

Which begins with a sly grin and a wagged finger, "You mean you didn't figure that out? It was one of the first things I learned from watching people, even though none of the other pixies caught on. I learned how to multiply!" Mintbalm opens up a set of portals with one hand and a quick motion, the other stuffing a small amount of pixie dust through. It comes out the other end shooting straight up into the air like a firehose full of glittering sand, colouring the air a vibrant pink before dissipating. Between Kate and Mintbalm there now lies a pink haze in the shape of a cherry tree, rooted to the ground and standing over twenty feet high.

This could be bad for Kate's continued sanity, although Mintbalm doesn't seem inclined to continue on with the dust fight. She just wanted to show off to a friend.

If she notices Kate is a bit shorter than before, she doesn't mention it. Probably thinks her eyes are playing tricks on her.

[FireFox]

Toby is walking around the camp casually.

[Rebonack]

[Up a Tree]

Though to be fair she's lived out in the forest near Glog.

It's quite a distance from here to the center of the Nexus, which means the weirdest of the weird stuff often doesn't reach this far. So it's understandable that the girl hasn't encountered anything too strange.

"Well... we could ask him, right?" Freddie suggests. "All the other dryads that I've met talk to their trees all the time. Though... their trees walk too..."

So that might change things around a bit.

"Anyway! I think I see a good spot to gather some herbs. And it's near your tree, too! We should go down there."

The Huldra nods in agreement with his assessment.

[Lost_Deep]

Clearing

"Ha ha ha! Clever! I wouldn't think that you could do that efficiently. Of course, it's simple enough to... he he he!"

Kate does not look terribly sane right now. Also, she's a good bit shorter... she's lost several inches to all her dispel-related shenanigans.

"Of course, it would be difficult to multiply each instance of dust singularly, but if you define an area it takes no concentration and you just need to supply enough dust to maintain the effect. Ha ha! That's much more efficient! In fact... ha ha ha... hey, Mintbalm, I want to try something!" Kate crosses the distance between the two of them in one jump, going straight through the image of the tree. She tries to land within arm's reach of Mintbalm...

She has a crazy look in her eyes. A playful crazy look.

[Devixer]

Wherever Toby is walking, he might run into Aiden, a plain ol' human dressed in jeans and a day coat. He's carrying a worn journal with him.

[FireFox]

Toby attempts to "accidentally" bump into Aiden so he can use the opportunity to discreetly frisk the young man for any weapons he may be concealing in his pockets or waistband. Oh! Geez, watch where you're going!

[Devixer]

[Somewhere]

Aiden's too poor to afford any weapons. The only thing he has on him is the journal he's openly carrying. He moves to the side after Toby accidentaly-on-purpose knocks into him. "Sorry, my fault." He's pretty sure it's his fault, anyway.

[FireFox]

The Druid steps back and relaxes. Hey, I haven't seen you around before.

[Devixer]

"No, I've only recently started staying here. I'm Aiden," He says, extending his hand to shake.

[FireFox]

Toby shakes his hand. You a redemption case, a charity case, or a worker?

[Devixer]

"I guess I'm a charity case," Aiden says. He doesn't really like that term, but it doesn't show. "I'm just staying here until I can manage to find a job. Or I somehow get something I've written published here, which I really doubt."

[Slii Arhem]

Clearing

"Ha ha ha! Clever! I wouldn't think that you could do that efficiently. Of course, it's simple enough to... he he he!"

Kate does not look terribly sane right now. Also, she's a good bit shorter... she's lost several inches to all her dispel-related shenanigans.

"Of course, it would be difficult to multiply each instance of dust singularly, but if you define an area it takes no concentration and you just need to supply enough dust to maintain the effect. Ha ha! That's much more efficient! In fact... ha ha ha... hey, Mintbalm, I want to try something!" Kate crosses the distance between the two of them in one jump, going straight through the image of the tree. She tries to land within arm's reach of Mintbalm...

She has a crazy look in her eyes. A playful crazy look.

Clearing

*Fwump!*

That is the sound of a person hitting a hard light illusion at full speed by trying to jump through it. Mintbalm's little trick may have been see-through, but it was most definitely not permeable.

Of course, this might accomplish Kate's ends anyway as Mintbalm sees her friend crash headlong into the tree, and rushes to her side, easily within arm's reach.

"Oh my god Kate, are you okay?"

[Lost_Deep]

Clearing

"In my defense, that tree totally looks like it's only kinda there."

Kate will get up, and shake her head a bit. "Anyway, I just want to try this. It won't be hard to remove or anything, but please don't because I want to see if it works!"

There will be a twinkle of pixie dust in Kate's hands, which forms into an orange silhouette of Mintbalm. Kate will touch Mintbalm with the silhouette, and there should be a moment of immense disorientation as a lot is changed suddenly.

Most her her senses will become sharper... except for touch, which is dulled. Pain will come through as more of a feeling that something is damaged, and she won't feel tired. And Mintbalm will be a robot.

Except instead of looking like a robot, it will look like Mintbalm has metal skin and her eyes are similar to Kate's own artificial eyes. Most of the other changes are purely internal. Mintbalm's mind is completely unaffected, meaning that she can still use pixie dust.

[Slii Arhem]

Clearing

Mintbalm stands rigid for an instant after the change, just taking in everything that's different. If she were mechanical, she'd have smoke pouring out of her ears and gears grinding away as her brain went through a forced restart.

Instead there's a little dial-up tone issuing from her open mouth for a while.


"I- buh... wha? What?"

I think you broke her Kate.

[Lost_Deep]

Clearing

"Come on, it's not that weird. And it should be easy enough for you to change back. I specifically made sure to avoid messing with your mind, so you don't have to worry about that. I just used a bit of pixie dust to redefine you to be a robot, with a few specifics thrown in. I'm not sure of the specifics, in fact I avoided thinking about it too hard to save dust. Pixie dust runs off of mental effort and concentration, not in magical energy in and of itself. As thus, a very vague idea of what you want to do and throwing it into a lot of dust results in a large change that you don't have too much control over."

[Slii Arhem]

Clearing

Mintbalm takes a moment to wrap her knuckles on her new stomach, producing a ringing, hollow sound, "Kate, I don't even know what you turned me into, but you actually turned me into something. Pixie magic can't make changes like that, only superficial stuff." Her artificial eyes look up at Kate from where she's examining herself, and her tooth, pearlescent smile spreads across her cheeks.

"You catch on fast, smarty! Come on, let's go flying!" Mintbalm reels back and shoves a hand full of dust through a portal, it coming out as a vague outline of Kate on the other side. If it touches Kate, the same transformation Mintbalm underwent will overtake her.

And then Mintbalm produces a jetpack from between her shoulders, the entire assembly unfolding from a small slit along her spine. Kate will find, with a bit of effort, she should have one too!

[Lost_Deep]

Clearing

Kate is robot'd!

She shakes her head. "You're smart, too. Can't use tricks with each other without the other one figuring it out, huh?" She puts her backpack at the base of the tree, and activates her jetpack.

Whee takeoff!

"HA HA HA! Just think of all the crazy stuff you can do with these tricks."

Crazy crazy stuff...

[Slii Arhem]

Clearing

Wheee! Mintbalm takes off after Kate, looping around as if flying with a jetpack was as natural to her as walking.

"You kind of have to practice them though, since pixies tend to forget all kinds of things if they don't force themselves to remember. I think that applies most in the Land Between though, because my memory has gotten sharper lately, just by hanging around here." Which is pretty awesome really. Despite all the mystical wonderment in the Land, Mintbalm wouldn't trade hanging around real people for pixies in a million years.

[Lost_Deep]

Clearing

"Yeah, I can see how that would be an issue. I'm a fast learner, though, so I should be able to remember this stuff."

She won't.

"But just think of how easy it would be to do all kind of things! It's real easy to... to..."

To SO MANY THINGS. Anything. ALL THE THINGS.

[Slii Arhem]

Clearing

Mintbalm nods vigorously. This was her absolute best trick, and even though being the only one who knew it kept her safe, she was more than happy to share it with Kate. Still though...

"Just don't tell anyone how I do it okay? It's kind of what makes me unique, except now you know it too." She can take Kate at her word that she won't tell anyone. If it was anyone else, she'd be suspicious, but not Kate.

[Lost_Deep]

Clearing

"Oh, ho, don't worry. I'm not going to tell anyone. I realized a while back the kind of damage an evil pixie could do, I mean-"

Kate stops. Her eyes get wide. She does not look well.

"I need to sit down."

She starts simply floating back to the ground, slowly. She's scared... very scared.

[Slii Arhem]

Clearing

Mintbalm swoops towards Kate as she starts acting weird. More weird, anyway, "Kate, what's wrong? Is there something the matter?" This is bad. What has got Kate so spooked all of a sudden?

[Lost_Deep]

Clearing

Kate will land and sit down, her jetpack retracting. She looks very, very scared.

"Mintbalm, I just figured out... my goodness, Mintbalm..."

She is very scared.

"Mintbalm, either one of us could be a WMD."

She says that with no doubt in her voice. She is serious.

"Wipe GLoG off the map... blight everything for miles..."

[Slii Arhem]

Clearing

Mintbalm knows that acronym from... somewhere, and it takes her all of a handful of seconds to realize what Kate is worried about. And then she laughs, only a tiny bit, because she doesn't want to be rude.

"Kate, have you ever tried causing someone pain with pixie dust? It's worse than impossible. Pixies can't be WMDs anymore than Gloamings can steal lives away." There are ways around it, maybe, but no pixie has ever wanted to try enough to find one. Converting all of GLoG into hamsters might work, if that was enough of a WMD to qualify to Kate.