Trog's Tavern CCXLX

[Cyber Punk]

Ilyona smiles. The way her face muscles move... her smile is far wider than it should be. "Sometimes people need to die so that othaws can be saved, and so I can have spare pawts for my expewiments."

She gestures with her hand. It appears that Ilyona perfers her body to be able to bend any which way. People are usually unable to bend the backs of their hands to touch their wrist. "Besides, if they didn't we-lie solely on their fwail human bodies, they might still be alive."

[DoomITP]

Rist's expression darkens, Ilyona is definitely starting to stray into forbidden territory.

We may never know, they are with Suna now.

[Cyber Punk]

"Darkened facial expression: subject is getting angry. Of course I know for a fact! You see, human lives can be saved! They just need stwonger bodies; bodies that are a pawfect fusion of flesh and machine!"

Ilyona pauses.

"I have no use for weligion, but knowledge is power, so... tell me about Suna."

[DoomITP]

Rist inhales, preparing his traditional explanation of Suna.

Suna is the goddess of justice, patron of healing and soldiers. Our order of priests follow the tenants that demand that we right wrongs inflicted on people and balance the scales. We are also meant to be the spiritual guides of our congregations and the soldiers we serve with whenever we are called to war.

[Shadowcaller]

"In case you haven't yet noticed, dear heart," Eschelle says to Ambrosia in a gently teasing voice, "We aren't living in a human society. It's alright here, darling. You aren't back home any more."

Ambrosia rubs her templat with her her hand. "I'm perfectly aware of this, Eshcelle. But it's easier to interact with humanoids like this and it's a bit more complex than simply the body. Mingling draconic and human essence." She looks down at the little pen-holding figures. "You must know that spirit and body are connected. They affect one another. I guess the easiest way to describe it is that I have parts of this dead woman's personality, she lives again in me in a way."

[Cyber Punk]

Ilyona looks bored. "Yeah yeah, standawd deity... you know what my deity is? The machine man. Take you for instance: you would be a much more effective waww pwiest if I transplanted your bwain into an undying andwoid body. Then, you could spwead your message all you like, with no fear of death!"

"I could even pewform the opewation here!"

[DoomITP]

I'd prefer that you didn't. It's the cowards way to fear death and try to evade it in such a fashion.

[Cyber Punk]

"What nonsense! I shouldn't be surprised, though. Pwiests tend to ignowe the potential millions mowe they could help and instead speak of cowawdice! But then, pwiests are foolish."

Ilyona cackles in her characteristic unnatural manner.

"Advances in medical science and my expewiments have shown there aw ways faw people to even regenewate wounds, and people still choose to die senselessly, and for a lost cause." She shakes her head, a full 360 degrees to the left, then to the right. "I am thankful that I am not a pwiest. Pwiests end up as spare pawts."

Ilyona stops and pauses.

"No offense."

[DoomITP]

Rist's expression becomes one of pure ice as he stands up.

I think we're done here.

He offers his normal courtesy of bowing while holding the chain of his Sunan medallion so that it does not lower with him as he bows before starting to walk briskly to the door.

[Cyber Punk]

Ilyona's head tilts to the side. Tilts in a 180 degree angle, momentarily.

"Icy glare. Angered at perfectly legitimate concerns to outdated beliefs. I was only twying to make conversation!"

She watches him get up. "I guess some people awen't weady for machine-hood. They'll come wound soon enough."

She watches him further as he leaves, then decides to follow after a while.

She'll follow him to Skyside without his knowing.

[Deathkeeper]

There's a small huff, and subsequently a young fifteen-year-old pulls himself up onto one of the beams. He has dirty blond hair, glasses, and is wearing jeans with a tan shirt.
"Hey, what are you doing up here?" he asks the Mew, with a tone to match his curious smile.

[Rebonack]

Well.

That's quite a bit of trouble to go to.

Forte glances up from the tiny device she's erecting atop the rafter toward the human, then peers over the edge to see how he got up here. Did he stack up a bunch of chairs on a table or something? It's very mysterious!

"Oh, hi! I really wasn't expecting much company up here, sorry if I interrupted anything," comes a human voice from her little wrist computer, rapidly translating her native chorus of mews.

Now that her attention is elsewhere, several dust bunnies come creeping out of the musty corners of the rafters and begin sneaking toward the few machines she's already set up, no doubt intent on mischief.

"I'm studying the portals and bridges that naturally form in the Nexus. I've tried investigating here at Trog's before, but because so many people and things come through here, the data was muddled. But since then I've refined my equipment, so I'm going to give it another try!"

She offers a tiny pink paw, no doubt intent on an equally tiny, pink handshake. "Fortuna Wonder."

[Deathkeeper]

Isaac shakes the hand daintily with two fingers so he doesn't crush her paw.
"Isaac Saunders. I go to Zaff's. they did always say Trog's is pretty nuts in terms of magic, even for the Nexus. Leylines crossing and such. You know what you're doing?" he asks, innocently, and not implying anything.

[Rebonack]

"Zaff's?" Fortuna replies, quirking her head off to the side a bit. "I don't think I've ever heard of that place. Hehe, not too much of a surprise, though! Inside is huge. There probably isn't a single person here who has been everywhere."

Probably not wrong there, Fortuna.

A magical school, on the one hand, would be interesting to her.

But on the other, it's a magical school. For... you know. Younger people. Forte's fields of interest are a little more specialized.

When questioned about her expertise...

"Of course! I have plenty of field experience with bridges, unstable and otherwise. There have been a few mishaps, but mistakes are just a chance to learn!"

And get catapulted into a Mystery Dungeon.

But no reason to be overly critical, right?

Meanwhile!

The dust bunnies begin fiddling with the little claps that secure one of the mew's weird devices to the top of the rafter.

[Deathkeeper]

"It's a high school and college." he explains.
Isaac's pointed ears pick up something.
"You hear that? Is anything else up here?" he asks her, looking around the rafters, his gaze not focusing on the machinery just yet. Well, it does, but not focused enough to realize the dust isn't just dust.

[Rebonack]

"Oh, neat. I really haven't focused much on the schools around here. The one they have at Inari's temple seems to work well enough. Nice and safe."

No one would seriously attack a school in the middle of a temple, right?

Not unless they feel like getting turned into a fish.

"Noise?" the mew replies, her fuzzy little ears twitching this way and that. Eventually they zero in on the troop of tiny brigands messing with her equipment. "Hey, no! That thing is sensitive and expensive, shoo!"

She waves her little paws at them in a 'shoo' motion, causing a wave of psionic power to shove them away gently.

Several of the dust bunnies pull out little spears and begin menacing at Fortuna with them.

The mew is small enough that the bunny spears might pose some degree of threat to her.

But to someone human-sized like Issac? Not so much.

[Deathkeeper]

Isaac smirks, and waves a hand, creating the illusion that the rafter is a few inches to the left and the dust bunnies are an inch or so off the edge. No normal person would fall for it and scramble to "safety" but these things aren't too bright...

[Rebonack]

The moment the bunnies 'lose' their footing they begin to flail about, trying to quickly scramble back to the illusionary rafter.

True enough, they aren't the brightest.

Over the edge they tumble!

One of them into a now rather grumpy patron's soup.

A hair in your soup is gross.

A tiny elemental made out of hair, dust, and other gross things is even worse.

But amidst all that flailing?

Tragedy strikes!

One of them clobbers Forte's machine with a spear! The device shudders and sparks, a bolt of scintillating energy lancing between it and the other devices set up! And then, with a crackling pop and the sound of a duck yodeling the Star Spangled Banner backwards while vomiting up a sheet of sand-paper, a bridge is opened!

The portal exists for only a moment before it closes, a window into a vast, starry expanse of breathtaking beauty. A few seconds, nothing more. But plenty of time for a tiny moon the size of a soft-ball to come bumbling out in search of something to orbit.

It should come as little surprise that the diminutive stellar body chooses Isaac as its gravitational anchor.

Congratulations, Isaac! You have acquired your very own pet moon.

[Deathkeeper]

Isaac looks in horror at the little rock. For a second or two, nothing registers about it besides it being a round floating rock.
But then he gets a feeling in the pit of his gut.
A really funny feeling.
So he gives a hiccup. And then a hiss. And he tries to bat away the tiny satellite, but all he has to do that with are feathers, not form enough to deflect it at all. His legs writhe unnaturally and twist into each other, becoming a single scaly limb, as his shirt disintegrates into scales. There's a small pop, and what's left is a large snake with scales of sky-blue, yellow, and peach, with a pair of scintillating colorful wings and a small line of feathers reaching from the crest on his head down to his feathery tail. His somewhat dragonish serpent head yawns its big jaws, coiling around the rafter and letting its wings and head hang upside-down.

"Hoo, boy. Really needed to stretch my wings. And I can talk and think coherently now, so I guess it's fine I didn't take my meds. That makes life easier." he muses.

[Rebonack]

What.

"What."

No, seriously.

What?

The moon continues orbiting Isssssssaac.

[Deathkeeper]

Isssaac waves his wings around in mirth, making him wave around a bit as they displace air.
"I got bit by a werewolf, and now I'm a werecoatl. Full Moons set me off, and this is certainly a whole moon." he explains.

Forte should know all about werecreatures. She read the scene where Jace was one using her chaos powers!

[goto124]

Remember the baby emperor penguin here?

It's waddling about the bar counter, chasing after the cute widdle moon!

Then it jumps and flaps its flippers wildly.

The flightless bird, of course, plummets straight to the wooden floor like a big fat rock.

*thump*

That looks like it hurt.

[Rebonack]

"I might be a little hazy on my knowledge of werewolf mythology and how they work in the Nexus, but I'm pretty sure that getting bit by one means that you would turn into one, too," Forte points out. "Not into a quetzalcoatl."

Why would Forte know what he is?

That's easy!

A feathered serpent queen was one of the villains in a Daring Doo book.

And Daring Doo was just a series written by an explorer regarding her own exploits.

Which means feathered serpents are totally a thing which exists in Forte's home world.

"Umm... sorry about the moon. That might be my innate chaos magic running in the background looking for a way to make this situation sillier."

Isaac DOES seem pretty silly right now.

[Deathkeeper]

"Oooh, chaos magic is fun. Don't sweat it. Like I said, really needed to stretch my wings. And it's so much easier to, well, hang loose, if you know what I mean, when I'm like this." he explains.

"And no, a coatl! Big Q was a sun god. I have some light magic, but nothing like that. Mostly I just try to relax. And maybe make a few folks laugh while I'm here." he says, reaching behind him and producing a little red clown nose, sticking it on and giving it a honk or two before pulling it off and returning it to whence it came.

Feathers really shouldn't be able to do that. But Forte knows pegasi, so that really shouldn't be weird.

[Rebonack]

"Well, you ARE hanging, so I guess that's true," Forte muses.

She could do that!

But hanging around upside down for too long makes her get dizzy.

She hums at his vocabulary comment, though. "Really? Differences in naming conventions I suppose. From what I've learned of human mythology, Pegasus was a singular god, too. But that didn't stop whole races of winged equines called 'pegasi' from being a thing. Back home, the quetzalcoatl are a race of winged serpents that live down in the southern jungles."

No real reaction to the clown nose, though.

Forte has no strong feelings one way or the other regarding clowns.

She does have strong feelings about her equipment not getting busted, though. After a quick look she heaves a sigh of relief. "Oh good... nothing burned out. I won't have to replace anything after all."

A beat.

"Umm... are you going to be able to change back?" she asks. "Maybe... stuff the little moon in a sack?"

[Deathkeeper]

Issssac shrugs his wings.
"Dunno. Generally if a therianthrope has their change triggered, they're stuck for a few hours. Sometimes until morning the next day. So either way, not soon. And I don't think I want to stuff him in a sack. He seems pretty happy doing his thing." he says, poking the moon with his tail.

[Rebonack]

"Well, I'm glad you aren't mad at me," Fortuna says, her ears drooping slightly. "Weird stuff happens around me a lot. So far no one has been hurt, but I still worry..."

The idea of her chaos magic harming one of her friends flatly terrifies her.

It's why she has been avoiding her 'natural' shape as much as possible.

Doing so dampens her innate chaos magic, but apparently it doesn't completely mute it.

Otherwise Isssac would probably still be Isaac right now.

Regardless!

Several of those dust bunnies are climbing back up into the rafters whilst Forte tinkers with one of her devices.

"The divide between worlds is really thin in here," she explains. "So I thought it would be a good place to try opening some temporary bridges to gather data. Once I've got the process nailed down, I should be able to create a bridge between the Nexus and any universe it has ever touched."

[Deathkeeper]

Isssac uncoils from the rafter, floating over to Forte and trying to wrap her in a colorful, feathery hug.
"Aw, don't feel bad. I'm sure you'd never hurt anyone, not even by accident that would be some terrible luck, and not even mine is that bad. I know you'll pull through." he says reassuringly.

[Rebonack]

Aaww...

Hugs.

Getting hugged by a snakeish thing isn't totally weird for Forte.

She hugs Nick Jr all the time!

"Thanks for the-" Fortuna briefly ducks to avoid getting clocked by Isssac's pet moon. "Thanks for the encouragement."

A beat.

"I don't suppose you were born here in the Nexus?" she asks curiously. "Or did you get stranded here?"

Meanwhile, the dust bunnies creep closer...

[Deathkeeper]

Issssac disengages, lazily swiping at the bunnies with his feather duster of a tail.
"Nope. Born here. Lived in thissscity all my life. Was pretty normal until a few years ago, honesstly." he explains.