Inside 66: Order up!

[Chaotic Bob]

[Abandoned Tech Store]

While not as ignorant as some, Edict's level of technological knowledge still seems to be drawing a line here somewhere.
He's not really sure how a simple disk of amalgamated parts is supposed to produce this holographic entity elsewhere.

But like magic, sufficiently advanced technology is difficult to comprehend as a matter of course.
"Depending on what you would need, I could probably acquire additional components, but the location itself is rather low-tech. When you say you would only be able to communicate, would you be blind elsewhere?"

[bc56]

Busy Street
Open Scene - Interaction wanted!

People are hurrying to and from their daily tasks. Amidst the crowd, many things are easily overlooked, but just as easily spotted by someone who isn't in such a rush. One such thing can be found in a storm drain by the side of the road. A tiny spherical robot, no more than an inch in diameter, feebly struggles to climb out of the grate. Two of its four spindly legs are caught, and the other two cannot find enough purchase on the pavement to pull free. The robot has a pair of paper thin metal wings, but they are mangled by numerous puncture marks, reminiscent of the teeth of some animal. The only other feature of note is the camera which takes up the front of the robot, constantly focusing and refocusing on the obstacle in front of it.

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

"Nah, it's fine. Waking up early kinda feels like a day off. Don't have to rest up for a job, you know?" Cassidy grins, then has a moment of realization. "Huh, I guess you wouldn't. Anyway, it's fine. Soykaf? I'm making one anyway." She fishes around in the dusty cabinets for one of her cups of soykaf powder, as well as a protein bar.

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

"Eh, caffeine doesn't work on me," Charity says, grimacing, "Makes it just bitter water, rather than something helpful. If you've got one of those bars to share I'll take one, though."

Whether or not Cassidy is willing to give Charity a protein bar, she'll finish up with the bowl and say "so, how long until we head out?"

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

"Soon as I'm up and suited. I don't leave without at least one of my guns. Best to leave early-ish anyway, before foot traffic around here gets awful." Cassidy tosses a bar Charity's way, then works on brewing her self some almost, not-quite-coffee. "Fair warning, it's cold up where MERC is. Crazy people saw the arctic base in those old cartoons and thought it was cool."

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

Charity nods, and unwraps her protein bar to eat. She'll eat in silence for the moment, apparently staring at Cassidy with a frown.

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

Cassidy takes a few hasty gulps of the soykaf once it's brewed, and puts the cup down with a wince. "Frag me, that's bad. Y'know they have real coffee in some stores for cheap here? Never bothered to lo-" She stops once she sees Charity's expression. "What? I got something on my face?"

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

"No," Charity says simply, "Just trying to figure out where you're from. Never heard of soy based crap like this before." And really, 'crap' is putting it mildly.

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

"That's it? I'm from Seattle. Redmond Barrens. I think it's... 2057 now? I had trouble keeping track after I first got here." Cassidy looks down at the cup and grimaces. "Count yourself lucky. Some of these people don't know how good they've got it, with their real foods. What about you? You at least know what a gun is, I think, but that ain't much to go on."

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

"I'm from 2007," she says, "We've got something like a fifty year timegap between us, then. I grew up in Marlick Bay; never heard of the Redmond Barrens. Where I'm from, Seattle's a small town."

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

"I've read some sites about the times before everything happened. Cripes, it's weird hearing about a time without magic." Cassidy finishes off her soykaf, grimacing at the taste again. "Weird to hear about a small town named Seattle, too. I've lived there my whole life and I've never left the Barrens. Never heard of any Marlick Bay either, but that's no surprise, really."

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

Chairty tilts her head, "Different worlds entirely, then. Marlick Bay's one of the major US cities in my world, and magic's been around for centuries."

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

Cassidy lets out a low whistle. "Yeah, real dang different. Magic came back in, like '09. Dragons flying around, bunch of cults popped up, US broke up, lot of crap's happened in the last few decades."

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

"Yeah, that's sort of magic's deal. Imposing your will on reality," Charity says, "I was born with my power 'cause of what I am. You?"

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

"Hm? I'm what's called a physical adept. I channel magic into my own body, at least that's what some wizard told me. I just go by instinct." Cassidy narrows her eyes as she looks at Charity. ""Hold on, what are you? Look plenty human to me."

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

"Ooooh, you do chi channeling? That explains it. I've met a few people like that before, even learned some of their moves," Charity nods to herself. Yeah, that makes sense! "As for me, I'm half demon. I just walk around in human form because it spooks fewer people; transmogrification and all that. Not easy, per se, but learning a form or two is a lot simpler than having people run screaming from you all your life," she takes another bite of the protein bar, "and before you ask, I'm as short as I am because this is how I'd look if I didn't have demon-blood."

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

"I guess you could call it that. Never really felt like it to me." But then, what exactly does chi feel like? The image Cassidy has is likely nowhere near close to correct there.
"Oh. I guess that makes sense, that you'd walk around like that. And I wasn't gonna ask. I've seen some demons around here, they're as different as humans are." Awfully blasé reaction to that.

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

Then Chairty's presumption of Cassidy's character is correct, "what do you mean by 'different as humans are'?"

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

Cassidy waves a hand back and forth in an 'eh' motion. "That ain't the right word. Diverse, I guess? Demons look way different from each other. No reason to think being half-demon would make you super tall or anything like that."

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

Charity takes another bite of her protein bar, looking flatly at Cassidy for a long moment, "I'm six-foot-five normally."

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

Cassidy looks up at the height that Charity indicated. "Dang, that's pretty tall." She shrugs. "But yeah, I've met a demon that was actually shorter than you right now." She finally unwraps her own protein bar and takes a bite out. "As well, I'm not gonna hang on it."

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

Charity grunts, "I bet if I was your height as a human, I'd have broken seven feet. Woulda been nice." she finishes off the last of the protein bar. It wasn't good, but, hey, food is food.

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

Cassidy cackles at that. "I'd like to see that, not gonna lie." She tosses the wrapper in the general vicinity of the trash can. "Hey, I'm gonna be getting my stuff soon. There anything you have that you wanna bring with you to MERC? Just your clothes?"

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

Charity shrugs, "It's all I've got. I'm thinking if I keep borrowing your clothes, I should change back to normal, though; it's all pretty loose on me right now." Charity tosses her own wrapper in with impressive accuracy.

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

"Not like I can stop you. Got a hole in the floor to remind me of that." Cassidy laughs again. "I'm gonna get changed, then. I won't be long." With that, she's quick to down the rest of her protein bar and head back to the bedroom.

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

When Cassidy comes back out into the dining room, Charity is still there, but not how she left the half-demon. She's covered in black scales, lines along her body glowing a pale green, with amber eyes and shark-like teeth visible in her face, shadowed by a large, white, bony crest that juts from her forehead and sweeps back, her still blond hair spilling down over her back.

Oh, and she's still as curvy as she was as a human. Unless Cassidy's got some impressive curves herself, her clothes on Charity will be straining somewhat around the chest and hips, but it's certainly a better fit than when she was so much smaller and the clothes looked like they were about to swallow her.

"Ready to go?" she asks, her voice carrying an odd resonance as she speaks.

[Devixer]

Quiet Zone - Condemned House

Cassidy, for her part, doesn't look much different - just a new pair of black cargo pants, and a different t-shirt for the same synthwave artist, and now she's wearing an open hoodie, to conceal the pistol and the light submachine gun on her hips. She looks at Charity, and whistles. The clothes did strain a little - Cassidy has a more athletic frame than a curvy one - but she had to admit that they didn't look bad on her.

"You clean up nice. Yeah, I'm ready whenever you are." Cassidy heads for the front door. If Charity had tried it earlier, she'd have found it to be rather sticky, taking a good effort to open. Cassidy, for her part, shoves the door open with her shoulder.

[Halae]

[Quiet Zone - Condemned House]

Charity will be right behind the other woman as they head out. She seems hesitant, though. She did mention how she's not used to going out in public like this after all. But after that moment of hesitation, she's outdoors with Cassidy, letting the other woman lead the way to MERC.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Abandoned Tech Store]

While not as ignorant as some, Edict's level of technological knowledge still seems to be drawing a line here somewhere.
He's not really sure how a simple disk of amalgamated parts is supposed to produce this holographic entity elsewhere.

But like magic, sufficiently advanced technology is difficult to comprehend as a matter of course.
"Depending on what you would need, I could probably acquire additional components, but the location itself is rather low-tech. When you say you would only be able to communicate, would you be blind elsewhere?"

[Abandoned Tech Store]

"Hmm. How best to describe it..." Affidavit rubs his chin thoughtfully with one hand and twirls his cane thoughtfully with the other. All entirely pointless gestures of course - rubbing one's chin can't really help with thinking when there's no physical chin there to rub at all. "Ah! How about this? Imagine you stuck one of your appendages through a portal to someplace. It's still connected to you. You can still control it. Now, imagine that appendage had fully-functioning senses. It could see and hear and you could communicate through it. That disk is basically such a portal for me."

Does that work? Hopefully. A skittering mass of wires offers the disk to Edict.

"Now, say someone closes that portal on your appendage, but it's then able to act on its own as if it was still you. And as long as it reconnects to your whole at some point, you'll have knowledge of everything it did. If that disk can find something to communicate with, it will be the whole of me acting through it. Otherwise, it can function adequately on its own, but you'll need to bring it somewhere more, ah, connected to technology to reconnect to me. Is that a clear enough explanation?"

[Earl of Purple]

Kushiro Inn

Keiko wakes at dawn, and is quick to her feet. She picks up her staff and heads over to the window, to try and make sense of just where she is, and how she had encountered so many strange creatures in such a short time.

Makuro is quick to wake after Keiko moves, and sits up, blinking a little in confusion as she remembers where she is and, more importantly, just what she is now. The Case 53 shakes her head and stretches, her elongated limbs moving a little further than their length would suggest- she's got some level of enhanced flexibility, as well as her reflexes, strength, night vision, and agility.