zenderael_rl | Tyrus + Harriet: Dropping By

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Tyrus + Harriet: Dropping By

Who: Harriet, Tyrus (as Travis)
When: Monday the 15th
Where: The Nenakret
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: TBD

Pretending to be Travis just got much more complicated. Once he realized that the worlds merged, Tyrus had to deal with the fact that he could suddenly make contact with the people in the Nenakret. Sunday afternoon, he took a warp there, and promptly went about checking up on old business contacts, friends, and generally making certain that his life as Tyrus hadn't fallen apart entirely. He went back to Fall City -- maybe he should have thought of it as Bastan, now? -- though, deciding it was better to keep living there as Travis for now.

Which meant he had to get in touch with people that Travis hadn't seen in awhile. Which meant going back to the Nenakret the next day, but this time in Earth clothes, with the brown contacts in, and acting stunned and amazed at everything he saw. Life could be confusing.

Thankfully, he he actually liked Harriet. It would be fun enough to be worth the confusing identity switching, he suspected, even if their last conversation had left him disquieted. When he got to the palace -- it seemed like where she should be -- he found a spellsword guard. It was a newer one; one he had never seen before, which seemed like the best bet. He mentioned that Travis Handley was here to see the Khshathra and she knew what it was about.

Hopefully, he thought, this worked. He had done a daring escape from the palace once before, but it was roleplayed. Somehow, he suspected the real thing would be much harder. It bothered him that he had become paranoid a day after the merge, but it was a good habit.

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The Khshathra could be found in the alchemists' headquarters, which was where Tyrus was led. The large stone building would likely be a familiar one to Tyrus, although the Khshathra's personal underground lab was a somewhat rarer sight. The place buzzed with constructs, quite literally, as she had developed a penchant for designing them after bugs.

At work mixing up a potion, she ignored him for a bit after he entered, finally taking the mixture off of its flame and setting it down to cool.

Once her experiment was settled, she flipped up her goggles and waved at Travis.

"Welcome! Watch where you step!"

As if on cue, a slug-looking thing oozed over his shoes and then smiled up goopily at him.

He had been to the alchemists' headquarters many times. He had to hurry along just a couple of times -- so someone he knew did not see him -- and play up the stunned Earther aspect a lot. It was easy enough to fake once he got into the Khshathra's lab. He had never been here before and he stared around at it, open-mouthed and gawking at the sights to be seen.

"Impossible things that world has never seen before," he murmured, half lyrical, half spoken, "in Dexter's lab."

Then, he saw the slug-looking thing that moved over his shoes -- oh, jeez, that was gross -- and looked up at her. He grinned, sheepishly, before he looked around. "I was gonna ask what you've been up to since you got to the Nenakret," he said, "and I think that's gonna be a pretty long answer."

"Don't mind Khshathraslug," Harriet said. She crouched down and made cooing noises to summon it off his shoes and over to her, at which point she patted it like a dog.

"There's no point to him except he can ooze under doors and be cute and freaky."

She patted the slug again.

"Gosh what haven't I been up to? I made a remote control robot to help fight a god, I'm building the Spenta a new eyeball, I'm helping work up possible formulas to fix the Undertow... and then also bugbots, for funsies."

"Cute and freaky," he repeated, looking down at the slug. He did not quite have it in him to kneel down and pet it. It looked freaky. Of course, that was sort of the point. He looked up back at her and grinned. "A new eyeball for the Spenta--and a robot? You can just call it a construct, Nyx. I played an alchemist, remember?"

He was an alchemist, but that could not go mentioned here.

He looked around for the bugs, though. He disliked bugs; he wanted to keep an eye on where they were. Then, he looked back at Harriet's slug. He had to admit some curiosity, now that he looked at it.

"Does it use a frame?" he asked, immediately and out of the blue. "Or did you manage to make it, uh, boneless but still work?"

There were bugs lurking all around the lab, most of them the size of a basketball or larger. Sorry, Tyrus.

Harriet looked up when he asked about the slug's frame or lack thereof.

WHAT A GREAT QUESTION TRAVIS! Actually pretty informed about the way constructs worked. Had he been studying up?

"It's a chemical suspension attuned to a small water-based core," she said, pointing out the marble-sized core barely visible through the slug's translucent body. "I forget, were you thinking about becoming an alchemist in real life?"

Oh, great, it was Starship Troopers in here. Tyrus's face screwed up a little, wondering where that thought came from for a moment.

But the slug was remarkable enough to distract him -- momentarily -- from the bugs. He did step to the side a little when one flew in close, before he nodded and looked back up at Harriet. "Uh," he said, "maybe--I mean, I want to think about it a little, if it's okay."

He looked back at the slug. That was incredible, he determined. "Did you use anything as a skin, or does it just keep its shape on its own?"

"It's kinda semi-fluid, semi-solid, but no skin."

She considered the slug, trying to come up with an apt metaphor.

"Like cake batter?" she decided.

The slug looked decidedly less delicious than cake batter.

"I guess I can see it being like cake batter," Tyrus said, "or maybe like ooze." He frowned after he said that. Of course it was like ooze! It left ooze all over his shoes!

He shrugged at Harriet.

"How'd your god-fighting construct work?" he asked. "I'm guessing it was, uh, pretty big..."

"It was! Though it didn't really do any god-punching or anything. I had it use a potion gun to buff the other guild leaders to make them super strong or turn them into giants."

It had worked out pretty well until it got smashed and things turned terrifying...

"Oh yeah, I remember you talking about that potion gun," Ty said. He tilted his head to the side. "What became of the Khshathrabot, anyways? I meant to ask."

"Wrecked, but I still have the core." She made a face, recalling the unpleasant moment that the live feed had gone dark and she'd thought her clowning around and failing to take the battle seriously had gotten the others killed.

"I disassembled it and kept the good pieces. I can build a bigger, bolder Khshathrabot later."

Oh, unpleasant memories there. Tyrus felt bad for having brought them up; he glanced away, a hint of guilt in his face, and looked at one of the many workbenches inside of the laboratory.

"One thing I heard about some alchemists doing is, like, a smaller construct built around the core," he said. "It lets the core get away when the main construct gets totaled. Like an ejection seat, y'know?"

"Oh, yeah, I know about that," Harriet said. She couldn't help knowing it; she was the Khshathra after all. In fact, she had to quirk an eyebrow at a guy who'd learned alchemy from hearsay and gameplay making specific suggestions to her (even if they were strangely good ones).

"I didn't have time to build a construct within a construct last battle, but it's definitely a good idea for next time."

She could have easily lost that core if things had been just a little more disastrous at the end.

"Oh, right. Khshathra," he said. He laughed. "Should have thought of that."

He shook his head, before he looked over at one of the terribly flying insect constructs that certainly never needed to be created. Why had Harriet insisted on creating those? The world had enough real insects. His face screwed up, slightly, before he looked back at her.

"What're the bugs gonna do?" he asked. "Or at they just kinda like the Khshashlug--Khooshraslug--the slug."

That was a tongue twister.

"Some of them have actual functions. Lightningbugbot takes magical X-rays. And Khshathrapede has lots of arms and can hold stuff for me?And the potionbees can swarm and deliver potions over a wide area. Whenever we finally figure out a cure for the Undertow the potionbees will have a chance to shine."

Right now there were only three potionbees, but look Tyrus they were coming over to say hello! Bzzzz.

Edited 2013-05-30 17:29 (UTC)

Oh, gods, they were coming towards him. He looked at one with a grimace, before he looked back at Harriet. "They, uh, they don't sting, do they?"

He took a nervous sidestep to the left.

"Nah, all their stingers do is slurp up potion. They're pretty much glorified water droppers."

They still made an ominous buzzing sound, though.

"Oh, that's... that's better than what I imagined," Ty said, with more than a little nervousness seeping through. He shook his head, tucking his hands underneath his armpits, as if to reduce the amount of stingable area on his body. He maybe did not quite believe you, Harriet.

He laughed nervously.

"So an artificial eye, huh!"

"Come here, bugs," Harriet told her constructs, finally picking up on Travis' blatant discomfort. The various constructs moved away from Tyrus over to Harriet, though she did look a little more imposing with this buggy backdrop.

"Yeah, I'm not sure if he wants all its extra features to be a secret, though."

Thank the gods!

He let out a long, relieved sigh, before he nodded. "Yeah, I guess the Spenta's eye would be kind of a state secret," he said. "It usually is."

He scratched at the back of his head. "All this is awesome, though. I never got to come here before, you know?" The Khshathra's laboratory was closed to played characters, of course, even if it wasn't quite how he meant. "You've really been knocking them out, huh?"

Of course he hadn't gotten to come in he- oh he meant the game, right.

"This is the part of the job I really understand," Harriet answered, a bit awkwardly.

Hiding in her lab in actual Zenderael making bugbots had become stress relief. Her life had chaaaanged.

"Politics," he sighed. That was even a genuine feeling; the politics in Bohun Upas had annoyed him to no small end. He hesitated a moment, before he took a seat on one of the benches. He laced his fingers together and looked at her thoughtfully. "I think I'd like the mad science part more, too."

"It's a shame that's the only thing I got an automatic download of," Harriet said. Duncan's speeches be damned, she didn't see why she couldn't magically understand statecraft if she could be made to magically understand alchemy.

Maybe she should try to invent a way to transfer information between brains.

He looked confused for a second, before he realized what she meant. The brain came with nothing about being the Sharifa. He frowned, before he nodded at Harriet. He could empathize a little with that.

"I think it's because politics are about people, y'know?" he asked. "They're fuckin' hard. There's no formulas and crap, and everyone keeps everything hidden. I like the science-y stuff better. I don't gotta figure out what everyone else is thinking."

She gave him a funny look.

"Do you seriously just want to be an alchemist right now, dude? I can make you an alchemist."

He seemed to have been dropping hints furiously, or... something.

"I meant computer science!" Tyrus insisted, awkwardly.

"...Oh."

She believed it. But now she was just confused over what his deal was. SOMETHING was weird.

"But I could, you know."

"Let me think on it," he said. "I might want to become a mage, too."

Maybe that was best. He sighed -- but try as he might, he couldn't perfectly hide everything, and he looked awkward at it. He certainly was not telling her everything.

But, really, how could Tyrus?

"Boo, mages," Harriet said. She could not help but feel in competition with the other guild leaders when it came to recruiting friends.

Probably because give or take a Mal, her friends had all turned up their noses at alchemy EVEN WHEN IT WAS THE ONLY SUPERPOWER SET READILY AVAILABLE, COME ON YOU GUYS.

Sigh!

"Aw, come on," Tyrus said with the sort of grin that said he was not remotely serious at the moment. He shrugged his shoulders.

"It's the only class where you can chill out in your bathrobe 24/7 and pretend that it's respectable!"

"That isn't even the cool part of being a mage! If you go off and become one, you have to at least appreciate the ABILITY TO USE MAGIC. ...In my place..."

She hung her head theatrically.

Using mana to activate alchemical systems was just NOT the same thing (she supposed).

"There, there, your Khshathraness," Tyrus said. He got a small kick out of being able to use a very informal version of his national leader's proper form of address.

"It does make me crazy." He grinned, sheepishly, and shrugged again. He spread his hands out wide, in a 'what can you do?' sort of motion. "I don't think I need to get more crazy. But I should think on it, right?"

"Oh, right, that's important." She always forgot about the mage-crazy.

"You should look after your brain."

Harriet certainly planned on looking after hers.

"Can't live without them!" he said with a smile. He looked around again, before he looked back at her. "It's pretty awesome, getting to see this, though. It does look like a lot of fun."

Except if he let her make him an alchemist, she would probably realize he already was one. Damn, damn, damn.

"Do you like being here? I mean--you know, now that the war's over, living in the Nenakret and all."

"I keep thinking it'll wrap up and I'll go back to living at home at some point, so that part is awkward," Harriet said. "Other than that it's a blast. And I can actually visit home again, now..."

"Yeah..." He trailed off with that, genuine reflection in his voice. "No going back, now, huh?" He looked up at her and grinned. "You'll get used to it. Plus, now you got rank. You can just do something crazy, look at someone, and go, 'DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY.'"

He snapped his fingers for emphasis.

"Bam!" he declared. "You're off scot free. It seriously works like that."

"It's good to be the science queen," Harriet said.

Being the boss was fuckin' confusing, though.

He laughed aloud at that. It probably was good to be the science queen. And besides, he recognized that reference! It was one of the movies Travis had, that he watched, and that he actually liked.

"You've seen that old movie?" he asked. "Or did that one just get kinda rooted in pop culture?"

"Pop culture, I think. What movie's it from?"

Harriet wasn't very well versed in media, unless you counted anime.

"History of the World, Part I," Tyrus said. "It's great. You got a television or movie thingy in here? We should watch it if you haven't seen it. It's got singing Spanish Inquisitors."

"I think my laptop is around here, somewhere," Harriet said.

Did she have time for a movie? Well. Maybe...

Edited 2013-06-02 00:40 (UTC)

"There we go, then!" Tyrus said. He grinned. "If you want to. I know you might be busy and it's not anime at all."

"That's all right," Harriet said, casting a glance around at her lab full of bugs, experiments, and all else.

"My interests have expanded a bit in recent months."

"It's like going to college, but cooler," Tyrus said. "Learn new things, see new things, get awesome experiences, but there's more mad science and magical powers involved."

"Yup, pretty much," Harriet said.

It wasn't the first time she'd had that thought.

"And even after you learn everything, you can never go home again."

Tyrus laughed at that. It came easy enough.

"But at least you make a bunch of cool new friends!"

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Tyrus + Harriet: Dropping By

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