paixaorpg | Are you a man or a mouse? ...Well, there's both here, actually... [active]

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Are you a man or a mouse? ...Well, there's both here, actually... [active]

Characters: Piers, Reep
Content: Now that things are clear, Reep and Piers are able to continue on with whatever they might have been doing.
Time: Evening
Setting: Niflheim area
Warnings: None

Reep sighed softly to himself as he peeked out from the shelter that he and Piers had managed to find. It wasn't the grandest of shelters, merely someplace sandwiched between the wall of a building and one of the golden-leafed trees that seem to populate this place, but it had been extremely helpful in protecting them against the weird weather.

Metallic leaves lay strewn around the two figures. Even if it had helped to protect them, it seemed as though the tree hadn't escaped a bit of a beating from the weather.

Reep's whiskers twitched. "Quite an...interesting experience that was," he remarked. "And not one I hope repeats itself anytime soon."

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"That's one way of putting it."

Piers had discreetly taken the liberty of casting a localized Parch effect over the area sheltered by the tree, effectively drying himself and the mouse without drawing undue attention. It didn't seem like his Psynergy would be too much help inside of this city, anyway, since there seemed to be abundant water if whoever led this city would waste it on causing weather within the domes over it.

"I take it the city isn't always like this? I recall you saying you've been here a while..." Absent-mindedly, the mariner picked up a shining leaf and toyed with it, but it didn't seem to be made of anything more special than the same gold the coins in his pockets were made of. "I've learned that first impressions, while lasting, are rarely ever accurate. What else is there to be learned about this city?"

Reepicheep may have been a rodent of unusual size, but Piers had learned to deal with strange things in his life, and he almost welcomed the oddity and the adventure of Paixao as alternatives to the disturbing normality of Weyard after the return of Alchemy.

"No, it's not," said Reepicheep, shaking his head. "That's the first time I've ever seen such a thing happen within this walls. The weather here is usually mild - like it is now, actually."

He still didn't see how such a thing could have happened, but it had. "What I do know of it is that it's a rather large city," - well, it had been to him, at least - "filled with all sorts of people. You have the people who seem to come from different places, and then you have the native folk..." The blonde-haired people of this city had seemed rather odd to them...there was something that was different about them, though he couldn't ever place what exactly it was.

"People from other places..." which meant Piers wasn't the only one who would be seeking his fortune in this city, though it was plenty big. "And then the native folk... rather like dolls, aren't they? Delicate, beautiful, and yet... something about those smiles seems faked."

A little too much like home, if he stopped to think about it hard enough, this glorious architecture inhabited by people who didn't seem to notice or that they lived in splendor. Though perhaps Piers had himself been like that not too long ago, and seeing the conditions the rest of the world lived in had given him a different perspective.

Maybe Reepicheep saw it differently. Piers could only imagine that the mouse saw it differently, though he had no idea what a mouse would see in a world dominated by humans.

He pocketed the leaf he'd been playing with, thinking it might be worth keeping as a memento or something...

"Dolls, yes, I suppose that's a decent way of putting it," said Reepicheep, nodding in agreement. "They seem like humans, but there's something missing within them. It's almost disturbing, really."

His tail thumped against the ground. "Speaking of people from other places, I hope it's not too much to ask you about from where you came?" The mouse's eyes held curiosity within them. "If for no other reason than I find the concept of people from other worlds to be absolutely fascinating."

"Not a problem," agreed the sailor. "I'm not much of a speaker, but I guess I've been pretty much everywhere there is to go there, so... where to start..." After a moment, Piers located a place to sit on the ground, out of the way of the doll-like locals' foot traffic, and made himself moderately comfortable, as well as closer to eye-level with his new friend.

"The world as a whole is generally referred to as Weyard by the people who live there..."

Piers described the world's oceans (which he knew quite well), several noteworthy landmarks (the elemental Rocks and the Lighthouses of course), major cities worth notice (Tolbi, which he'd finally gotten around to seeing-- a bit overrated and overpriced in his opinion), and small towns that didn't seem special but had friendly residents, cheap inns, and good food and drink (Mikasalla).

He had a few minutes of frustration deciding what to talk about and what not to talk about in terms of people, and finally settled on not defining Psynergy, but indicating that certain groups of people had certain powers (certainly a mouse of Reepicheep's stature and intellect wasn't very common even where he was from?), though the majority did not. He described a few of the more interesting groups of people-- the people of Prox with their draconic features, militaristic mannerisms, and inherent fire powers, the wind-gifted werewolves at Garoh.

Piers didn't mention Lemuria. Perhaps out of habit, perhaps because it was bad form to talk about a place you'd been banished from.

He didn't mention the struggle to restore Alchemy to the world, recent as it was to his mind-- it was still a sore spot to his own people, yet it was ancient history to the rest of Weyard (though if you told a Proxian you'd been to Vale, he wouldn't ever look you in the eye again). He'd had good friends in that quest, but everyone had made some horrible mistakes at some point, and most of it was better left unmentioned.

Finally, he was done. His throat had gone hoarse, the (*ahem* exceptionally stylized) sun was well below the horizon, and his stomach was beginning to offer its own opinion on his stories. "Goodness! I rambled for a while there, didn't I? I do apologize for keeping dinner waiting-- how about finding someplace to eat and turn in for the night... on me, of course?"

Even with all that Piers had talked about, Reep had continued to keep his attention on what had been said - for the most part, anyways. The mouse's ears had swiveled around every time he thought he'd heard something else, but otherwise he'd caught the story. "Sounds like a plan," he said. "Though you need not apologize for taking so long - I found it to be absolutely fascinating, even if it did take a while to say."

His ears twitched once more. "Had anything specific in mind?"

"Not really, but where there are people, there has to be a place for them to eat at, right? And there are a lot of people here..."

Unlike a lot of men, Piers had learned that asking for directions was not a shameful thing and was a lot easier than trying to find one's way blindly through a new place-- and in the company of women with attitudes, a lot easier on the male ego. A few stopped pedestrians later, he thanked a dollish blonde woman for her time and followed her directions to a small, shabby-ish street vendor. The food would be unspectacular, but easily affordable.

"Will this work?"

Reepicheep eyed the vendor with a slightly skeptical look. Admittedly, that wasn't the kind of thing he'd had in mind when he thought of getting something to eat...though hey, it would have been better than nothing.

"It should, as long as the food's decent," he said. Then again, considering he'd once sailed for a while upon a ship and had to sustain himself on whatever had been available there, 'decent' meant something that was at least edible. A random street vendor was bound to definitely fulfill that requirement. "Actually, yes, it would work," he added a moment later.

Piers didn't have to be a Jupiter Adept to know the mouse was less than thrilled with buying from a street vendor... but no one had offered an actual restaurant or an inn or something. "I don't know how they expect us to find our own ways around," the sailor muttered lightly, counting out the coins from his coat into the hands of the vendor. "I haven't seen a map anywhere, and these papers-" he indicated the pamphlets stuck in another pocket "- aren't doing any good, either..."

"While a map would be useful, it's not necessarily needed," said Reepicheep. "Part of the fun of adventuring is finding out for yourself what's out there. Though, now that you mention it..." He tapped his journal with a claw a few times. "I believe I might have seen something similar to a map in this device while I was checking it out before. Perhaps that's worth checking out."

"Is that what it's for...?" Piers wondered absently. He'd seen a few interesting gadgets on his journey, and one or two lesser wonders since then, but it hadn't occurred to him yet to investigate the device he'd been given at the gate. And, as Reepicheep had mentioned, part of the adventure was exploring... and if the mouse wasn't too concerned about it, chances were good there weren't any terrible monsters out after dark, though the citizenry were all turning in for the night. "We can study the devices as we walk, then? You're right in that adventuring is more fun when one can explore and find things on their own..."

(OOC: This is taking forever. Shall we wrap it up and start a new thread?)

"It's for a lot of things, apparently," said Reep. "You can put messages on it and have others respond to you, and it looks as though there's plenty of other things to do...it's a nice device."

He nodded. "Sure. I could use the opportunity to learn more about it, myself." The mouse played with a few of the buttons on there, finally managing to pull up the map he had seen before. He turned the journal upside down for a moment, then on its side, and then right side up again. "Hmm. Any place in particular you wanted to go see? Or try to see?"

(ooc: yeah, sounds good)

Piers saw the map and swore like a sailor. Apparently, they'd just passed an actual sit-down restaurant that would have been much preferable to the fare of a street vendor, and no one had told him!

"I'm not entirely sure why I was sent here, let alone where I should go," he answered half-thoughtfully as he set his practical side to work figuring out the buttons and their functions on the little contraption.

At first glance, he'd thought the city was quiet and blank and really pretty boring, if lovely to look at (a bit like Lemuria still in decline, he thought wistfully). But learning and navigating the "journal" like a new ocean revealed currents and undercurrents not visible from the surface: kidnappings, a weasel-like creature decrying the incompetent Mayor, said Mayor's attempts at placating numerous beings from innumerable other worlds, waves of amnesia--

-- and, almost innoticeable amid many journals and many complaints or requests, a small notice demanding the attention of any and all hailing from a world called Weyard. Piers made a mental note to take a look back at that journal later, closed the device, and looked at his companion.

"At least now we can find our way back if we run into trouble. For now, it seems that the nearest inn is still quite a ways away-- we'd better start walking."

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Are you a man or a mouse? ...Well, there's both here, actually... [active]

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