summonerd | i just wanna know: who broke it?

i just wanna know: who broke it?

[Sheena'd thought she was all done with dimensional travel, now that the two worlds were united. But here she is, having fallen asleep in one world and woken up in a Tethe'alla that's just different enough from the one she knows to be constantly jarring. Her connections to Aselia's summon spirits dangle loose, snapped by distance - not even Origin's power could follow her here, it seems. That's more than a little unsettling.

It takes her some time, alone in a bizarro version of Meltokio as she is, but eventually she stumbles on a lead - an old scientific journal, a mention of the power of something called an Aegis being able to transcend space and time, at least in theory. And a little asking around tells her that Tethe'alla has its own Aegis, though no one's seen it for years. Well. Worth a shot, right?

Somehow she manages to talk her way into the Tethe'allan castle where the Aegis's core crystal awaits being woken up, with a series of smiles and her very best politicking - yes, of course she's got nothing but loyalty for Tethe'alla, of course she's skilled at this, of course it'd be a great honor.

(Zelos would be proud, she thinks, wryly.)

They're dubious, but her persistence wears them down, or maybe they're just desperate enough for a return of the Aegis's power to let her try, and the orange core crystal is offered out to her.

She takes a deep breath, and reaches out to touch it.]

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"So you guys used your appearances as a distraction, huh?" Lloyd laughs, an awed grin gracing his face at the snippet into Anna's childhood and the idea of Malos, massive teddy bear that he is, purposely causing a scene to let Anna get what she needed -

Actually, it's completely believable, but it's still fantastic. Hearing stories about Anna and Malos works at Lloyd's itch to know more about them, to know the mother he never had and the grandpa he wouldn't have gotten to meet anyways had Lloyd never followed Sheena here to this weird, parallel world. He wants to know more about them, how they met and the subsequent shenanigans that seem to have happened. Maybe this would be a good time to ask?

"So... How did you and Malos meet, actually? I know you're his driver, but, uh. Do you just... Ask someone if they wanna be driven?" Lloyd pauses, squints, and starts over. "Ignore that. Just - yeah, how did you both meet?"

"Oh," Anna says. She stops grinning, but mainly because she isn't sure how to explain, and-- clearly, Lloyd needs some explanation. "No it's. Blades. Sorry this might be an awful explanation but I've never, uh, met anyone who didn't know how this worked. And I guess I just kind of assumed. Anyway."

Anna clears her throat. "Blades don't, um. They don't really exist, without a driver?" It sounds so weird, when she says it aloud. "Without a driver, they're just a core crystal. Dormant, until someone comes along and wakes them up."

Actually that wasn't so bad of an explanation, Anna thinks. Onto answering Lloyd's question.

"So, uh- well, twenty years ago-- was it twenty years ago?" Time's been a lot harder to keep track of since she stopped aging. "Somewhere around there. We were slightly more at war than we are now, and my village got raided, and... I was the only one who survived, and... I found Malos' core crystal after running from the destruction." Old, somewhat tender memories, of everything burning and the stench of blood fill her mind, but they're gone before long. "He saved my life."

That day itself isn't one of Anna's favorites, but her smile--if a little sad--is fond enough. The pain's mostly behind her. And she did meet Malos that day, even if she lost everything else.

Blades don't... exist without their drivers?

Lloyd blinks, eyebrows shifting downwards as his eyes narrow in thought. So, a driver awakens a core crystal, and the blade pops up as is, but where does the conversation come into place? Where is the deal struck and the agreement made? When is the contract signed and the terms of partnership made valid?

Do blades have absolutely no control on who wakes them up, who drives them? Who controls them, or how? How their resonance is shaped? How it's used?

Nausea churns in Lloyd's gut, the apple in his hand no longer seeming sweet. So this world has a system of indentured servitude, basically, where bladekind and their individual happiness is left in the hands of lucky draws, a chance for a good driver over that of a terrible one. And while Lloyd still has hope and faith in humanity - in the general will of people to do good - he's seen way too much, experienced way too much to know that this system works as it should, that all people treat their blades as they should.

Lloyd thinks of the Aegises - of Zelos, of Colette, of the way they were abused - and the anger that flares up in his heart is intense, rage choking his logical thoughts within seconds. It's a miracle he's able to push it down long enough to listen to Anna's story, because, well. He did ask for it.

And he does listen, places his free hand on Anna's forearm and gives her a small, reassuring smile, but the sick fury pulses through his veins, not unlike what he felt when he learned of the Angelus Projects, of the true cost of Exspheres and Cruxis Crystals. What the fuck, he thinks, does Sheena know about how awful this system is?

"Mom," Lloyd calls out in his distraction, not even realizing he's opened his mouth until his voice rings out around them, "you're saying that blades don't have explicit control over who drives them, and if that's the case, that's just - that's fucked."

Lloyd's words make her trip on her thoughts just a little, but not as much as his grip on her arm, somewhat tight, and the underlying rage in his voice.

"It. Yeah," she says. Her throat is dry. Her voice registers distantly to her brain, words she barely hears herself say underneath a roar. "Yeah I guess it is kind of fucked."

("If your driver's that much of an asshole, can't you just, I dunno, DO something about him? Hell, or I can--"

"Unfortunately, no, not unless I want to throw these past ten years of work down the drain.")

Something pulses behind her eyelids, strong, and then suddenly it's gone. Anna takes a deep breath, hand finding Lloyd's on her arm to steady herself. She feels fine, now, other than the foul taste under her tongue.

"But don't get mad at me," she laughs, sharp. "I'm not the one who made the world like this! And the asshole who did-- even if he is real, I highly doubt we can get our hands on him to lodge a complaint."

Lloyd doesn't catch Anna's quick lapse of composure, the hand on his arm seeming more like an unconscious way of calming him down, not unlike Colette's light gestures and touches back at home. Still, Anna's touch helps ground Lloyd, and he cuts his anger off at its throat, channeling it more into irritation and making sure not to direct it at Anna this time.

"Sorry," Lloyd apologizes, a little sheepish. "You're right, I just - I dunno, there is still so much about this world I don't understand, and, well. I guess the idea of... Okay, so there are these things in my world that are known as Summon Spirits and I'm not gonna really go into how that works because that's Sheena's whole shebang, but," he takes a breath, rambling, trying to get to his point.

"The whole thing here is that they can be summoned, and like blades, can be used for their powers and stuff, but it's all -" Lloyd stops, narrows his eyes, what's the word, what's the word, what's the w - THAT'S THE FUCKER. "It's all contractual. They have complete control in who's allowed to use their powers, so I just assumed that blades were the same way. It's..."

Lloyd forces himself to take another bite of the apple, mind racing, and as he chews he tries to better pinpoint how he feels about all of this -

"It's a little upsetting to think blades don't. Have that right. I, uh. So the Architect, he's. Okay, let's say he was real: where would we find him? We - Sheena and I, I mean, have our fair share of experiences in meeting mythological legends."

Anna nods along as Lloyd explains this whole Summon Spirits deal. "Yeah, that sounds like a much better system," she agrees, when he finishes. "Architect knows people misuse it all the time-- or." She chuckles darkly. "I guess maybe he doesn't know. Or maybe he doesn't give a shit."

She's not sure which is worse.

Anyway, actually meeting the Architect? She laughs at the absurdity of the idea for a second, but-- Come on, Anna, the Aegises are real people. If the legends about them creating the world are true, the Architect probably is too, and--

(The memory, somewhat sharp, of foreign ether filling her to the brim, burning her arm, saving her life--)

"Maybe he is real," Anna allows. "If he is-- Mithos would know." If she'd ever talked to him for more than ten minutes, maybe he would have said something. "So I guess we can ask him when we get there."

Edited 2019-05-13 00:26 (UTC)

The mention of Mithos chips at the thin barrier that constantly holds Lloyd's composure, causing a deep crack to appear in its surface, threatening to let the dam break and Lloyd's panic to rise to his tongue. He stumbles, Anna's arm holding him back enough to stop it from being an actual trip down to the hard ground, and swallows hard. God, he had almost gotten himself to forget about their true destination, who he'd have to face, and now it's come back to bite him in the ass.

"A-Ahaha, yeah," Lloyd laughs nervously, "M-Mithos. That's right, I uh - I'll make a note to ask him while we're there. He's..."

Hints of deranged laughter and desperate talk echo through his mind, the otherwise quiet sounds of nature not enough to block out the memories that want to flash through his eyes, the glinting of a blood-covered sword as it runs itself through a chest, the sound of a cruxis crystal being shattered -

"...He's our best shot at this, after all!"

"Careful there," Anna says reflexively as she steadies Lloyd. She studies him, her throat a little tight. That's. Well that's definitely a trauma reaction. To... Mithos?

Hmm.

"I mean, I can ask him too, that's not a problem," Anna says, to lighten what she guesses is his load, barely even thinking about the act. "Or I can ask Kratos. There's little Mithos knows that he doesn't." (She kind of wishes in hindsight she'd paid more attention, but Kratos talked so rarely about the Architect anyway that she's not sure it would have helped.) "I can take care of that, you don't have to worry."

And then, becuase she'd like to know, just a little more.

"Is... The Mithos in your world... What was he...?"

Goddamn it.

Floundering, Lloyd tries to compose himself enough to answer, except. Well, he knows that if he tries talking about Mithos here, without Sheena around to hold hands with and know he's not alone, that - that somebody else knows he didn't want to, that he didn't - he didn't know how else to stop him or what else to do because talking didn't work and fighting wasn't working and Mithos was supposed to block -

Take a deep breath, Lloyd. Count to ten.

He can't answer that question.

"Don't ask," Lloyd says, suddenly and a little curtly, before softening his tone, looking down at his scuffed up boots. Stop lashing out, Lloyd, that's not how you get people to like you. "It doesn't matter, anyways. T-This Mithos seems way different. I... I'll get over it, but don't worry, alright?"

And then he flashes Anna the biggest grin he can muster, putting his all into ignoring everything his mind can throw at him, and lightly pulls his arm out of Anna's grip, skipping ahead just a little, just enough to keep her out of proper observing range. "Let's go, I wanna see what Malos was being so sneaky about!"

Anna is worrying, but if Lloyd doesn't want her asking, she won't. Hopefully, whatever the problem is, he'll figure out how to deal with it. If she knew how to help, she would, but she doesn't know how... Sheena probably can, though. Maybe Anna should talk to her. Let her an Lloyd figure it out, as they should.

Oh. Maybe-- when they get closer. She'll make sure Lloyd knows he doesn't have to talk to Mithos, or get anywhere close, not if he doesn't want to. But the converastion's over for now. So Anna let's it drop.

Anna tugs gently on her ether link to Malos. Feels like he's pretty close, so if he could just intercept them-- There he is!

"Speak of the devil," Anna laughs, as if she definitely didn't just play a hand in orchestrating this timing.

"Hey!" Malos calls to them, waving with one hand and hastily shoving something behind his back with the other. Not suspicious at all, no. (Incredibly suspicious Malos, you're better at this.) Anna does her best to convey in as few seconds as possible that Lloyd could definitely use a mood booster, so unless whatever the hell that is Malos is hiding has to wait, now's a good of a time as any.

Malos gets the idea though, thankfully. He trots to meet them, sighing dramatically. "Alright, so, I meant it to be a little more of a surprise than this, but I guess that's on me for not trying harder to avoid y'all 'til we were back at camp," he complains, then pauses dramatically as he pulls his hand out from behind his back and reveals:

A modest kit of woodcarving tools.

He grins shakily at Lloyd. His anticipation is so strong it clutches Anna's windpipes, but she smiles, fond. Her dad's such a dork.

"Remembered you mentioning you liked making things, Lloyd," Malos says. "So I got this for you."

The sight of Malos automatically makes the fake smile on Lloyd's face turn into a genuine grin, wide and playful. The fact that Malos is being so bad at hiding whatever he's supposed to be hiding only peaks Lloyd's curiosity, and he finds himself squinting and leaning in such a way that'll let him see the thing. Malos is a goddamn mountain of a man, though, so Lloyd doesn't really see shit, not at the angle Malos is standing at.

And then he jogs on over and pulls the thing out from behind him. It takes Lloyd a few seconds, a blink of wide eyes being his only reaction, and then the realization of just what Malos had gotten him and the fact that he remembered Lloyd liked making things hits the boy like a train.

Lloyd throws the apple he's still holding somewhere into the forest, hands shooting out to grab the kit, excitement pulling his grin into a straight up beam, and then he's tearing up, sniffling, and looking up at Malos like the man had just told him tomatoes didn't exist in this dimension.

"Thank you!!" Lloyd not-quite shouts but kinda close to it. He glances back down at the tools, so fucking excited to be able to carve again, and then decides the thank you wasn't enough. So he tosses himself at Malos, pulls him into as best a hug he can manage with the toolkit and packs on him. "Thank you so much!!"

Malos lets out a laugh, delighted, a little bit relieved. He squeezes Lloyd back with as much force as he can without making Lloyd drop all the shit he's holding.

"Yeah, no problem kid!" he says. Lloyd's excitement right now is easily worth every gold spent, and then some. "I hope you like it."

"Are you kidding me - of course, I like it!" Lloyd exclaims, stepping away and bouncing on his toes, holding the kit out again so he can look at it. He's missed carving so bad, the antsy nights he's spent without his tools working to drive him slowly mad. Lloyd hopes he hasn't gotten too rusty in the little while it's been since he's last gone and carved something (his last creation was a dog statue for Colette. She cried when he gave it to her.)

Honestly, the fact that Malos remembered such a small thing and went out of his way to make Lloyd's entire day like this - it's so goddamn touching. It reminds him of the quiet yet observant things Dirk used to do for him when Lloyd was struggling with something, and the familial affection that lingers in his heart is warm and comforting. He's got the best goddamn grandpa in the whole universe.

"I can't wait to get back to carving," Lloyd says, already picturing his next project. "It'll be nice to give myself something to do that isn't training or bothering Sheena."

This conversation hasn't really gone any of the ways Sheena had imagined it going. But… it's progress, maybe. She can accept that.

"Yeah, alright," she says, the soft note that had crept into her voice earlier not leaving. "I think I can manage that." Here's hoping, at least. She's not alone, and maybe that's all it will take to keep him safe long enough to get out of the country. "From what Anna and Malos said, it shouldn't be too much further to neutral territory."

She falls silent after that, not wanting to ruin the moment, but before long the noise of someone approaching reaches her. With the soft snatches of speech accompanying the footsteps, it's probably the rest of their group and not soldiers catching up, but - best not to be caught unawares, just in case. (Maybe if she hadn't waited so long to have this conversation, they would have had time to recover from it before the others came back.) Sheena pushes herself to her feet, turning in the direction the voices are coming from as she tries to spot them.

Well - no one else would be wearing that much red, that's for sure. She laughs to herself about that softly, waving as the trio comes into sight to catch their attention.

Lloyd spots Sheena waving from their campsite, and even though he was already smiling while bantering with Malos and Anna on their walk, it quickly spreads out into an excited beam as soon as he sees her and Zelos. He picks up the pace, pretty much jogging over, and as he gets closer to the campsite and can see their expressions, well.

They don't look unhappy, really, but there is a definitive sense of Something Just Happened in the air and it's a bit worrying. Lloyd's noticed at this point their hesitance in being alone together, not quite avoidance but just a general discomfort of having to face each other, and. Well, he didn't get involved, didn't try to play counselor, but it was a little anxiety-inducing to see them shut away from each other a bit. He's glad they seem to be - y'know, not at each other's throats, but he still can't tell where they land with each other.

And both Sheena and Zelos have similar looks of relief at the return of the rest of the party, so maybe they need a bit of a distraction from whatever just happened or was discussed. Good for them, Lloyd's excellent at being a distraction.

Impulsively, Lloyd lets the toolkit slip into the pack and trades it for an orange they had grabbed from the market, makes his way to the two, and plops himself down on the ground in front of them with a quick "hey!"

He then proceeds to bite into the orange. The completely unpeeled orange. Without any fanfare. The citrus flavor is immediately overtaken by the absolute soured bitterness of the peel, completely ruining any satisfaction that comes with eating an orange the normal way, and even though Lloyd regrets this decision immensely, he keeps the blankest face he can muster. He's eaten worse. Like tomatoes.

Lloyd chews, swallows, and then grins at them. "Market was fun."

Edited 2019-05-15 20:50 (UTC)

The others' arrival is already a welcome distraction, but Lloyd plopping down in front of Zelos and Sheena makes for a much, much better center of attention to focus onto other than how weird the emotional link feels after the trip their conversation just made. So Zelos, still sitting, offers Lloyd a little and genuine smile in greeting, which is then promptly wiped off his face to be replaced by a look of pure surprise and then slight horror when Lloyd bites into the unpeeled orange and proceeds to fucking swallow it like it's nothing.

What. The fuck.

And "What the fuck," he repeats out loud. Zelos reels back and blinks. Holy... shit. Holy fucking shit. "Did you just," he tries and fails to ask. Hm. Try again elsewhere. Without taking his wide eyes off the boy before them, Zelos reaches over to Sheena's ribbon and pulls gently, trying to gain her attention. "Sheena," Zelos says, "I. I think Lloyd broke."

She doesn't react to Lloyd biting into the orange, though there's something bright like laughter immediately shoved down out of reach of the emotional link. Holy shit, Lloyd.

"What do you mean? He seems fine to me," she says, doing her best to keep her voice even and not ruin her poker face, before she turns her attention to Lloyd, settling back down onto the ground with the two of them. "You get enough of those to share?"

Lloyd hides the way his lips quirk upwards in a smile behind the orange, reaching into the pack with his free hand and underhandedly tossing another orange to Sheena. She knows the name of the game here, and he's so happy he can pull this off with her again on another unsuspecting victim.

"Yeah, Zelos, you never see someone eat an orange before?" He asks, forcing himself to look confused, and then bites into the orange again. The satisfaction of a well-placed prank is almost not worth the instantaneous regret of doing this. "Want a bite? It's pretty good," Lloyd says after swallowing, holding the orange out to Zelos.

Sheena catches the orange with one hand, eyeing it for a second. She's definitely about to regret this, but it's already worth it for Zelos's reaction.

"How else would you eat an orange?" she asks, the picture of innocence. She lifts it to her mouth, about to take a bite.

Oh HELL no.

Horrified and already incredibly full of regrets, but before Sheena can even THINK to take a bite, Zelos reaches over for the orange in her hands and snatches it away from her grasp. Then, he immediately pulls his gloves off with his teeth, letting his ether lines glow, and puts himself to work in peeling it as aggressively as the damn fruit had wronged him personally.

Zelos laughs. It's a little manic. What the hell is happening. "Yeah, I don't fucking think so!" he shrieks out while peeling, tossing the disgusting and useless orange bits away. Who cares if they're healthy. Yuck. "I refuse to watch this happen. You are going to eat this orange like a motherfucking person, not an Architect damned savage!"

Once he's done peeling, Zelos gracelessly tosses the orange back to Sheena growling at her, and then turns to Lloyd. He extends a glowing palm to him and raises an eyebrow in the most 'are you fucking kidding me' expression possible. "Give me your orange."

Lloyd makes a valiant effort in keeping his poker face, managing to keep it through Sheena's act and up to when Zelos grabs the orange, but as soon as Zelos starts yelling while aggressively peeling the innocent orange, as though it had pissed in his cereal, Lloyd loses his shit. What starts off as a series of giggles escalates into full-blown belly laughter, and by the time Zelos is done with Sheena's orange and ranting, Lloyd's in tears, holding his side, left in stitches.

And then Zelos holds his hand out for Lloyd's orange, and Lloyd passes it to him, hiccupping, trying to breathe properly. "Holy shit," he wheezes out, abdomen aching, "definitely didn't expect -" more giggles "- for you to get so mad at this."

Zelos yanks the orange out of her hands, and Sheena's attempt to maintain her composure fails completely, bursting into laughter. She looks like Zelos just singlehandedly made her day. This is the best thing that's happened to her in months.

She fumbles the orange briefly, less dextrous when she's absolutely losing her shit, but manages not to drop it at least. "Holy shit," she manages, between giggles.

Well! Whatever! Zelos takes Lloyd's orange and proceeds to also peel that with an annoyed huff, though less aggressively than before now that their act has completely fallen through. God. Fucking shit, the nerve of these people, seriously!

Still, though, at least Zelos is enjoying himself. A little bit of Sheena's joyous laughter sneaks its way through their link, and as such Zelos can't help it when he starts chuckling under his breath, the grin that brings contrasting with the concentrated furrowed brow he's sporting while peeling the fruit. "Honestly, you lot are terrible people," he laughs, finishing up, tossing the peel off his lap and onto the grass. Then he tosses the orange at Lloyd, aiming for the head. "At least I'm not the one who bit into an unpeeled orange! You must be so proud of yourself, huh!"

"I've done worse," Lloyd shrugs with a playful grin, catching the orange before it hits his head and peeling a slice out of what's left of its mangled corpse. "This wasn't as bad as the times I've done this with a banana."

Popping the slice into his mouth, he chews - it tastes like a normal citrus fruit now, and he lets the actually welcomed taste of orange juice explode on his tongue - and fights off another laugh at the ridiculousness of what just happened. It's. Really nice, laughing like this again, and knowing he was successful in getting both Sheena and Zelos to laugh too just makes it all that much better. He likes this. It feels safe.

Silently, Lloyd hopes it stays that way.

"I forgot about the banana," Sheena admits, still a little breathless with laughter. "I still can't believe Raine tried it, too." Although now that she thinks about it, Raine would probably try anything in the name of experimentation, so maybe she hadn't been convinced that it was the right way to eat one. She breaks her orange in half, offering half out to Zelos, before she pulls a slice off of her half to eat it. At least it actually tastes good, without the peel in the way.

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Page 15 of 31

i just wanna know: who broke it?

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sorry lloyd

[lloyd voice] this is fine!

malos is gonna make me cry

malos is gonna make /lloyd/ cry!!!!

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skates back into the thread with derris kharbucks

can i have a frappe

Sir this is a Burger King

Can I get a Big Mac then

I'd like a boneless pizza

None bones with left beef

AND NO FUCKING ORANGES

YALL GOT BONES IN YALL ORANGES?

THE PEEL IS ITS EXOSKELETON

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE?

DEADASS

WHERE DID THIS CONVERSATION GO EXACTLY