summonerd | i just wanna know: who broke it?

"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.

Stare at Lloyd. Blink. Jaw drop, close, scoff. "You. Bit into an unpeeled banana?" Zelos asks, halfway through grabbing the orange half Sheena offers him. "Oh, I hate it," Zelos wheezes out another disbelieving laugh. "I hate it so much."

To be honest, despite the conversation veering into the horrific and the fact that Zelos currently has to deal with his driver and her best friend being completely and totally mad, the air around the three of them is the lightest it's been, and for a moment Zelos allows himself to get lost in the sweetness of it as he plops an orange slice into his mouth and laughs through it. "Architect, you people are animals," he says. "Next thing you know you'll be telling me that Flesh Eaters actually eat flesh."

Unfortunately for Sheena, she's just bitten into her orange slice when Zelos says that, and she has to try not to choke on it. "Flesh Eater?" she says, slightly muffled by orange. "Is that some kind of monster?"

Anna, who's mostly just been losing her shit and filled with immense fondness at her son being a dumbass, now chokes her laughter down, the moment unfortunately passed. Holy shit, Zelos, some tact, maybe?

Okay, it's fine, it's fine, they had to find this out eventually.

"No, it's," Anna interjects, nearly tripping over herself to insert herself into the conversation. "It's a really, frankly horrible colloquial term for um." She pauses. Takes a deep breath. What's the least horrible way to put it. "Blades who have been infused, some way or another, with human DNA."

That's something, but it's also basically nothing, so:

"They're still-- they're still blades, really. But the human DNA makes it harder for them to process ether, which... isn't good for blades," Anna continues. She wonders if that was relevant. More relevant, probably: "They also don't need drivers. Which means everyone hates them, and would rather pretend they don't exist."

Architect, she hates interrupting the good mood that was going on here, but she really couldn't stand them not knowing.

The more Lloyd learns about this world and it's twisted, built-to-be-abused power structure, the more convinced he becomes that something needs to be done to put an end to it. The idea of Flesh Eaters horrifies Lloyd - not because the name is, yeah, frankly horrible - but because he understands why a blade would want to become one, even at the risk of their own health. Who would willingly want to sign up their lifespan to a driver they can't choose? For the chance of possibly having a kind driver who cares and wants them to know that?

"That's... awful," Lloyd breathes out in a kind of morose laugh, the disgust at the fact that blades feel like they have to go this far for true freedom plain on his face, in the way his lips pull back into a grimace. "I understand why they wouldn't have to have drivers - this system is so fucking broken against blades, but. God, that's - Why would anyone hate them? They want freedom, they just. That's cruel, making them suffer alone!"

His voice raises a little at that last line, and he shoots Sheena a look that reads like did you know about how fucked up this is? before he continues with his rant. "Blades don't get the choice to pick who drives them, who uses their powers and how, and then people get mad when blades try to gain that freedom? That's fucking disgusting. This sucks. This whole system sucks and needs to be overthrown."

Crueler still is forcing them through the process in the name of research and then still blaming them as if they're the guilty party, but Anna doesn't voice that one, just lets her anger sit and boil in her gut. It's not really her secret to share, and she's brought down the mood enough. So she bites her tongue, waits for Lloyd to finish-- pride and joy and fondness bubbling in her stronger than the anger-- eager and ready to join him on this quest, becuase why stop at stopping a war? Might as well rip the whole system out from under them. That'd probably be more efficient, anyway.

"And that's why we're going to find the Architect and kick his ass," Anna says, smile sharp, arms folded proudly. "I mean-- after Zelos and Colette are safe, of course. That takes priority."

Edited 2019-05-17 01:48 (UTC)

"That's," she says. Wow! What the fuck. She returns the look, eyebrows high with something like disbelief - it's fucked, and she'd realized that, on some level, but the full depths of it hadn't quite hit her til now. Her mind races as Lloyd continues, some horror and anger getting through the link as she processes it. She sneaks a glance to Zelos, uncertain.

"Yeah, we can't leave things like this," she says, with a decisive nod. "If that's a blade's only option for getting out of a bad situation, and people are awful because of that…" Well. Punching god's a good place to start. "We'll just have to make a second option."

At first Zelos is ready to deflect the Flesh Eater question with a quick 'don't worry about it', too happy with the current light mood to bring it back down again for like the fifth time this week, but right at that moment Anna injects herself into the conversation and brings it up anyway before he can protest. Cold, sharp disappointment and resentment crystallize in his chest, and as the next subject change pushes itself to the forefront to leave the good mood forgotten, as Sheena's horror and anger invade their link and Lloyd starts going off about the blade system, Zelos averts his eyes off to the side, sits back, and eats the rest of his orange in silence, intent on only vaguely paying attention.

But then Lloyd's fervent ranting on the blade system catches his ear and doesn't let it go, so Zelos spares him a little glance out of the corner of his eye as he eats another orange slice. The sight plants a small and frighteningly warm feeling in his core, together with Sheena's agreement when she speaks next, but mostly, it all piques the Aegis' curiosity. A human, caring so damn much about how broken the system is? Wanting to change the system for the sake of bladekind? To abolish it?

Ain't that a concept.

The warm feeling remains, though. It's light and sweet, and completely uncomfortable, unfamiliar, terrifying. Zelos finishes eating his slice and lowers the rest to his lap, still intent on seeming nonchalant and disinterested, trying not to stand out. His pulse hastens. The logical side of Zelos' mind tells him not to believe such childish little ideals, especially when the three humans of this traveling party are planning on getting to it by asking the fucking Architect. You know, god. The man who supposedly created the world. Like, can't they take this a little bit more seriously, or what? It'd be a lot easier to go for the people in charge of regulating the system than chase after the fantasy of some lousy god that probably doesn't actually exist.

Honestly, Zelos has to laugh.

"So lemme get this straight. Apparently now the plan's gone from getting these two," he says, still sitting back, grinning devilishly and pointing with his head at Lloyd and Sheena, "back to their home world to just totally chasing after a myth in hopes that he will change, I dunno, the very fabrics of the entire world as it is." Spurred forward by some of Sheena's anger and his own disbelief, Zelos then chuckles, shrugs. "That's so... Human of you."

He says nothing else. But how very human indeed, Zelos thinks as that warmth trembles, yet remains.

sorry lloyd

[lloyd voice] this is fine!

malos is gonna make me cry

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

no subject

no subject

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

SOUP

I WANT TO GO HOME FROM SOUP

ME TOO

LLOYD GETS ANGRY (AGAIN)

no subject

no subject

Oh lord