summonerd | i just wanna know: who broke it?

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.

Oops. Sheena remembers, too late, to rein in her side of the emotional link as best she can. The conflict coming from Zelos's side is a lot just to feel secondhand - no need to make it worse.

"We did it once," she says, flashes him a bright, confident smile. For all the mistakes they'd made along the way, the fact that they'd actually succeeded in reuniting the worlds is something she can be legitimately proud of. "If this Architect exists that might make it easier, but if not…" Sheena shrugs. "There has to be more than one way to rewrite a system, right? Even if we just make it harder for blades to be hurt by drivers, that's something."

Still a mess of emotions, but feeling the way Sheena reins her side of the link, Zelos decides to play a little game of masks and fabricates as much disbelief and amusement in his core to pass along to Sheena while hiding his discomfort and whatever the hell the other thing is behind it.

He laughs, something short and mocking, and nods his head along. "Oh, well. At least now we're making more sense, aren't we?" Zelos pushes himself to sit straighter and flaps one hand about. "I don't know how it is in your world, or whatever, but this whole talk about meeting Schrödinger's God is a little bit ridiculous if you ask me. Like, holy shit"--he laughs and dramatically sets that hand on his chest, apologetic expression exaggerated--"so sorry, honey, but I'm just pretty sure the Architect just doesn't exist."

Next, Zelos crosses his arms, pouts, and sets his hand under his chin as if pensive. One finger rises to tap at his chin. "But, well, if you wanted to fuck up a long-running natural system of power-dynamics and political agendas, I'd say you have to kill a few kings, or stage a coup here and there. Basically change the entirety of society as we know it." Seriously and with a nod, Zelos shrugs. "No biggie, right? That's just kind of how it is on this bitch of a world."

"I mean I'm not wholly convinced the Architect exists, either," Anna admits. "But I know how to find out, and asking god to fix his shit seems faster than--" She gestures vaguely towards Zelos, hoping to convey all that shit Zelos just said without having to reiterate it herself.

"Like, don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to killing both Sylvarant's emperor and Tethe'alla's king if I can't make them see sense. Whatever. Was kind of already on the agenda. Dunno if that'd actually fix how blades are treated, but figured it would at least stop the war." Anna shrugs. "It's- Whatever. We'll figure something out. We have to try. Hell, even if it takes me the rest of my life-- I'll see it done."

Lloyd nods along to Anna's words, his jaw set in determination, brows furrowed in such a way that makes his gaze just a little more intense. "I'm not planning on leaving until this is fixed, either," he says, sending a small apologetic glance at Sheena, "this world isn't my own, but I'm not gonna leave people to suffer."

Fixing his gaze back to Zelos, he opens his mouth again. "If it means I get to help take down the system that hurt you and countless other blades, I'll gladly be branded the universe's biggest idiot. You deserve better, they deserve better, and we're gonna make it happen."

Holy shit, people, Zelos was being sarcastic. These plans on how to actually take down the blade system and society itself weren't actual, real things that he'd thought these people would be stupid enough to try or even consider, but apparently idiocy runs rampant in the human gene.

Zelos' jaw drops. Anna wants to fix this, wants to stop the war. Her words alone are already stopping Zelos' ether pulse for a second with how fucking serious and determined she sounds, but then when Lloyd speaks again, addresses him directly, and Zelos actually feels his jaw slam back closed and his breath hitch. Embarrassingly enough, Zelos feels his cheeks heat up again at the direct mention of his own pain and this 'something better' that Lloyd claims he deserves. So he grits his teeth, suddenly finds it hard to breathe. Because... they're serious. They're all serious, if the lack of malice in Sheena's side of the emotional link is anything to go by, too.

Oh, Architect above, this is too much to handle.

So Zelos decides not to handle it.

"Ugh--you know what? Whatever!" he shouts, throwing his hands up in the air in hopes that it'll distract from the orange glow on his cheeks. Then he hastily reaches for his gloves, slipping them back on as quickly as he can, looking away with his eyes closed and brow furrowed as if offended. "It's become perfectly clear to me that none of you are gonna listen to the voice of reason here, since you're all so dead-set on doing stupid shit in the first place!"

That said and without waiting for an actual answer, Zelos then goes to push himself to stand, dusting himself off. He grumbles under his breath. "But whatever, I don't care. I'm not your fucking babysitter anyway. But at least let's just stop wasting time and get back to the main task at hand, yeah?" Zelos claps his hands. "So get moving, people! We got so many Tethe'allans chasing us!"

And with that he scoffs again and walks off in the opposite direction that they came from, not waiting for anyone else.

Sheena nods in response to Anna and Lloyd's words, face set in determination. Even if it's hard, this is something that's worth doing - she couldn't go home knowing Zelos and Colette wouldn't be totally safe from this fucked-up system, and she's sure Lloyd feels the same.

Zelos storms off, and she's not sure how to take it - there's heat rising in Sheena's cheeks, which… what? Is he embarrassed? Holy shit. She can't help it if she reacts like she would have if this had been the Zelos from their own world, just for a moment.

"It's not stupid if it works. And at least finish your orange!" she calls after him, turning away from the others to be heard better. Definitely not to hide her own blush.

So, the fastest passage out of Tethe'alla from Meltokio involves passing through Toize Ether Mines. Going around Toize Mountain Range adds at least two days to the journey, more if you are also attempting to avoid civilization. Not to mention, going through the mines, in theory, is also safer. They've been abandoned for years, and the high ether concentration means no on really goes there anymore.

Which is why they weren't supposed to run into any opposition.

Of course, seeing as they're trying to smuggle an Aegis out of Tethe'alla, perhaps they should have known better.

A man blocks their path through the mines.

They come to a halt at a crossroads, ether crystals of varying colors providing soft glowing light from the walls around them. Pathways branch to the left and the right, but those paths only lead deeper into the mines, which wouldn't do them much good. The man stands between them and the way forward.

He doesn't look like Tethe'allan military, but then, why would he? And even if he isn't, that doesn't mean he isn't a threat.

Malos, who was already at the front of the group, takes another step foward, making sure he's between the man and his companions.

"Fine day to be exploring an abandoned mine, huh?" Malos jokes.

The smile on the man's mouth is mostly amicable, but the squint and glint to his eyes under the myriad glow of the crystals shadows his face in all the wrong places for Zelos to find the expression calming. "Quite a fine day indeed, eh lad?" the man laughs. "Though I guess that's more subjective than anything when you're buried underground with no other light than a bunch of ether crystals around, huh." He pauses here, shrugs, and scoffs. "Scratch that. A bunch of ether crystals, and the powerful light of a blade's own ether lines and core, sure."

Something about the situation runs a quick shiver down Zelos' spine. Being stopped in the middle of their path by a babbling old man is already a huge red flag, but the fact that Anna had reassured them that these mines were supposed to be abandoned for years due to their concentrated ether sets a stone of dread at the base of Zelos' gut. They've got three humans to worry about in this group--because, blade eater or not, Anna's still human--so they cannot afford to stop here, the urgency palpable from the moment they entered the mines, but this guy, he doesn't even try to look concerned.

Something's off. Something is very, very dangerously off.

As naturally as he can make it seem, Zelos straightens his posture and moves slightly so that the capelet Sheena got him at the start of this mess can hide his core crystal better. "Yeah, but that still ain't a replacement for sunlight, old man," Zelos jokes, successfully pushing down and hiding most of his anxiety from his mask. He licks his lips, shrugs. "Don't worry, though. If you're lost, you--"

"Any of you folks familiar with ether crystal mining and trading, huh?" the man interrupts, walking over to one of the crystals protruding from the wall, setting a hand on the smooth surface of the rock like it's nothing. Alarms immediately start blaring in Zelos' mind, anxious energy bouncing in his core as he slowly inhales and exhales. The man grins. "I'll let you all in on a few secrets of the trade, then: the point is always to get the purest, most powerful crystals to sell. Knowing where to get 'em and who to trade with is what gets you quick gold in the first place. And the rarer the wares, the better the reward."

Subconsciously, Zelos takes a slow step back while maintaining the easy, calm face. Oh, that's bad. That's really fucking bad. In a desperate attempt to gain some sort of an upper hand on the situation, Zelos taps into the ambient ether to try and feel for any other signatures, but the sheer amount of concentrated ether in the air blocks most of his senses like a thick miasma that chokes at him from within. He tries anyway, though, reaching anywhere and everywhere for anything that may feel strange or out of place or even the slightest bit dangerous.

He has to try, damn it. He has to do something before this gets out of hand.

Before them the man hums, drops his hand from the ether crystal he'd been patting at. Sighing, he nonchalantly reaches for his back pocket and pulls out both a cigar and a lighter. "And I've gotta say," he says, lighting the cigar, "that there ain't nothing rarer than an Aegis out there, that's for sure."

On edge from the moment their path was blocked, the growing unease in Lloyd's gut begins to transition into protective fury as soon as the old coot in front of them begins to talk, the threat underlining his tone even before it's spoken aloud. Lloyd's lips pull back into a snarl, his swords already gripped tightly in his hands before he's aware of it, stepping up and falling into place before Zelos. The way he addresses Zelos - who is a goddamn person, you fuck - and the barely-hidden connotation to his ether crystal trading, both of these things spike into the lava-like flow of Lloyd's rage. Old man is brave, threatening two people Lloyd cares about so openly and boldly, and to be so callous about his trading of life essences of innocent people? Lloyd's dealt with fuckers like this before, and he will continue to for as long as they think they're unstoppable.

"Hey, you old bag of ashes!" Lloyd calls out, eyebrows pinned down in anger, voice loud and aggressive, "what the fuck is your problem?! Couldn't get a life, so now you gotta steal others'?"

Stepping into a defensive stance, Lloyd continues his rant. "You must think you're such tough shit, huh? Trading peoples' lives away for what, money? Power? A shot at thinking you're an untouchable figure in humanity? You're pathetic, is what you are. To live thinking that your actions gain you anything more than the tangible," Lloyd laughs, mean and bitter, "I pity anyone like you, anyone who thinks their life is worth more than others' by default. What a sad existence to live."

Lloyd huffs out a loud exhale, centering himself, ready for a fight. "You're not touching them. Your trade will die with you if you want to try."

The initial, underlying threat of being treated like some sort of trade object by this man already has Zelos' anxiety rise to dangerous levels underneath his skin, but Lloyd stepping forward in front of him and pretty much screaming at this guy turns that anxiety into a quickening panic that painfully spreads through Zelos' pulse. His chest constricts and his breathing hitches, a curse whispered under his breath as he sets a hand on Lloyd's arm to get him to shut the fuck up before he makes this worse--

Sheena steps forth, too, falling in place right next to Lloyd. The sight of it leaves Zelos speechless. The almost complete loss of control of the situation sings a song of fear and paranoia in Zelos' core.

Fuck.

Brain scrambling to do damage control, Zelos' previous starts to anything he wanted to say evaporate on his tongue. In the following silence, uninterrupted, the man before them takes a drag of the cigar and laughs the smoke out of his lungs once Lloyd's done speaking. "Ah, you got guts, don't ya?" he calls out, an amused glint to his squinted eyes. He lightly waves the cigar about in front of his face. "I like that, kid. But either way, I wouldn't get so feisty if I were you, you know."

Tick-tick-tick-tick, comes a familiar little pull in Zelos' core, in his ether-filled artificial veins. Tick-tick-tick, it comes knocking from their left, their right, before them and behind them. Zelos grits his teeth, grip on Lloyd tightening. Reinforcements, easier to detect now that they're so much closer and actually moving. About... three? four? He can't really tell. And he seriously doubts that's all of them, even though they've made their presences pretty damn clear to anyone familiar with the way superficial ambient ether changes when someone uses up their own. It's mostly just a threat. But where are they? Zelos discreetly tries to look around for a tell-tale glow, or a weapon, but the amount of ether crystals and their glow in the area makes that difficult.

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

Seemingly ignorant to the Aegis' plight, the man calmly takes another drag of the cigar. "Now here's a proposal for you fine people here. You hand over the Aegis, we let you through without a single scratch to your pretty little heads, and without taking any more than what we want," he now says, gesturing. "Put up a resistance, though," a chuckle, "and I can't say my associates won't want a better booty to take home for their efforts."

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)

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no subject

Oh lord

here we are

At Sea World?

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no subject

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no subject

WHY IS MALOS ALWAYS IN CHARGE OF TIMESKIPS

YOU KIDS WANNA BUY SOME ETHER CRYSTALS

STRANGER DANGER

Great!