Hurricane yesterday. Work today. Post start tomorrow. Worst three-day weekend ever...
Stay safe! And try not to wear yourself out too much. Sounds like it's been a hell of a month for you.
Anza
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Stay safe! And try not to wear yourself out too much. Sounds like it's been a hell of a month for you.
"Save the world... Ah." The moment that tidbit had slipped out of Da Vinci's mouth, Michel felt the true weight of the situation hit him like a runaway train. It wasn't as if he hadn't felt it coming: the anticipation had been wearing away at him for days already. There was a difference, however, between worrying about a possible future and staring it right in the face, knowing that the time to turn back had long ago passed him by. Now that he had been called up to rescue the planet, he couldn't just refuse, could he?
"Ahahahahaha..." With a soft, bitter laugh, he dropped his head, and spent the next minute or so focused entirely on his meal. The warmth, the savory tastes and manifold textures, a final taste of home. Barring Caster and the young Katerina, everyone else was speaking their mind, but Michel had nothing to say. What kind of question, or argument, could he possibly make that would change a fate so momentous? He wasn't even a real mage. He barely even understood this mission he was being sent on. So all he could do was keep moving forwards with a smile, and treasure every small moment that remained to him.
He raised a hand when Assassin came, and greeted her Master as she awoke. "Hello there! Welcome to the team." With his plate mostly clean, his attention focused more on the conversation around him, and though he didn't add any questions of his own to the pile, he would be listening very closely to the answers. That clown made him wary, but she knew things, had seen things that might still be beyond even what he was imagining.
And he couldn't forget Cordelia. Cordelia sitting just to his left, looking similarly overwhelmed by it all. Though he'd stayed largely quiet up to his point, Michel couldn't help but clear his throat and raise his voice in answer to Berserker's jibe:
"Isn't that okay, though? Mages are scary." A sly glance indicated the other Masters around the table, many of whom easily qualified as such. "Sometimes fear is the right answer. Sometimes you need to accept that it's best to run. Knowing when to be scared and what to be scared of are important skills too, and if I'm really going into a Singularity then I want that kind of person by my side."
It wasn't a lie. The last team going in must have had bravery to spare, and look where that had gotten them...
"Ahahahahaha..." With a soft, bitter laugh, he dropped his head, and spent the next minute or so focused entirely on his meal. The warmth, the savory tastes and manifold textures, a final taste of home. Barring Caster and the young Katerina, everyone else was speaking their mind, but Michel had nothing to say. What kind of question, or argument, could he possibly make that would change a fate so momentous? He wasn't even a real mage. He barely even understood this mission he was being sent on. So all he could do was keep moving forwards with a smile, and treasure every small moment that remained to him.
He raised a hand when Assassin came, and greeted her Master as she awoke. "Hello there! Welcome to the team." With his plate mostly clean, his attention focused more on the conversation around him, and though he didn't add any questions of his own to the pile, he would be listening very closely to the answers. That clown made him wary, but she knew things, had seen things that might still be beyond even what he was imagining.
And he couldn't forget Cordelia. Cordelia sitting just to his left, looking similarly overwhelmed by it all. Though he'd stayed largely quiet up to his point, Michel couldn't help but clear his throat and raise his voice in answer to Berserker's jibe:
"Isn't that okay, though? Mages are scary." A sly glance indicated the other Masters around the table, many of whom easily qualified as such. "Sometimes fear is the right answer. Sometimes you need to accept that it's best to run. Knowing when to be scared and what to be scared of are important skills too, and if I'm really going into a Singularity then I want that kind of person by my side."
It wasn't a lie. The last team going in must have had bravery to spare, and look where that had gotten them...
Had a crazy time last week and am still picking up the pieces. Probably won't be able to get to this tonight or tomorrow, but I can try to write a post on Monday or Tuesday.
"I-I'm very sorry about that!"
"Ah?" Michel tilted his head to one side, and met Cordelia's eyes with an innocent smile. "I thought it was really cute. You have a very pretty voice, even when you're surprised." With steps so smooth and quick he almost seemed to glide across the floor, the boy slipped through the threshold and paused at his fellow Master's side, considering her as if in a new light. "Actually... I should be thanking you. It makes me a little less worried, knowing I'm not the only one feeling scared. "
Maybe he should offer to pay her back, though he wasn't sure what he could do for an actual mage. Share some of his dinner with her? The whole table smelled wonderful, just packed with mouth-watering offerings all put together with skill and care. Ignoring the class cards, Michel followed the scent of home to its source, and soon found himself leaning over a plate of little pasta dumplings stuffed with minced pork and breadcrumbs and spinach and onions and just a hint of pepper and parsley. The fork was in Michel's hand before anyone could even blink, and speared through the first delicious parcel with the practiced accuracy of a top-tier Lancer servant.
You have to try this. Beaming, he held up his prize and seemingly offered it to the empty air.
...And here I thought you would gorge yourself like a gluttonous pig. Or has your vermin brain finally broken from the fear? Listening to her voice, Michel could tell that his Servant was in a good mood. Ah, my wretched contractor. If you're ever so insolent as to offer me food again, you will learn the taste of my spear.
Aha. You're too generous, Lancer. The boy popped the dumpling in his mouth, closing his eyes to savor it as well as he could. Warm, earthy, and filled with love, a flavor he could never grow tired of. He would have to thank Da Vinci after this, and beg her for cooking classes, just so he could attain even a tenth of her skill. That, and he wanted to know what she thought about pairing this dish with smoked eel, because clearly the two would go together like peanut butter and mayonnaise.
Before that, though, he had better sit down. Food and pleasantries aside, this was a very important meeting, with potentially life-changing consequences for each of the young Masters present. All the more reason to dig in, then, and enjoy this while they still could. Director Fujimaru had personally ordered them to eat, and it would be actual insubordination to refuse, not to mention a travesty against the very sense of taste.
"Cordelia, have one of—" He paused. Blinked. Held up his plate a little higher. "...Um, Berserker? You can have some too, if you'd like."
The big warrior had to be really hungry, if he was acting up like that. Servants didn't have to eat, of course, but they still felt desire and curiosity, yearning and nostalgia, all kinds of roiling emotions that could bite just as hard as the sensation of an empty stomach. Human or not, Michel couldn't help his compassion for them, and his intent shone though in his demeanor as clearly as the warm midday sun in a cloudless sky.
Behind him, Lancer stood fully materialized, radiating pure bloodlust at her fellow Servant.
For just a few short seconds, the entire room seemed to tilt on the verge of an unrecoverable disaster. Then Cordelia raised her arm, and Berserker dropped his aura, and the tall, dark-haired lady in red quietly melted away into the air. Completely oblivious, Michel carried on offering extra food to anyone and everyone who wanted some, turning his green gaze next to the terrifying Katerina and her attendant Caster. "Yours smells nice. Want to trade a little?"
"Ah?" Michel tilted his head to one side, and met Cordelia's eyes with an innocent smile. "I thought it was really cute. You have a very pretty voice, even when you're surprised." With steps so smooth and quick he almost seemed to glide across the floor, the boy slipped through the threshold and paused at his fellow Master's side, considering her as if in a new light. "Actually... I should be thanking you. It makes me a little less worried, knowing I'm not the only one feeling scared. "
Maybe he should offer to pay her back, though he wasn't sure what he could do for an actual mage. Share some of his dinner with her? The whole table smelled wonderful, just packed with mouth-watering offerings all put together with skill and care. Ignoring the class cards, Michel followed the scent of home to its source, and soon found himself leaning over a plate of little pasta dumplings stuffed with minced pork and breadcrumbs and spinach and onions and just a hint of pepper and parsley. The fork was in Michel's hand before anyone could even blink, and speared through the first delicious parcel with the practiced accuracy of a top-tier Lancer servant.
You have to try this. Beaming, he held up his prize and seemingly offered it to the empty air.
...And here I thought you would gorge yourself like a gluttonous pig. Or has your vermin brain finally broken from the fear? Listening to her voice, Michel could tell that his Servant was in a good mood. Ah, my wretched contractor. If you're ever so insolent as to offer me food again, you will learn the taste of my spear.
Aha. You're too generous, Lancer. The boy popped the dumpling in his mouth, closing his eyes to savor it as well as he could. Warm, earthy, and filled with love, a flavor he could never grow tired of. He would have to thank Da Vinci after this, and beg her for cooking classes, just so he could attain even a tenth of her skill. That, and he wanted to know what she thought about pairing this dish with smoked eel, because clearly the two would go together like peanut butter and mayonnaise.
Before that, though, he had better sit down. Food and pleasantries aside, this was a very important meeting, with potentially life-changing consequences for each of the young Masters present. All the more reason to dig in, then, and enjoy this while they still could. Director Fujimaru had personally ordered them to eat, and it would be actual insubordination to refuse, not to mention a travesty against the very sense of taste.
"Cordelia, have one of—" He paused. Blinked. Held up his plate a little higher. "...Um, Berserker? You can have some too, if you'd like."
The big warrior had to be really hungry, if he was acting up like that. Servants didn't have to eat, of course, but they still felt desire and curiosity, yearning and nostalgia, all kinds of roiling emotions that could bite just as hard as the sensation of an empty stomach. Human or not, Michel couldn't help his compassion for them, and his intent shone though in his demeanor as clearly as the warm midday sun in a cloudless sky.
Behind him, Lancer stood fully materialized, radiating pure bloodlust at her fellow Servant.
For just a few short seconds, the entire room seemed to tilt on the verge of an unrecoverable disaster. Then Cordelia raised her arm, and Berserker dropped his aura, and the tall, dark-haired lady in red quietly melted away into the air. Completely oblivious, Michel carried on offering extra food to anyone and everyone who wanted some, turning his green gaze next to the terrifying Katerina and her attendant Caster. "Yours smells nice. Want to trade a little?"
@Anza Everything progressing good over there?
*incoherent screaming*
I got something done. Sorry for being the slowpoke of the group. I'll try and be more on the ball next round.
With its sterile white lights and smoothly polished walls, its windowless rooms and its featureless minimalist furniture, Chaldea resembled nothing so much as an upscale lunatic asylum. Though its empty halls roamed the damned and the lost, disposable bodies deemed too unusual to function in proper mage society and instead brought here, to the icy edges of the world, where the ghosts of long-dead stories came to life and sharpened their weapons for a war against time itself. Seeing such a place, and knowing its intended mission, could one call it anything but madness?
While the world ended around them, the young Master candidates went obliviously about their day. Never mind that their timeline was sinking into a paradoxical abyss: there were classes to attend, homework to be done. Never mind that nearly a third of those classrooms sat empty, their diligent students all lost together somewhere hundreds or thousands of years back in the past. Empty chairs and empty desks sat collecting dust in eerily silent rooms, where only the rustling of paper and the scratching of a single pencil could be heard.
Sitting up straight at a missing girl's desk, Michel Hahne continued to draw. The quiet suited him well, let him focus without interruptions or distractions and try to visualize what he couldn't see, that creeping uneasiness at the back of his mind. For all of its wonders, this facility had been lately feeling more and more like a prison to him, its walls marking the outer boundary of everything that existed in his life. Before, the world had seemed wide-open and endless, a billion possible futures all spread out before him... Now, day by day, he could feel them all narrowing down to a single, inevitable point.
How to express this? After thinking for a while, he'd decided that it looked a little like a snow globe. There he was, sitting in a cold and desolate place surrounded by ice and snow, confined by something he couldn't entirely see. Not a solid line, but a boundary he could show through shading, in the way his imaginary rays of light were distorted by something invisible to the observing eye. It was tricky work, trying to convey that in a sketch, and the effort of it put his mind at ease. While he focused on the texture, the hatching, the physical motions required to bring his mental images into reality, there was less room to worry about the future.
Smiling to himself, he turned his sketchbook around to get a better angle, only to be interrupted by a voice from behind him:
"Missing class? That's not like you."
Michel blinked. Without turning his head, he brought down the tip of his pencil and begin carefully filling in another corner of the page.
"A lack of diligence never amounts to anything good. You're already lagging behind the other candidates as it is, and yet here you are, wasting your time hiding away in your own little world." Even without looking, he could hear her cruel smile, the venomous curl of those bright red lips. "Pitiful. Like a rat skulking in its hole. All of the others are already steeling themselves for the day they stand as the guardians of humanity, but you— You're not a protector. Not a leader, not a thinker, not even any use in a fight." A long sigh, laced with bitter disappointment. "I suppose they could sacrifice you for luck. Why, I'd even show them how. A good Servant should always seek to bring out the best in her contractor."
That got a little laugh out of the boy. "Good morning to you too, Lancer."
"Mhmm." A black-gloved hand reached over his shoulder, and dropped something on his desk. "You left this in your room."
Catching it one-handed, Michel flipped his phone over to see the fresh alert glowing on its screen. His eyes quickly skimmed over it, and his heart sank in his chest. "Hall Eleven... Ah."
"Be there on time," Lancer added, humming her words like a lullaby, "or I'll hunt you down and drag you there myself. By the hair." She turned on her heel and strode away from him, her footsteps echoing out through the empty classroom before they disappeared entirely as she vanished into spirit form.
Michel was left to sit in silence, staring down at his half-finished drawing and the message still painted across his screen. One by one, the letters flashed through his mind. M-A-N-D-A-T-O-R-Y. A boy trapped in a field of snow, surrounded by an invisible shell of duty and expectation and unwanted, inevitable fate.
He could already feel the noose tightening around his neck.
16:59. A delicate young man with sky-blue hair and bright, curious eyes walked silently up behind Cordelia Pelham and politely cleared his throat. "Would you mind opening that? I don't think I can afford to be late." In truth, he was every bit as scared as his classmate seemed to be, though you wouldn't have known it from his expression. Sometimes there really was no choice but to smile, breathe, and embrace the madness of one's new reality, to step through that waiting door and let the dice fall where they may.
While the world ended around them, the young Master candidates went obliviously about their day. Never mind that their timeline was sinking into a paradoxical abyss: there were classes to attend, homework to be done. Never mind that nearly a third of those classrooms sat empty, their diligent students all lost together somewhere hundreds or thousands of years back in the past. Empty chairs and empty desks sat collecting dust in eerily silent rooms, where only the rustling of paper and the scratching of a single pencil could be heard.
Sitting up straight at a missing girl's desk, Michel Hahne continued to draw. The quiet suited him well, let him focus without interruptions or distractions and try to visualize what he couldn't see, that creeping uneasiness at the back of his mind. For all of its wonders, this facility had been lately feeling more and more like a prison to him, its walls marking the outer boundary of everything that existed in his life. Before, the world had seemed wide-open and endless, a billion possible futures all spread out before him... Now, day by day, he could feel them all narrowing down to a single, inevitable point.
How to express this? After thinking for a while, he'd decided that it looked a little like a snow globe. There he was, sitting in a cold and desolate place surrounded by ice and snow, confined by something he couldn't entirely see. Not a solid line, but a boundary he could show through shading, in the way his imaginary rays of light were distorted by something invisible to the observing eye. It was tricky work, trying to convey that in a sketch, and the effort of it put his mind at ease. While he focused on the texture, the hatching, the physical motions required to bring his mental images into reality, there was less room to worry about the future.
Smiling to himself, he turned his sketchbook around to get a better angle, only to be interrupted by a voice from behind him:
"Missing class? That's not like you."
Michel blinked. Without turning his head, he brought down the tip of his pencil and begin carefully filling in another corner of the page.
"A lack of diligence never amounts to anything good. You're already lagging behind the other candidates as it is, and yet here you are, wasting your time hiding away in your own little world." Even without looking, he could hear her cruel smile, the venomous curl of those bright red lips. "Pitiful. Like a rat skulking in its hole. All of the others are already steeling themselves for the day they stand as the guardians of humanity, but you— You're not a protector. Not a leader, not a thinker, not even any use in a fight." A long sigh, laced with bitter disappointment. "I suppose they could sacrifice you for luck. Why, I'd even show them how. A good Servant should always seek to bring out the best in her contractor."
That got a little laugh out of the boy. "Good morning to you too, Lancer."
"Mhmm." A black-gloved hand reached over his shoulder, and dropped something on his desk. "You left this in your room."
Catching it one-handed, Michel flipped his phone over to see the fresh alert glowing on its screen. His eyes quickly skimmed over it, and his heart sank in his chest. "Hall Eleven... Ah."
"Be there on time," Lancer added, humming her words like a lullaby, "or I'll hunt you down and drag you there myself. By the hair." She turned on her heel and strode away from him, her footsteps echoing out through the empty classroom before they disappeared entirely as she vanished into spirit form.
Michel was left to sit in silence, staring down at his half-finished drawing and the message still painted across his screen. One by one, the letters flashed through his mind. M-A-N-D-A-T-O-R-Y. A boy trapped in a field of snow, surrounded by an invisible shell of duty and expectation and unwanted, inevitable fate.
He could already feel the noose tightening around his neck.
16:59. A delicate young man with sky-blue hair and bright, curious eyes walked silently up behind Cordelia Pelham and politely cleared his throat. "Would you mind opening that? I don't think I can afford to be late." In truth, he was every bit as scared as his classmate seemed to be, though you wouldn't have known it from his expression. Sometimes there really was no choice but to smile, breathe, and embrace the madness of one's new reality, to step through that waiting door and let the dice fall where they may.
@Anza
Hey. It's...actually been a bit since you posted here in general. Is everything good on your end?
It’s been a rough week.
Fortunately all is well now so I’ll try and find an opportunity to write something soon. If you need to skip me for a round then I won’t mind.
Excited to begin!
Alright! Like you suggested, I've updated Fu Hao's NP on her sheet. It's now set up so that she can summon simple ritual tools whenever she likes (since those are mostly flavor for her Oracle skill), but weapons/artifacts are restricted to three times per singularity and require a dice roll to determine which is summoned. The full list is on her profile, but basically the first five are simple weapons corresponding to her time period, while 6-9 are artifacts with specific effects. The 'Deus ex Machina' roll lets her pick two at once to deal with a given situation (quite powerful, but on average only going to happen once every few Singularities). Whatever she summons will last up to the end of a given battle scene, at which point it de-materializes and has to be summoned again through a later use of her NP.
As for Michel, I'm glad he went over well. I gave him a basic Mystic Code since he's essentially a newcomer to the world of mages. Even if he has been interacting with Mystics on some level his whole life, he doesn't have mage family to inherit a unique Code from, nor the skillset to make one on his own. I could see someone like Da Vinci being able to make him a custom one, however, so if she's still around in this version of Chaldea then it might be possible.
My sheets are all set.
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