spellbinders | [WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

[WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

Who: Participating coven members
Where: The Palai marketplace
When: Day 49
Open/Closed: OTA

[ Any and all who are in the marketplace will find that there is suddenly a mysterious barrier around the marketplace (that may be eerily familiar to some) -- specifically one large portion of the marketplace with a large number of tables and chairs, perhaps purposefully set out for nefarious reasons.

A few Palai are ushering coven members to chairs, and everything seems about normal. As normal as the Palai can be when they're putting on a show anyway. It's not until a sizable portion of the coven members are seated (and also supplied with breadsticks and small shrimp), that things get a bit more bizarre.

Thanks to the power of the Eltos, a small band of energy keeps coven members stuck to the chair (magic can interfere, of course), but that's not the end of it. On each table, next to those delicious smelling breadsticks and shrimp, is a bowl of scraps of papers. Every five minutes, a strip of paper will pop out from the bowl.

If you ask the Palai, they'll be inclined to explain speed dating to you. Asking questions, getting to know a person, then being shimmied off to the next potential mate -- this is made possible by Elto magic yet again, through flying chairs that transport their holder to a new table at standard intervals.

The Palai are extremely invested in this exercise? Will you let them down? ]

[ OOC: In the spirit of speed dating, each character will have a top level. All who want to respond to this top level can with questions from this post, but the threads have to end at 10 comments from each character. After this last tag, the characters can be assumed to have been whisked to a different potential match. You're free to have characters make up their own questions, interact with Palai serving food, etc. ]

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I didn't think the Palai would be so interested in team-building exercises...

[That's exactly what he thinks this is, because what is matchmaking when YoRHa aren't supposed to have emotions? Sure they still do, and some of them even have romantic relationships, but it's nothing at all like this. And 9S can't imagine anyone thinking he could be involved with such noble beings as humans this way.

He's looking around the area at everyone else confined to their seats, curious about this strange custom, before he finally looks Mikleo's way and-

...Only finds an empty chair and a floating breadstick]

Wha- [A moment of silence] I could swear I heard Mikleo...how'd he get out of here?

[oh dear, another victim of his invisibility. Mikleo waves the breadstick around to catch 9S's attention, surprised and amused]

Over here; I'm still in the chair, promise. Your scanners can't pick me up, huh?

[he'd sort of hoped that wasn't the case, but technology can be pretty unpredictable about sensing seraphim, so, oh well.]

[9S watches that breadstick move around, puzzled.

Cloaking technology is...certainly new]

There's body heat there, I can see that much, but I thought maybe something was wrong with my sensory functions.

[Although now he's curious (when isn't he?) and he taps the air, bringing up a holographic screen littered with different readings]

How're you able to cloak yourself like that?

I don't know. It's just...a seraph magic thing...? We're closer to spirits than humans, so you need to have resonance, spritiual sensitivity, to make us out. A lot more people in the coven can at least hear me than back home, though, and everyone could see me on the space island; it's kind of nice.

[he peers over at the screen, fascinated]

How are you doing that? You can sense temperatures...? What else? That's incredible!

I guess that explains it. Androids like me weren't built to contend with magic at all. I've wondered if maybe that's why I don't seem to have any of the weird abilities other people do, aside transmitting my thoughts.

[And that's still downright bizarre, considering the fact that he's artificial and most people here aren't. He certainly can't hack organic life back home, so how is it possible that he can send information, and receive it, from humans? Mysteries he intends to explore still]

Most of what I do is pretty standard for a Scanner, except having a functional NFCS— that's uh, Near-Field Combat System. Usually my unit type isn't capable of melee combat, but I...well. Made some modifications.

[He's...he's a talker, Mikleo, if this wasn't painfully obvious already]

...Anyway as a Scanner I'm intended to detect information on my environment and anything in it. Enemy units, allies, dangerous elements and all that. So temperature's pretty straightforward, I could even sort of see you that way. Not like the image Jay transmitted to me, but more like an outline...

[9S pokes one panel on his screen to magnify it, showing a heat signature that approximates Mikleo's figure]

There you are.

Edited (fixed some wording 2.0...) 2017-08-27 04:02 (UTC)

[he doesn't mind the talking, but the level of technology that must lie behind 9S's creation absolutely staggers Mikleo to think about, still -- he's a boy from a world that currently runs on the waterwheel and the horsecart, and while he's seem some magic-animated golems and such...9S says he was built, but he definitely doesn't seem like a machine to Mikleo. he even just admitted he had the power and autonomy to change himself, change his own capabilities.

he reaches out to touch the screen, even, in his fascination, before stopping just short of it, not sure if it will cause damage or not.]

Truly amazing . . . I think I kind of understand? You're naturally made to detect things in a number of ways, and you kept that while you adapted yourself . . . like training in a new discipline without neglecting the old one.

What you're doing is so advanced that -- [a small laugh] -- it does seem like magic to me, impossibly advanced levels of magic, even if I know it's technology. It sounds like your world is one of the ones mentioned in Genette's letter, where magic can't really disseminate, so other things advanced to compensate...

[9S observes that pause in what manner he can, detecting motion and temperature. It's a little dissatisfying being unable to really see someone, and he can't imagine what it would feel like to potentially go without notice that way, but he's unsure how one would go about changing such a thing.

...But it's going on his list of projects regardless]

Meanwhile I'm pretty useless squaring off against magic. I mean, I can still hack opponents, but... [Magical attacks cut him like butter, it's not fun] Guess it makes sense though, in a world where magic's pretty rare, now that you mention it.

[A pause, and he taps the screen again]

It's not gonna sting you or anything, you know.

[Neither is it solid matter, but it will respond to contact]

I just wasn't sure. It looks like an arte glyph, a spell glyph, a little, but you're telling me there's no magic involved...

[he taps it. the contact definitely registers! this is delightful

wait, though.]

Didn't you get a new ability when you came here, like the rest of us...?

[of course, he knows not everyone's abilities are practical in the everyday, but surely any power can be put to use somehow?]

[It looks like magic...? That's an interesting thought, having divergent capabilities that resemble one another. It certainly piques his curiosity, but 9S doubts it's something he can ask to be shown while they're stuck to chairs like this]

...If I got a new ability, I haven't figured out what it is yet. I've honestly been wondering whether someone like me could wield magic at all, considering I wasn't built with it in mind.

[As such, even squaring off against magic users was pretty dangerous. Not that this has stopped him, when does it ever, but the point stands.

At least he doesn't seem concerned with the lack of ability, tapping the screen between them to bring up another and dragging his finger across one module, then another, apparently intent on something]

I mean, being able to broadcast to everyone, even if they're not like me, is something I would've thought impossible already.

Everyone else got something, I think...maybe check with Brie or Genette? They definitely seemed to have some knowledge of what we were given, back on the island; I didn't confirm mine until they told me and gave me a way to practice it.

[not that that went particularly well.]

A lot of us have new abilities that...aren't natural to us normally, I think. I certainly wouldn't turn into a dragon at home, except under extremely dire circumstances. Is it so much of a stretch to believe you'd get one, even if you're not naturally a mage...? She seems to have given them to us as failsafes.

Magic's all but unheard of where I come from. Emil was the only one...and he'd been around since the days of human settlements.

[9S expects that Mikleo will understand his meaning, based on previous conversations. It's been millennia, and beings with such powerful magic were either few or nonexistent save for Emil and his many, many clones.

He can't be sure, having encountered no others]

It might be worth knowing, but I'm not too sure how I feel about someone else having modified me. If it didn't disable my motor functions, I'd remove this thing again.

[He taps the signet embedded into him with his free hand, still touching displays on his screen with the other until...

Until that temperature reading in one corner starts resolving itself into something much more resembling a human face. Mikleo's face, in point of fact, and 9S taps that small module to make it bigger. He smiles, pleased]

...Now that looks more like what Jay showed me.

Edited 2017-09-02 00:43 (UTC)

Well, better to know what you need to do something about either way than not, right?

[he does understand his meaning, but he hopes magic isn't something 9S doesn't reject for himself outright--

oh my god that is his face. his voice goes up into a squeak]

How--?!

[9S supposes he can't argue the point. He should figure out if he has any added capabilities in case they might prove helpful in some ways, though he still doubts that he could be modified on such a level.

Maybe he should doubt less, when he can have conversations with organic life-forms through thought alone. Still, he can't imagine how he could have been changed.

It's a matter he sets aside, watching Mikleo's face on the screen. It matches right up with the sound of his voice]

Well, I was thinking... Water's outside the visible spectrum, right? But we can still see it, because of its reaction to light. [He doesn't even know how on the nose this is] So if you're outside the visible spectrum, it just means it's necessary to bend light the right way.

[Like it's the most intuitively sensible thing in the world, what a weirdo, 9S]

Just like that?! You made that connection so fast...

[he gives up dignity briefly, in the face of sheer delight; 9S gets the dubious pleasure of seeing him wiggle his fingers at the screen and pull a couple of faces, before covering his face and laughing at himself]

What are you even using? We don't even show up in normal mirrors, and I've never heard of light-bending ones.

I'm adaptable by design.

[Mikleo may live to regret making faces, because 9S is recording the whole thing for his own reference. It's just to ensure that he has relevant data on how light filters work with Mikleo's condition, but nevertheless, this moment will live on in his memory files.

He wonders how it must feel, being invisible like that. On the one hand, it'd be terribly convenient for reconnaissance, but to go unseen even when one wanted to be... 9S frowns as he considers that, but the expression passes quickly]

It was just a theory, but... I changed the way my recording system filters light, to see if I was right. [And then he smiles, because the results mean there's something he can do] I can duplicate results like this, with the right materials.

[Mikleo's expression goes from goofy to shocked in the space of a moment; that is a legitemately world-changing revelation 9S just dropped on his head]

You can...so that anyone could see a seraph? By changing the light?

[MIND BLOWN]

Edited 2017-09-16 21:35 (UTC)

More like changing the way light responds to you, but yeah, something like that.

[He's relieved the concept is much more straightforward than adapting technology to work with the locals' magic. Something like this is easier for him to apprehend, and he's got a good idea of how it could be done...

Just a matter of implementation. So he believes]

Shouldn't have to be too heavy-duty. Maybe something you could wear?

[Technology so ridiculous it comes up with even more ridiculous technology: more likely than you might think]

[he is not normally physically demonstrative but 9S YOU ARE GETTING A HUG

...

it's kind of awkward since they're both tied to their damn chairs, but, it's a hug]

[And this is his very first hug. Very educational, catching people from across a table and holding them. Or well, it would be, if 9S quite recognized the gesture]

...Mikleo?

[His voice is muffled against a sleeve here, but the puzzlement is clear enough]

Oh, um, sorry, sorry, I should have asked, but this is a lot, this means a lot, and --

[flusters, gently letting go of him; oh no the chairs are starting to prepare to move away]

Thank you? Thank you! Let's talk more later!

[And so their game of musical chairs goes on. 9S opens his mouth to speak, but they're being swept off to other tables. So he thinks better of it]

I don't see a reason to be sorry, but... I'll let you know when I have something.

[It'll take him a while to figure out that was a hug]

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[WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

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