[WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

[spellbindmods]

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. ]

Comments

[sealeted]

Normal cats can't do that, you know?

[She's giving him a little squirrelly look of disapproval. Is it too much to even get and explicit "I don't want to talk"?]

[nockpoint]

[ just a bit of cat side-eye in return. he's not listening because he can't hear anything she's saying!!!! or, that's what he's trying to pretend is happening. while he might be able to cut himself out, he definitely can't stop her from talking to him this way.

imagine a little telepathic "read: 4:23pm" receipt at the end. its kinda like that. ]

[sealeted]

[You know what, Archer?

Fine.

Have a tiny raspberry from this tiny squirrel you're not listening to.]

[nockpoint]

[ that... that actually elicits a response out of him. very mild, but definitely a response, and most un-catlike: a sharp turn of his head, and narrowing his eyes at her, as if to say "are you that childish?"


... actually, no, he's going to straight up say it. mentally, of course, and very careful to let nothing but the words bleed through. the disaffected tone only makes him sound more judgmental, tbh. ]

It's not as effective coming from the squirrel.

[sealeted]

Oh, hey. It speaks.

[Maybe it wasn't the most mature tactic, but he literally can't tell her it wasn't effective at all.]

[nockpoint]

Look at that, she has the social graces of a squirrel to match.

[ effective, perhaps. mature? no. not that he really is either right now. ]

[sealeted]

Hey, I'm not the one who started this furry protest.

[She gives him a shrug. Compared to Gilgamesh, his insult game is Rank E.]

[nockpoint]

I don't recall ever protesting.

[ he's gotta save all his really good insults when he's trying to antagonize people into killing him. it's fine. (and is he going to fucking like like a bitch and pretend he's always been a cat until he gets found out in the most humiliating way possible? you bet your ass.) ]

[sealeted]

Going dead silent and refusing to offer even a token greeting sends a certain message.

[nockpoint]

Platitudes aren't a specialty of cats.

[sealeted]

...Is that really an excuse you can make to a squirrel?

[nockpoint]

As I recall, you certainly weren't one when they brought you here.

[sealeted]

You have fully demonstrated your ability to communicate, so I don't see why your species is an excuse.

[nockpoint]

It's hardly a matter of species. Familiars can do all sorts of things.

[ keeeeep diggin this hole, buddy. keep it up. ]

[sealeted]

Then they can certainly learn manners.

[She fluffs her tail with a soft sigh, her communication dropping to a verbal mutter.]

Even Gilgamesh responded when spoken to, seriously...

[nockpoint]

[ muffle kill bill sirens playing in the distance

WELL. UH. okay. this was going fine, in his opinion, just being rude and difficult, but this squirrel girl just made it... ah... weird. not just weird, legitimately concerning. after running into that weird pink lizard servant (whatever he class was, he's not quite sure), and then that caster who didn't want to die, he knows he cant rule out the possibility that more people from the same set of universes and timelines could be here as well... ]

And I'm supposed to know who that is for comparison? [ he maintains the disaffected mental tone easily, but at that name, there was the slightest twitch of his ears... ]

[sealeted]

[She's had to see the King naked multiple times. He knows nothing of weirdness.]

...a very rude, arrogant person. But even he had basic manners... though it was a gamble if he saw fit to use them sometimes.

[nockpoint]

So what you're saying is, he's not a reliable comparison in the slightest.

[ to hell with weirdness. weirdness doesn't mean anything in comparison to living off the souls of a bunch of dying orphans in a church basement for a decade. or turning matou shinji into that monstrosity. or tearing out illya's heart like that (because who else leaves blood on a floor after dying like that? not the servant, certainly).

also fuck, that guilt too at giving rin over to gilgamesh's master in that desperate, selfish last attempt to prove to emiya shirou his ideals were worth nothing after all. ]

[sealeted]

[That is weird, even for Gilgamesh. Hakuno has certainly never known him to partake in such behaviors.]

What I'm saying is, you failed to clear one of the lowest bars I could lay out for another sentient person.

[nockpoint]

Perhaps it's a good thing that familiars aren't people, then. You can still have your lowest standard unmatched.

[ perhaps, a more enlightening perspective on his feelings about himself than he intended, when all it seemed to be was a continuation of this lie. ]

[sealeted]

A 'familiar' is a being summoned and bound by magic, isn't it?