A delightful garden conversation

    The warm summer sun filled the garden of the Isekai Roukan, there is a level of serenity and peace found here at this moment. Taking advantage of this is Rizadoman who is sitting by the koi pond currently sipping his tea. He is simply trying to gather his thoughts as he watches the koi pool. For those who may have been looking for him as of late has been a bit missing in action. He shows up for some things here or there else he has almost taken on the lone lizard personality. It would be a true surprise for anyone to track him here.

Shiruba is practically dragging herself into the Roukan garden, where she turns and flops down on the pillows next to one of the kotatsu stalls. "Uuuuugh." The wolfgirl puts hands over her face for a moment, trying to drudge some of the weariness from her system. "Thank the Goddesses that trick with the bao buns still worked..." Even if it had cost more than her share for a triple order and delivery, at least she could finally get some time to recoup while the wily old panda was sleeping off his feast. "I ache in places I didn't even know I had to ache."

Track? Nothing of the sort. It's sheer coincidence. Shiruba probably hasn't even noticed anyone else is here yet.

Erufu is not about to let her friend stat being like Orcbalg and she will be sneaking up on Rizadoman while she waits for her order to come in. Meatbuns and the like, she is however sneaking up on Rizadoman and will he has an elf resting her head on his shoulder. "So here you are all brooding like a certain Slayer!"

    Miyako was already sitting at one of the tables, leaning back in her seat while she works away at something. Writing with a fancy-looking quill pen. A letter? A song? Who can tell? Her guitar rests against the table beside her, in the corner of the booth.

    She looks up briefly as Shiruba stumbles in, and nods briefly. "Evening," she says. "Been up to some shenanigans?"

And into this mess comes one Giganpor. Who, for some reason... still has a bunch of piranha stuck to his head. Literally. The chomping sound just kinda interrupts things a bit as the red-head sighs, eyeing his ever changing HP and moves to sit down off to one side. There's not been much Giganpor sighting lately, other than to say he's been walking in and out of storms of all things! And he's been fairly quiet otherwise.

But it's obvious it's Giganpor at least. No one else would duplicate his usual Root Town wearing clothes. Right?

    Rizadoman doesn't hear the Shiruba enter the gardne, or the Miyako greet the Shiruba, or even notice the elf. The guy with a fish on his head does break his concentration though and that seems to awaken him to the world around him. THere is a head tilt, and then another and then another before he shakes his head and looks around seeing Erufu. "When did you come in Erufu?" He reaches down and picks up his cup of tea, raising it to his lips and frowning. "Can't believe they sold me cold tea."

Shiruba lowers her hands from her face and turns her head a bit to look up at the voice. "Oh, I'm sorry Miyako, I didn't look to see if someone else was in this spot." Not that she seems inclined to move at the moment. "No, training... And when Li Ho found out he dragged me off into a VERY rigorous training montage." Eventually she shifts on the pillows to sit up properly. "I had to get a triple order of buns delivered out to the mountain farmlands to distract him so I could get a break."

Erufu says "Just a moment ago, they don't sell cold tea here my friend. I think you were staring at the fish so long it became cold." SHe nots and tilts he head a bit as she pulls back. "Been conerned you have been a hard man to find. My own order should be here soon, it has some cheese...with it."

    Miyako ahhs softly, nodding to Shiruba. "Sounds like you've been keeping busy. Don't think I've met Li Ho, though?" She shrugs and turns herself in her seat, leaning against the back corner of her booth. "And it's okay, I don't mind the company."

    The spriggan hmms softly, hearing a mention of tea. "You hungry? I could go for something." She looks up, noticing Erufu and Rizadoman, and waves casually to the pair. "Maybe we should try some sun-brewed iced tea, this summer."

"He's a guardian of one of Ninetails' farming regions, near the mountains," Shiruba explains. "He helped with my Shield training as well, but that was nothing as intense as this. Kind of caught me off-guard... And yes, please! I didn't get a single bun before her ate them all and dozed off." Finally she looks around, and waves to her other friends as she notices them. "Hello Erufu, Riza."

    Rizadoman looks over at Erufu as he then looks down as his tea and channels fire magic into it till it warm again. " I suppose I got lost in thought." Taking a moment he sips his tea before he looks up, not giving the answer about the cheese as he sees they have company. "Greetings Shiruba , Miyako. Do either of you know anything about that person with the fish on their head?" It is a question, perhaps it is a crown person trying to hide their crown.

Erufu sits down by her friend crosslegged. "We have a lot to think on. Also hello Shiruba! Miyako!" She wiat on her food now. "The Palace Landers won't stop so long as they have the Crowned as their slaves."

    Miyako nods, placing a quick order for something to eat - including an appetizer to share with Shiruba. It would seem she's in a mood for stir-fry noodles tonight. "Fish?" She blinks and looks up, noticing Giganpor. "Oh, yeah. Dunno what the fish are still there for. Maybe he likes them." She shrugs, helplessly. She isn't even sure how the fish are still /alive/ by this point.

    Then she turns to return Erufu's greeting. "Good day, neighbor. Tell me, now that you've informed us that water is wet, can you give us any good ideas how to go about changing that?"

Yeowang enters the garden, tucking a game bag back into her inventory. Seems she's been doing a bit of hunting to pay for meals. She sees so many alliance members, though, she will smile and call, "Hello," and take a look around. "Giganpor, why have you got a fish on your head?" she asks, puzzled, placing an order of her own before finding a chair.

Shiruba sits up farther to turn her head when people mention fish on heads. "Giga, why haven't you gotten that removed yet?" Now she's really glad she managed to avoid suffering that hazard. Though she's distracted a moment later by waving the waitress down as she passes through so she can order some proper food.

    Rizadoman nods his head slowly as he looks at his tea for another mmoment. " I suppose that is true. " Looking over at Miyako as she makes the comment towards Erufu, he gives his own rebuttal, "Sometimes stating the problem out in the open is the first step to solving it. However I don't think any of us are going to feel like we are doing anything until we can regroup and take back Shibuya." Looking at the water he adds," I apologize for not being present that day."

Giganpor looks up from where he was thinking. And he blinks a few times. "That can be removed? Thought they would just die off." He comments, shrugging. A sigh is given as he looks considerate again, "Oh, probably because I was doing all that training myself."

Erufu eyes the fish. "My ideas would involve us finding a way to free the Palace Land's slave soldiers." She looks back to Miyako for a moment as her order arrives. She will devour a bun before offering Riza some of teh cheese she got with her order. "They have their dirty mits all over my Inn!"

"They'll probably have had their dirty mitts on a bunch of things before we're done," remarks Jazz. When did she get here? Maybe she was paying attention when people talked about meeting? Who knows? What's important is that the wee-undine is here now and she has her hands tucked in her pockets, her hair swept down over her face, and she's sounding positively adorable, despite her grim tones.

...you know, just Jazz being Jazz.

"Your inn, Estelle's library, my museum. I just barely finished setting up, too." Shiruba exhaled slowly. "And now they attacked Gadelica's marina, too." Pause. "It's like they're avoiding the ports of the larger nations. Maybe they're navy isn't as formidable as they want us to believe...." Shakes her head a few times. "But speculation gets us nowhere."

Yeowang peers at Giganpor, blinking at his response about the pirhana. "I assume they're not supposed to be a condition you live with for the rest of your life." But she nods about being busy with training. "That's why I haven't heard from you on the issue of the mystery usurper. I wrote to you with a plan. It's not fleshed out yet," though the concept was pretty detailed.

"When you get a look at it, it's obviously your call. But I think finding out that she likes being at these affairs is her main weakness. I'm fairly certain, considering what she's done, that she's up to no good. Which means I have no compunction about removing her. Plan A is to let them sioree, then invite her to an exclusive after-party, so she heads home by herself, and waylay her on the road."

This being more of the rough outline.

To Erufu, she says, in the tone of 'look at the bright side', "They seem to be taking relatively good care of Shibuya, in any event." But she continues on, "But we can definitely take it back. I was thinking, what if we enlist Scale to assist us. They'll add considerable firepower," literally, "and if they're fighting Palace Landers, they're not messing around in the Tower?"

    "My library, too," the Spriggan adds. "And yeah, I agree that freeing them would be a Good Thing, but it won't stop all of them. For all we know it may not even stop any of them. Some of them might just keep on fighting."

    Miyako shrugs. And looks at Yeowang. "You know what utterly fucking terrifies me right now? The fucking Palace Landers getting into the Tower. If they figure out the relationship between that and the Waves?" She leaves it there, thinking it obvious what could happen. "Yeah, get Scale involved, but keep a good guard on the Tower."

    Rizadoman listens and shakes his head, " I fear I am of the same opinion as Miyako. I don't really care to try to save them I think. " There is a heavy weight to his words as if he is resisting saying those works and it is obviously hinting at what he was thinking about. " I don't know if we can save everyone so at the end of the day given the choice I would rather save us." He sips his tea again as he is perturbed by his own words.

    "Oh, don't mistake me," Miyako interjects. "I don't mean to just slaughter them. I do want to save as many as I can. It's worth doing even if we know it won't be a hundred percent successful. The real enemy's the arrogant fuckers who sent them here."

Erufu says "The Palace Lands have always had a terrible navy in the bounds of history." That is as close as breaking character as anyone might get the elf to do. She doesn't go further at this.

"You should care," says Jazz, gently, to Rizadoman, "if not for them, then for you and the people you *do* care about. What was done to them could be potentially done to anyone in this room if things go badly enough. For our own sake, you should care."

She tucks her hands back into her pockets, glancing down to the floor with the morose she's known for. Her bangs fall down over her eyes, because of course they do.

"The hard part is going to be figuring out who's the slaves and who's the willing participants." And that's all Shiruba has to say at the moment, as after a wave to Jaz her food platter arrives and Shiruba proceeds to make 'wolf it down' more literal than it was ever intended to be.

Giganpor sighs, "So, how do I get this off? It said something about cooking or such." He looks over at Yeowang, "More like I have been a bit busy. The usurper, however, is something I have been considering as well. And to pull off any of those plans, we need an appropriate bait or risk getting kicked out of the Root Town." He comments, with a shrug, "I'm fresh out of ideas as far as some sort of bait to make it work, and my only real connections are the Tradesmen and Lady Mia."

Yeowang nods to Miyako, "They're keeping a close watch on the Tower, I'm told, but they'd need to bring in a pretty major party, and then, what are they going to do, clear a floor boss and bring down a wave that might hit them? That doesn't seem like a good strategy for them." Which is entirely different from saying she doubts they will do it. "But Scale's got a pretty stout gate guard at the entrance, I think they can stop a tower clear party. The Palace Landers would need to bring an army, and then Scale can reach back to their firsr floor base and pull their own reserves. Or just shut the gates or hold them off in the doorway and bleed them dry. It would be a very hard thing to take the Tower right now."

Erufu's interjection doesn't come across as breaking character so much as unlikely-but-welcome knowledge. "They have? Well, we should get our own allies to mobilize. The more of their ships we can sink at sea, the less mobile they become."

To Giganpor, she says, "If you have a Lady as a contact, she may be able to get you the social schedule. A big enough function will bait your target out of the Root Town, my sources said, so we will just need to make that function happen. We just need to find a where, and that will tell us who to go through. It's all in the proposal I sent you, when you get a chance."

    Rizadoman shakes his head, " I feel all I meant is that at the moment the war needs to be ended. We ... the New World alliance always feels like we are a three headed snake. Each one of us always seems to have a different opinion on the matter and I feel if we could just agree to not worry about saving the enemy until we have won then perhaps , just perhaps we could all come together and focus on a solution to the immediate problem." He doesn't look anyone in the eye or even the face instead just continues to stare at the pond. He said it and he isn't sure what else to say. It's like starting a fire with all the gasoline from all the conflict it may not be the safest idea.

    Miyako looks over at Shiruba and hmms softly. "That, I fear, is going to be the hard part..." She sighs softly and looks down into - oh. Her food arrived.

    "Gigan -- you -could- go stick your head in the deep fryer... I dunno if it'd help, though." She smirks at the big fellow, definitely teasing him. Trying to get her mind off of the dark times.

    And she has food. Time to eat it! She grins and grabs her chopsticks and digs in.

Giganpor considers, then shrugs, "Worth a try. Let me go find it."

He stands up to go do just that it looks like. He is a tank, after all. Surely a deep fryer won't hurt him!

"I don't think there can be any victory without unraveling how to do away with the 'crown'," says Jazz, firmly, "But that's just one angle of approach that's going to need to doing if there's going to be any hope of averting the worst possible result for us." Jazz doesn't seem to think there can be any real 'winner' in this conflict, given the careful choice of her words. She stares at Giganpor for a moment, then looks around slowly to see if anyone else is doing anything. Given her nature as a Sea-Witch, she kind of expects that some of them are going to look to *her*.

With a sigh, she makes a gesture in the air, "I'll take care of it, Giganpor..."

She lets out a breath and then begins, "Great hunter of the seas, sleekest beast of the ocean, may your bite be swift and your hunt end in the sweet capture of your prey."

Yep, activating an arte. A summon, apparently, as a twinkle of light appears above her and a slightly ephemeral beast springs into view in a wave of sparkles and light, spinning around in the air once in joy at having appeared!

... it's... a fish. More accurately, a catfish. A literal cat-fish combo, with adorable fins and swirlingly colored scales.

"MEWL," it bloops, loudly. It looks arouind for a moment, but then it's eyes alight on Giganpor's predicament.

"Chhrrt," it twitches. It's fishy back-end wiggles back and forth before it zips towards Giganpor and pounces on the attached fish, swallowing it in a single, razor-toothed 'OMP'. Gulp.

"MEW," it repeats, and then spins around more happily before taking a position over Jazz's head. Is it ... purring? Apparently. A purring cat-fish.

Shiruba looks up from her food. "Riza is right. We need to stop chasing our own tails, and decide on a course of action as a whole." Then stuffs an extra large meat bun in her mouth. Omnomnomnom. Wolfgirl hungry. And tired. But we're taking care of hungry first.

Giganpor just blinks a few times. At how quickly it was taken care of. Then he eyes the summons. "That's a new one. Palace Lands or something?"

He sighs, looking considerate, "If we are going to win as far as the war, then my suggestion is to stop reacting." He plops down at a closer table, ordering some steak and other things.

Then he leans his head on one fist, the elbow on his knee as he gets in a bit of a thinking posture. "What you have done so far is react. So stop reacting. Start acting. Tell the other two Alliances. Scale's usually all about a fight, and Olympus at least sees the same problem from what I understand. I would get involved myself, but there are other concerns I have to deal with at the moment. Namely refugees among other things."

Erufu was about to say something deep and profound to Riza and then Jazz summons the purring catfish. You can see the Elf's brain breaks. You can see her mind shatter. "That ... catfish, is purring?!"

Yeowang nods at what Jazu says. "I concur, that a complete victory cannot happen without that. And with uncrowning the leaders there that are mind-controlling others." She agrees with Giganpor about taking the offensive, though she says, "Baroness Wake seems to have the refugees in hand. But if we can band together all the alliances, we will definitely be able to field a major force." She yawns, "But it's late, and I have to turn in, so I will bid you all good evening."

    Rizadoman stands up slowly and looks at the others, "Shiruba is right, Giganpor is right even Jazuhanzu is right. " Taking a moment he actually looks at the others and the heavy weight he is carrying can be seen behind his eyes. "I will gather together the alliance and then the alliances and we will find a single voice. " Taking another step he simply adds, "Thank you all and I am sorry." With that Rizadoman steps out of the garden, heading off to where ever lizard people go in times like these.

    Miyako hmms softly as she eats, and then Yeowang mentions the time. She looks up at her menu and realizes... it -is- rather late. She gets up and walks over to the bar. "Send two more plates of this to my room? Kotono's going to be starving, and I owe her." She hands over some coin, and heads off to one of the rented rooms, presumably where she and her friend are spending the night.

"...'even'?" says Jazz, a flash of annoyance crossing her expression. She looks relatively put out by that!

Shiruba nods vigorously as she gulps down the end of her meal. "Ah, that's better. Now I can go get some sleep.... And yeah. We were ready for them to invade the Marina, and that was a start. Now we need to start taking the fight to them instead of defending on our back foot."

    Hearing Jazuhanzu's response as Rizadoman is stepping out he turns and adds, " Yes even you had insightful words that I felt were credible and correct. Despite their conflicting views with my own I am not deaf and in fact agree that being able to remove the crowns could be helpful. At the same time I feel that should not be the primary focus of ours but a side quest per say. If we manage it great, if we can't until the war is over then so be it." WIth that he continues his way out the door.