An unexpected meeting

It is not hard to find Robert amidst the desolate, blasted landscape. Wind screams in vengeance as it whips raindrops first this way then that through the gathering darkness. Neither moon nor stars illuminate the craggy peaks and heat-glassed gullies. This land is lit, tonight, only by lightning.

And lightning marks out Robert's position, for all that it is but a pale echo of the raging sheets that crackle overhead. He stands atop a rocky outcropping, arms extended out to the side, his rain-drenched clothing snapping. Bluish light gathers in his right palm, then in his left. It dances over his form, retreats into hiding. Flares and subsides.

    Tae hasn't seen weather this bad since winter in Eas. She had grown up in Korea, so winters and mountains aren't unfamiliar to her, but the ability of snow and sleet to fly upwards will always seem unfair to her. Yet here she is, leading a very unhappy peko into the desert. If this is even nice enough to call a desert!

    She has had to wander a fair while, but eventually, Tae is able to find what she is looking for: the only person other than her to be mad enough to come outside for this. She says something, but the winds simply carry it away.

    After considering her options, Tae just heads right up towards Robert. You know, upon the highest point in the area. During a lightning storm. She adds this to the ledger of things that her fiancee has gotten her into.

    It takes some effort for her to even get up there. Additional effort considering the peko is unruly and Taeyeon is hardly that talented with the thing. At last, she gets up near Robert, who probably can't hear her approach, being rather focused on other things.

    While her voice isn't terribly loud, the explosive noise of a lightning strike probably will get his attention. The victim isn't Tae. It's her ride. She is left holding a lead that now swings uselessly in her right hand, the ends quite burnt. Her peko falls and then bursts into pixels.

It's not the lightning bolt that catches Robert's attentions. He's used to that at this point, as loud and intrusive as such things are. Nor is it Tae's voice, which he cannot hear over the storm's cries. What he -does- hear is the sound of pixels bursting. It even leaves an interesting drop, in the form of a small white paper box with a pleasant-looking man in red on the surface. Even amidst the storm, the mouth-watering scent of dinner is difficult to resist.

But Robert stands there, lips pursed. Lightning still plays over his form, crackling, flaring, ebbing. He looks at Tae. Back to the box. Then back up at Tae. "I don't really swing that way," he states quietly, eyes finally alighting on the swaying (and now empty) leash.

    Tae tilts her head, shrugs, smiles, and says, "Well, I came all this way. Let's at least enjoy dinner." She looks at the lead and with a gesture sends it back to her inventory.

    With a smile in her eyes, she turns to pick up the food. "Alas for you, my friend peko. No doubt I'll be losing the deposit for your rental. But fear not, I have brought side dishes to make the most of your offering."

    The wind and rain continue to whip around her, and Robert is still doing his Thor impression. "I hope this isn't one of those situations where you need to be hand fed."

There's just silence in response. A scorched feather lazily sways through the air during a break in the wind--that is tailor-made just for that dropping feather. Once the feather hits the ground, the wind starts up again.

As for Robert, there is a hiss and the potent scent of ozone as he extinguishes the sparks in his hand. "I was not expecting you," he comments, a quick hop sending him skittering down the loose rocks underneath his outcropping, heading towards the darkened mouth of what appears to be a cave. "But Wake would not have sent you. Why," he wants to know, "are you here?"

    Tae watches the descent of the feather with a twinkle of amusement in her eyes. She turns her attention back to Robert, and follows him to the cave. She's not as quick about it as he is, but she keeps up as well as she can.

    The cave is probably a spartan thing, but it's at least out of the elements. Mostly. Tae will happily accept that.

    "And why are you so sure that Wake wouldn't have sent me, exactly? I am her favorite caterer and all that." She's being evasive, maybe, but she doesn't keep it up. "Anyhow, I came because I heard from various sources that I could find you out here. Is it so odd that I'd want a break from my exciting life of sitting around waiting for chims?"

The cave is indeed a spartan thing. But it also appears to be something Robert has been using as a sort of a base. A bedroll occupies one corner, next to a small stack of supplies. A small heap of firewood occupies the center of the chamber, unlit. That is something easily addressed, though, in the form of a swift crack of lightning that sets the thing blazing.

Thus situated, Robert lifts his hands, turns around, and settles in upon his own throne--a humble rocky outcropping of the cave wall. "Wake would not send you alone into a place like this," he states, a trifle flatly. "She might even hesitate to send you into a place like this with guards. And I would hazard that simple boredom is not sufficient to get you to leave Tolbana and come all the way out here." So he did know where she was based. Interesting. "So." He spreads his arms, expansively, in a gesture of welcome and folds one leg over the other. "What can I do for you, Tae?"

    Tae listens, nodding thoughtfully as Robert speaks. "It may shock you, but I don't always do what Wake wants." She sighs, flicking some dirt from her left shoulder. "But yes, though boredom is a torture, I came out here because I wanted to talk to you. To figure out a thing or two about who you are and let things go from there."

    Tae doesn't have any outcropping to sit on, but settles on her knees. The game dampens the pain enough that it doesn't bother her. "We have never had a real conversation before. Wake is relying on you to a degree that I respect and seek to better understand. When you love someone dearly, you want to help them. She is out of my reach, but you are nearby."

"It doesn't shock me whatsoever," Robert opines, almost blandly. "What it does suggest is that you're not out here for anything she wants. Only something you want. Which I appreciate your honesty in. Ask away, and I will answer in the manner that I consider to be appropriate. Though you do understand that the part of her life that -you- occupy is completely separate from the part that I occupy, yes? And must stay that way?"

Popping the Peko drop out of his inventory, he selects a still-steaming drumstick before wafting the entire box over to Tae on a helpful gust of oven-warm air. The box whirls, pauses, neatly settles by her side. Robert smiles. Almost smirks. "At least one of the devs had a sense of humor," he comments.

    Tae messes with her inventory and soon the bird feast is enhanced with cooked vegetables and rice. She's a good cook. "I think we can hold off on the fish, since my ride so generously decided to provide the main dish for us." She laughs playfully at this.

    "And yes, I'm here on my own. I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I assure you, I don't swing that way, either." She is a very tidy eater, though she manages to keep up a flow of speech with no signs of difficulty.

    "You probably know a bit about me already. How Elly -the woman you call Wake- and I were together in the real world. But if you have questions, ask away." She somehow doubts he will. "But first, tell me what you are about. I get that you want out of this place, but why, exactly?"

"You are where the Baroness goes when she doesn't want to think about work," Robert clarifies, if a trifle absent-mindedly. No doubt he's formulating his answer to her other question. "I am part of her work. And I bring that work with me wherever I go. I think you can agree that the overlap is unacceptable."

And then he is silent, brooding. "Why do I want out?" he echoes at last. He shrugs. "Three reasons, really. First: I have duties to fill back home. Promises that I made. People who rely on me. Or relied on me. As you might imagine, the longer we are trapped here the less impact that reason has. Second: I..well, I hesitate to consider this a waste of time. But there is no translation. Knowledge I acquire here has no bearing on the real world. Skills I acquire disappear. The longer I am in here, the more it is as though I spent five, ten, twenty years on nothing. It's like prisoners who are in jail, and then are released after a couple decades. What do they do? How do they contribute to a world that has left them behind? I mean no disrespect to them, but starting a life is...at best, difficult. Third: we are trapped here. Even if I were content to remain, there are many who wish to return. Who need to return. And while I could sit back and enjoy this land, it seems to me that I would not be able to ignore the fact that I am enjoying myself in their inescapable prison."

    Taeyeon considers Robert's words carefully. If there is one trait she may share with Wake that is obvious, it is being intention with her words. But she is a fair amount faster to reply than Wake is.

    "Those are all understandable reasons. The first speaks of honor and commitment, the second echoes my own fears, and the last is much like the first. A moral stance. As for me, I just want to get back to see if I started a fire. I was baking a pie when we went into the game, thinking I'd step away again to take it out. I guess sometimes games imitate reality. Though all of this.. is ultimately useless."

    She frowns then, abruptly stabbing a vegetable with a chopstick. Wake would be appalled. "We're sitting here, barely.. feeling anything. Out there I'm.. getting old. Probably my skin is horrible and I'm fat. I doubt I'll be able to walk at this point. I love Elly, and while this place is amazing, if there is a way back, I want to drag her with me, if I can."

SpritesHero , by contrast, is not at all appalled. Lightning may crash outside, but he is contentedly gnawing away at his personal bit of Peko-carcass. He'd probably nibble on its bones, the monster.

"I think I can promise you that the fire is out," Robert opines with minor amusement. "Though I think your pie may be inedible." Again, silence, during which Robert eyes Tae for far too long and with far too much intensity. "You..." he begins. He then pauses. There's a minor grimace of distaste. "You'll just have to convince her then, I expect. I would imagine she thinks that the other world would not welcome you." He leaves it ambiguous as to whether that 'you' is singular or plural.

    "You see pretty clearly. She'd be right to think that, but I don't care. I never did. We carved out a life for ourselves. It was wonderful, imperfect, and I loved every moment of it. I still do. If the choice was given to me, I'd obviously stay wherever she decides to. I cannot be without her. Elly is my home."

    Tae continues carrying out a merciless war on the food. Peko has only rarely been bitten with such energy. If anything, Robert's made it okay for her to just relax and enjoy the food.

    "Okay, since you have no questions for me yet.." She smirks, not bothering to wipe a bit of grease from her chin as immediately as her fiancee would. "Who is waiting for you out there? I mean.. family, a bunch of friends, your coworkers who like to get blitzed with you every other night?"

SpritesHero rather ignores responding to issues surrounding Tae's and Elly's relationship. He's rather clearly chalked it up into the general realms of 'not my business'. Or at least 'not something for me to actively meddle in'. Which is probably for the best. A meddling Robert would not be pretty. As for grease on chins--he either doesn't notice or doesn't care. The lighting is atrocious anyhow, if warmly welcoming, and the wood occasionally snaps as it burns to send sparks skywards.

"I'm not certain," he answers at last, his words a trifle chilly in the near-silence of the cave. Well, silence relative to outside. "The people who are waiting for me probably don't know that they are. And won't. Perhaps they'll be worse off for it, but I hope not. I genuinely hope that I am not missed at all."

    "That sounds very sad, Robert," says Tae. "You seem like a pretty decent guy to me. Your actions, as I understand them, align to your motivations to help others. So I doubt you are feeding me crap. I mean, you obviously don't take me all that seriously yet, but being a the girlfriend of a noble probably doesn't lend itself to that. God! It's so ironic. She used to be /my/ girlfriend and now it's all backwards. Granted, she had a kickass job and could hold her own. Here I'm.. just a girl who cooks and sings."

    Though she makes a face, it's obvious she's not upset about it. "So. Anyway. What's something I should never ask you about? You have an aura about you, you know. This is a guy who has secrets. I'm rather used to it, and I like to be straight forward. I'm not trying to mess with you or screw up whatever you guys are working on."

SpritesHero's head tilts to the side, as though in confusion. "It's not sad," he clarifies. "If I'm missed, it means that someone else's life has gone down the drain and others weren't able to address the problem. So as nice as it is to be missed, I think I'd prefer knowing that, even in my absence, folks are able to get what they need." His smile is wry, a bit stiff, but also amused.

Her second inquiry, on the other hand, gets a rather long, dubious pause. Finally he answers. "I mean. I'd prefer it if you didn't ask anything particularly private or...weird? But other than that there's nothing in particular that I consider to be off-limits. I prefer not lying if I can avoid it. Lying well is difficult. Horrendously so. I am too lazy to maintain the mental space reserved for it."

    "Well, at least missed for a bit, right? Isn't it fair to say that you'd hope that you had a big enough impact to have people care that you aren't present, and wish you were? I wouldn't want people to be utterly shattered by me vanishing, either, but my dearest friends I would hope think fondly on the times we spent together and wish that we had more time to spend together."

    She turns away from that with a laugh. "Damn, there goes all my questions about how you cut toast and whether you fasten or zip first." Her nose wrinkles up as she lets out an unapologetic giggle. "Ohhh, I know! I'll ask questions for you, since you aren't sure what to ask me yet." She imagines he doesn't care, and suspects he would love it if /she/ were to vanish right now. Just not in a way that might cause Wake any level of distress.

    "Taeyeon, why are you so curious about me, really?" She even tries to put in a voice somewhat like Robert's. It's a horrible impression, but she does what she can.

    "Well, Robert, that's a very good question. I..." She just pauses, setting aside the food for the moment. There's a light in her eyes as she finally goes on, "I want to be your friend. You can call it what you will, you can be upset with me, but I have an eye for people. You look like the kind of person that could use a friend every now and then. God knows I could. I don't want anything from you. I'm not trying to snoop into your past or anything like that. You can take that as you will, but I can't help Wake by being.. smart or sneaky. You aren't going to crack under the pressure of an interrogation from a former korean pop star. But maybe I can help her by being your friend. And since I love having friends, it helps me, too. So.. there you have it. Tae's dastardly plan."

"Fasten," Robert answers flatly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Fastening first takes strain off the zipper. And as long as you hold it shut while zipping, you don't run the risk of ripping the button off." So there. Mysteries of the world part 1, solved, without even a modicum of fuss.

The rest of her comment, however, has Robert looking distinctly uncomfortable. Or at least skeptical. There's silence, aside from the shrieking of wind, the hiss of rain against rock, and the very-frequent thunderclap. Finally he clears his throat. "I'm...not sure that's how friends work," he hazards at last, his tones just shy of being strangled. "There are a hundred things you already do, and can continue to do, that help Wake. You don't need to adopt her co-workers. You really, really don't want to adopt her co-workers. A good chunk of your -practical- value to Wake lies in your not being mixed up with her coworkers. So far I have answered your questions as truthfully as possible because I figured you were worried about the sorts of people Wake hangs out with professionally. And that is fair. But I suspect you have not thought this through. I could be wrong, of course. Please walk me through the thought process from start to finish, beginning with what exactly you think I do for your fiancee."

    "Well, that is a very organized way to do it. Honestly I've only met a few who zip first, and it has a lot to do with trying to fit into pants that are aligned with long gone measurements."

    As for the rest, it's clear that Robert has put up a sound argument against Tae's answer to her proposed question. She realizes that she's not met someone like Robert. She wonders if this is what CIA are like.

    "Very well. Perhaps I have not devoted adequate thought to this. I tend to operate more intuitively, but you are a different case than the people I have met before."

    She falls into silence then, considering what she knows of Robert's relationship with Wake and what they talk about. She's never really pried into it. Those kind of aspects of life were generally kept out of her sight. The business always gets handled separately and then the levity usually takes place. Not that Robert has really done that.

    "I suppose I should leave you to.. whatever it is you are doing out here. I can think about a better answer to your challenge and come back more prepared."

    If she's upset, she does a very good job hiding it. She can't help but feel more suspicious and curious, though. What are Wake and Robert up to, anyway?

"Intuition is important," Robert acknowledges as he pushes himself to his feet. "It lets you know what to pay attention to. But I've found that it is...advisable to try and find the basis behind that intuition." There is a swift tug on his still-soaked clothing in a feeble attempt to straighten it. The look he gives Tae is...severe, to be honest. And judgemental. "I will not be walking you home," he announces, gaze flickering towards her dinner. "Yes. I saw what you did with that peko, and I am quite sure that I am taller than you are. You are welcome to remain here until the storm blows over. I will give you your privacy, but I will be returning to my practice. If you will excuse me?"

    Tae actually pauses to consider what Robert says. She hesitates to react. After a time, she says, "That.. is most helpful. Thank you." She rarely looks so thoughtful, but it's clear that something is set in motion by that challenge.

    "In my defense.." She looks down at the remains of the meal, "That bird was delicious. I couldn't have done better myself. We may have discovered an entirely new means of preparing food in a rush." She sighs, "But, yes, I suppose it wasn't terribly kind." She tries to put on a serious look of remorse. It's totally unconvincing. Hopefully Robert isn't offended. "So.. good luck with your practice. I'll see you after the storm! And after I think."

SpritesHero fixes Tae with a glance reminiscent of stabbing a bug through the middle with a needle. "I don't drop edibles," he reminds her. And then he is gone, his cloaked form vanishing into the storm's fury.