Surf and Turf

Another day, another chance for adventure, excitement, and (most importantly) a really good meal. Since the big mess with the Palace Lands has started to clean up (relatively speaking), Asuna has been back in her home city. She has a small place here and it's well known to her alliance (and others) as a great place to simply show up for a meal.

Today, she is hard at work in the kitchen, preparing lunch. She's gotten her hands on some excellent grunty cuts and fish so fresh it was still flopping when she got her hands on it. She's not much of a fisherwoman, but persistence and luck paid off. This means the smell of food is wafting out from her open patio to the busy road outside.

Schneider is a lot of questionable things, but he is a fan of good food and is not shy about it. Which is why he's at Asuna's place. "Hello," he calls out from the porch, and knocks on the door pretty loudly. He knows she's home, and the way she cooks, she's likely expecting company.

Easier to go around to the back and knock at the kitchen door in any event, so he'll go do that, calling out, "Hey, Asuna, what's for lunch?" He doesn't have a lot of useful skills, crafting-wise, but he contributes where he can, and sponges where he gets the chance.

Asuna is rather used to Schneider's approach. The door opens and he's welcomed with a grin. The scent of the food pours out.

    "Today I have something special. Your timing is impeccable! Since I understand your big booooom aspirations are set to the side, perhaps this can be a consolation?"

There is a table set already, too! Asuna turns back to her work, but she's well on her way to completion. The steak is resting and the fish is just being drawn from the oven.

"What have you been up to lately?" she asks. "I imagine a whole bunch of us has gone over to pay our thrown-out guests back for their invasion. I figured you would be among them, honestly."

Schneider was indeed sad to set aside his explosive aspirations, but he's interested to hear what might compensate for a boom /that/ big. He will sit down at the table, set the napkin in his lap, and wonders if the steak is having a nap? As to what he's been up to, he says, "I'm working on a research spell, and helping Uta work on a technique that seems pretty interesting. But mostly things have been slow. I finshed my defensive training, so that's good, but I will probably need a new magic shield spell."

"Upping the ante, eh? That's good to hear."

She is focused on the meal. Beyond the fish and steak, she has something else she's been working on. The scent of a much more aggressive level of spiciness is notable as she removes the cover from a pan. It's a red sauce of some kind. Not quite salsa, exactly, but serving the exact same purpose. Having no corn on hand, Asuna instead used rice to make her chips for dipping.

"Uta is a pretty creative person, isn't she? I hope she's having fun and staying safe. This game seems a bit harsh on people with that.. I dunno.. innocence and sense of wonder."

The food is presented, plates with the rice, meat, and fish, and a bowl in easy reach for the chips and dip.

"Just a warning, this is pretty spicy stuff, but I doubt it'll be too much for you."

Schneider hesitates, then says, "Not so much upping, the research spell is super intense and costs a ton of mana, so I'm making one that costs less mana and will do in most cases." As far as Uta staying safe, he says, "She gives that impression, but she's a mailed fist wrapped in a delicate glove. She's surprisingly tough and resilient under it all. I think it comes of walking face first into trouble and having to bail herself out."

When the food comes, he takes a deep breath and sighs beatifically. "Ah, that smells good," he says, and looks it all over hungrily. He won't dig in right away, but he's savoring the idea, waiting for Asuna to join him. "Hot stuff is good," he agrees, breathing deeply. "I can feel it clearing out the pipes."

Asuna settles in a moment later. There are other places set, but that was more about optimism than clear expectations for guests. The chef appreciates Schneider's waiting, and gestures that he may begin.

"Itadakimasu!"

"She's a good friend, too. She helped me get my dire panda. I've provided her with a few slimes. She seems to be a collector. It's nice finding someone who shares your interests. And I understand about the efficiency issues. I'm not an eternal wellspring of mana, myself. So many of these fights require some lasting power now. The old tactics of the one swing kill are largely gone."

Schneider is well-mannered in surprising ways. He'll vaporize a goblin or a Palace Lander quick as thinking, but he was raised to not start eating until everyone's sat down and said the magic word. "Itaidakimasu," he agrees, and digs in, nodding as Asuna explains about Uta. "I'm part of her research group," he explains, "and we've found some quite interesting things. We got the Chaos Gate to react, we've learned how to fly, and why not to fly outside the Tower."

He nods about Uta being helpful, and about fights requirng extra ooomph. Of course he's a hybrid caster, technically, as it seems most casters are, with just enough sword skill to get himself into trouble. "The old tactics," he hrms, considerng. "Maybe I need to change up a bit, too? I seem to have topped out in magic and fire, maybe swordplay's the way to go."

"Options help. Though frankly it sounds like persistent, quality defense is a huge deal. I hear the enemy from the Palace Lands constantly used massive AoE attacks that were horribly tricky to avoid. I think your shield investments are likely to continue aligning with the current meta. I'm just a mix of magic and blade, with everything split equal. I just hate the thought of fighting real players. Now that we know the costs. But as for the Palace Land NPCs? If they are hurting real people, I can't find much fault in treating them like a malicious file."

Despite the harsh words, she has no trouble eating with an appetite. She's clearly judging her work, but she's also satisfied. The steak and fish are good. The spice is pretty well-balanced. Red sauces are kind of her thing, so she expected a success.

"You could look for some more options with thorns or a DoT, I suppose. Maybe you can get a relatively inexpensive bleed from a weapon?"

Schneider nods about options. He does, from time to time, have /so much/ to check out that he runs out of the better class of spells and winds up using the noob spells that are barely effective. So, more options are better. He nods about the Palace Lands NPCs being fair game. "That's how I see it as well," he agrees. "The Palace Lands players have taken it on the chin these past two years, I have no hesitation bailing them out. I do qestion whether we can take over a city, though I guess what we did in Mac Anu, we can do over there also? I don't know what else we could do to set them back?"

As far as DoTs go, he laughs and says, "I'm all about fire, so fire-based DoT is my thing. Though I'm thinking how I want to build the Venom spell." Which is essentially all DoT, though canonocally it was sort of reverse-DoT compared to how DoTs work in game. "Well, a lot of things I do are approximations, Schneider's sort of a homebrewed approximation. Not like famous people like Goblin Slayer."

"A toxic fire. You know, you had to give up nukes, but do you have to give up, say, radioactive attacks, necessarily? Could you mix some earth and fire and just irradiate them a bit?"

Asuna is a terrible influence. She is simply far too practical in this discussion for her own good. She's also very much enjoying a meal. And talking mechanics has always been of interest.

"Do you have an epic weapon? I've heard those offer a lot of benefits. Plus a unique style is a good way to get in people's heads. After all, it's kind of clear that we may have to fight some players along the way. Even if that is stupid considering what we know. No doubt there will be idiots out there that have to be convinced in kinetic means."

Schneider shrugs about toxic or radioactive fire. "That's a good idea, but I find in practice 50% fire plus 50% poison type attacks don't actually add up the way 100% of one or the other adds. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, because you'd think there'd be a balance point to maximize it. But you'd probably need calculus to find it." He smirks, admits, "Sorry, that was like the last math class I had before getting stuck here, using derivatives to find minima and maxima." Which is why he doesn't have the technical insight to make nukes. Though on that subject, "I did plan to survey for silver, but everyone seems so busy, so I haven't put it out to the Alliance yet. Cash doesn't seem to be a problem."

As far as Epic, he says, "Originally, I was thinking Venom should be my Epic, but really, Black Sabbath was Schneider's biggest spell, and while they're mostly all unique and distinctive, I was going to make the big boom Epic when I actually learn the explosion spell that one girl had. I haven't seen her since like the opening days of the game, but she had an incredibly explosive spell. I want to learn that more than anything else."

"If calculus is actually useful, I was top in my class. Before this all derailed my aspirations."

Asuna focuses her attention more on the chips now, having made considerable progress on the rest already. Judging by her expression, she's really putting some effort into deciding what it needs to improve.

"It is annoying that you haven't found a good balance. Fire is such a great attack form. Maybe it just works better with water, though. Poison, that is. Or perhaps you can make a poisonous steam? That would be nasty! But maybe it's just.. go back to the classics and burn the ever-loving hell out of them."

Schneider is enjoying the chips and the meat and everything and it's hard to tell which is best. He still has to eat menu food from time to time, when he's on his own, or adventuring without cooks. As far as calculus goes, he arches a brow and says, "You can probably do a lot of science here. In trying to recreate flight in the game, my main takeaway is they've pretty faithfully recreated Real Life physics almost completely, so that you can in almost every case rely on it. Ironically, cooking is one of the big cases where physics doesn't work. In real life, food doesn't go from done to burnt in the blink of an eye."

He shrugs about the balance, and agrees, "I think I didn't create Dark Schneider completely faithfully, because I don't have as much skill at Lightning. So that's another place I want to focus. I taught my lightning spell to the girl who sometimes cosplays as Arshes Nei, but Nei was better at Lightning than Schneider."

"Yes, cooking is weird here. But so is menu food, menu cleaning, and menu clothing changes. Though I still prefer doing it properly when I can. A real bath is so much better. But when one is on the road, it's handy to just be done with it all."

Asuna grins at the though of putting math to work here. "I wonder if my former skills even will help. I heard that some people who were talented martial artists couldn't gain any advantage at all here. Which always seemed odd to me. Cooking was the same way, apparently. Even singing. It's weird. I can understand that we learn new things, but I don't know why the game has to mess with what we were already good at. But.. in any case, yeah. You can focus on lightning. There's no big disaster of the moment. Just this Palace Land thing going on. At least we're on the offensive now."

Schneider takes a moment to imagine Asuna in the bath. Because he's a bastard, of course. But at least he doesn't leer or comment. He can only shrug about Asuna's former skills, because he doesn't know what they were, but he nods about not being as good at things you were good at in RL. "For me it's basketball, but I think part of it is that I'm much taller here than I was, and that affects how you dribble and shoot."

As to no big disaster, he wonders, "Did you not get the chim? There's some huge deal over in the Palace lands that they want as much as possible of /almost/ anything you can think of." Just not cryptography or scripture, so he's got nothing specific to contribute.

"I heard it, and I'm doing what I can, but it's far off and frankly, the only thing I'm good at making is xp. There are no monsters to catch, no raids to complete. Just the usual resource pull. So while I understand there's a big deal going on, it's not like I can exactly address it with ease."

She does not detect any undressing going on in Schneider's eyes. But she's so used to that kinda thing it probably wouldn't even bother her.

"But anyway, when it comes time to do the stuff I can do effectively, I hope to be better prepared. Even though the idea of riding a ship for long has absolutely no attraction to it. Is that ride still a week?"

Schneider nods about not being good at anything that's needed. "If we could get together with someone who's a bit more astute at the collection side, we might be able to make a resource gathering party and come up with stuff, but no one's around when you need, right?" He smirks.

As to the ride, he nods at it still being a week, though he says, "They seem to have ironed out the details that made the first journeys so hard. So at least there's that."

"When the time comes to get some heads rolling, it'll be worth the trip. Besides, I imagine there are new ingredients over there. I could stand to expand my offerings in the kitchen. Perhaps I can even bring some of it home. I have heard they have some crazy monsters over there. Apparently hybrids are a major theme. But the plants and spices are what really appeals."

A pause for thought.

"Well, plus loot, of course. I think we should get to bring something back for all our trouble. They threw me out of my home for months, after all."

Schneider chuckles about getting heads rolling. "Hell, yeah," he agrees. "And yeah, there's some crazy monsters, owlbears, and bearcats and whatnot." As far as plants, he can only shrug. The only way plants fit into his life is .... well, that's what you make booze with, right? Or ink?

He brightens at loot, and says, "I expect the Palace Lands players will be pretty grateful if we can smack their Landers around and uncrown them. I'll bet they won't hassle us about loot. Plus, they have a whole tower that apparently hasn't been touched. It's not part of their lore at all like ours is, so they don't mess with it. But you have to wonder."

"So they haven't even gone inside their tower?"

Asuna could not possibly be more interested. In fact, she's kind of giddy about that.

"So it's like a level one that is open and we can just raid and race through as many floors as we can manage? We have to do this. I wonder.. if it truly didn't level up in some way, how many floors could we clear in one go? What kind of drops might we get? We could catch up a huge part of the alliance on gear!"

Schneider nods about not even going inside. "What I /heard/ was that their rumor for how to escape the game was to take over a root town. They were /way/ too low level to succeed that early in the game, and it never occured to any of them to grind a few floors in the Tower, get some levels, and -then- take the town."

He nods about level one being open, but says, "No idea if it will spawn Waves like our tower does, either. For all I know, it could be empty. But yeah, I'd like to at least look." He's interested, too, if not so keenly as Asuna. "After we thump them and get them settled down, I'll be game to give it a try, though."

"Oh. That's right. I suppose unleashing like half a dozen waves wouldn't be very kind. But isn't it odd? So, from what I heard, the wave that hit there from one of our clears was met with a fully prepared force. If they had no level clears, why would they know to do that? Sure, there's a timer, but so what? Could you imagine if the situation were reversed. We would never be able to get all the landers to send huge forces to address the wave. They'd have laughed at us, wouldn't they? Or maybe there's some lore I am missing. Anyway, we deal with the landers and then we profit from it. Maybe we can find out what those kings and queens have for gear. There has to be something handy."

She rises with a smirk and slips off to the kitchen, quickly returning. With green tea cake rolls and some coffee. Thank goodness people figured out how to get that back.

"Nothing like a bit of sweet and bitter to wrap up a meal. Coffee is something I missed. It's not perfect, mind you, but it's certainly good."

Schneider isn't accustomed to coffee, but will give it a try, and the cake rolls are definitely welcome. "Yeah, but remember, NWA was there, they could have simply told them that the timer means bad things coming. The Palace Landers were pretty clever to use that as an excuse to muster every fighting person they could to dry gulch NWA, but they underestimated Yamato players that had been levelling up for the entire time they'd been in game. I guess Palace Lands players haven't had as much chance to level up. The Landers probably consider it suspicious or a threat."

"Well, we will make sure they level up now. And along the way, we can thin the lander ranks of trouble makers. I doubt the players over there will mind. Though I suppose NWA may protest a bit. Hopefully we have enough people over there to just do things the way we think is best. I have no issue sparing people who truly repent, but there's going to be a lot of work to do and a price to be paid."

Asuna has no problem speaking of this very flatly while she enjoys the dessert. Granted, she's never had to punish someone in the manner she speaks of. Whether she could really put someone to the sword in cold blood is a whole other matter.

"I haven't been over there, honestly. It sounds like you have. Is it beautiful?"

Schneider grumbles, "NWA's going to complain no matter what happens. They're the ones that gave goblins weapons, and good weapons, I heard, to make our trip through the fourth floor harder. And it was mostly Landers that died. A few players had to rez, but of course Landers go away. So any holier-than-thou flak from NWA, I summarily ignore. Mostly /anything/ from them is suspect, I find. They're mostly a bunch of whiners who are fine with not being able to log out."

He sighs as his NWA rant tapers off. "But yeah. I like adventuring with Palace Lands players. The ones that have joined us seem pretty cool." As far as being over there, he says, "It was just for a bit and I had to come back here and get stuff done. I /do/ wonder if we can fly there, or if monsters fly off their tower also to destroy flying craft the way they do with our Tower." As to whether it's beautiful, he shrugs. "It's all right. I'm not a big comparitive landscapes person."

"They probably will. I imagine Olympus is more with us on this. Not that it matters. Ultimately, once what is done is done, that's it. And yes, I know about that Goblin matter. Though I believe that Xander directly addressed that with Giganpor. NWA, as I heard it, disavowed any knowledge of that matter. Hm. It is interesting, though, isn't it?"

Asuna looks thoughtful. "If you get the Landers out of their little towns.. we could let the monsters do the work for us. No losses, we just would have to buff them. I wonder if that even works. I've never tried to buff a monster. I heard that there was a boss pairing where it was done, though. One boss would aggro on the other, weaker boss."

Schneider nods about Olympus, agreeing, "They're a lot saner, yeah. I know Uta anyway, I guess I don't know too many people outside the Alliance. I should probably get out more. Everyone's so businesslike in a duty, there's not much chance to just chat and get to know people." He shrugs about Xander, and says, "One PVP win hardly offsets arming hundreds or thousands of goblins, and I'm sure the families of the Landers that died wouldn't consider it much at all, considering how players come back. In real life, he'd be spending the rest of his life in jail if he gave weapons to like Al Queda or something, so what he faced here was, basically, nothing." He's clearly a bit salty about this.

As far as the Palace Lands landers go, he says, "I'm not even sure how bent they /all/ are on hating players. It might just be the leaders. If we can take away their ability to Crown people, that might be enough. Though the Palace Landers seem to be trying a re-do of their city takeover plan."

"I don't disagree."

Asuna looks thoughtful.

"But, there is, after all, no statue of limitations, right?"

She shrugs it off, though. It's a bit morbid to talk about prison and punishment of another player. Especialy when everyone is fighting on the same side. For now.

"I imagine it's just a matter of getting rid of the right people. Most landers are really simple. Innocent, helpful, not much to say. They just want to get help or live their lives. I can't say I blame them. At times I envy the simplest of them."

Schneider can only shrug about the statute of limitations. "I guess technically he's been punished, if you can consider the slap-on-the-wrist he got from NWA leadership a punishment. But, on the other hand, it's just a game, so really, he's just playing the game. We don't put PVPers in prison, even the creepy, predatory ones. Ironically, it's NWA that usually plays the not-just-a-game line. I think what really bothers me is that he drifted over /that/ line. I /know/ it's just a game, and I've also met a village full of players who went native and live like Landers, having babies and everything."

He nods about getting rid of the right people. "I think that's it. We just need to find out who those right people are. Though I imagine if we send over terms for their surrender, we'll see where people stand."

"We know now that it is more than just a game. Even if we get out, it seems unlikely we will get our lost memories back. We won't get any lost time back. These are years of our lives passing here. I can't even imagine how my body will look and feel when I get back to it."

She looks really bothered by this! She's probably gotten horrible weak without any moving. Living off a feeding tube, she figures. Yuck.

"Anyway. Not a great topic. So yes, invasion, victory, party, loot. And you know, the proper administration of justice. Hm. Anything else going on that you know about?"

Schneider smirks at more than just a game. "Yeah, it's a /sucky/ game." That's apparently Schneider's interpretation of 'more than a game'. "Logout button broken, /several/ glitched quests and monsters. All kinds of issues. I'm definitely demanding my momey back if we get out." He grins, nods at the topic change.

As far as anything else going on, he shrugs. "No one tells me anything. Proph knows tons of stuff, but it comes out in a trickle. I badger him for more info because any time we find somethning, it turns out he already had like half the story already. The spider-thing we met. And the thing he reported about healing minds. Those are the most recent events, I think."

"Healing minds? Healing in what way? But I know what you mean. The boss always has something up his sleeve. I'm on the outskirts, anyway, so I guess that is why it doesn't bother me so much. I am just here to organize and lop off monster heads. Perhaps I'm just lazy and settle into this to avoid thinking. Thinking gets me in trouble, after all. Almost as often as feeling has."

She will take the time to clear the table. At this point, the leftovers have to be put in inventory. Real life eat your heart out on that front. Good luck throwing fish in your backpack in the real world and eating it later.

Schneider will grab one lsat mouthful before the plates are cleared, and he asks, "Are there dishes to wash, or is that just a menu-action? Is there anything I can help with?" He can only shrug about the healing minds. "All I know is what was in the report. I'm on the outskirts, too, even though I don't want to be. But this is my first game ever, and I feel like they just don't feel I have the game knowledge chops to hang out with the knowledgeable people. It's super frustrating, because I want to. But I have zero idea of the backstory or anything that's going on."

"Nor do I, frankly."

Asuna is rather resigned to her spot on the outside of the secrets.

"Oh, dishes. I mean, we could. I honestly do like doing chores. What else is there to do, right? It's not like there's a tv to watch."

She will lead the way to the sink and get things setup to clean. Which is mostly adding water, heating it with some fire, and adding soap.

"There's a towel to dry them, but I'd suggest letting them drip a bit before getting to work. Oh, and if I ever learn anything, I will let you know. It's not much of an offer, of course. The only new things I learn lately have to do with keeping Tomoe from wandering off and eating a cart full of vegetables. Landers find that terrifying, but she wouldn't hurt a fly."

Schneider has enough fire to make the water very, very hot. So much so that he needs more water to cool it off a bit. He's not big on chores, himself, and it's not part of the 'character' of Dark Schneider, but the player was taught to be helful, and he did just get a free dinner. If you pay for it, you've paid for the dishwashing after. If someone feeds you, you ought to try and help.

Not that washing dishes is complicated, but it takes up time that he would otherwise spend ... doing nothing useful, to be sure. "Well, we can hang out here on the periphery," he says to Asuna as he washes dishes, "And drop in fireballs as and when they need us."

"Fireballs, decapitation, whatever works. Though I hope that this business with the Palace Lands doesn't stop us dealing with the gnolls. I think that threat is something we better pay attention to, as well."

The chore isn't so onerous, and Asuna does seem to relax into it. But eventually, the time must come to an end, and she must part from her guest. Things to do and all that. But still.

"I hope you can drop by again soon. It's nice having company. Kirito is.. well who knows where he is, honestly. Klein still comes around, but otherwise it's rather quiet most days."