On Inspiration And Mastication

Plant Duck has a home base! It's kind of shabby though. People are working on fixing that but amidst all the hullaballoo one of their prime builder types, Att Syne, The Man With The Architectural Plan, seems to have vanished into the workshop and been afflicted with a lot of... /inspired/ behavior.

To the point that he seems to have problems remembering to /eat/. This is an issue in a game with death penalties for starvation. Also, people just work better on a full stomach. Hence why Proteus has arrives at the HQ with a large satchel full of delicious meat smell, stepping inside and heading to the workshop.

"Att?" Proteus calls. "You in here? Please tell me you haven't invented actual cannons yet. Or rather, tell me if you did so I can hide behind something much more durable."

One problem: the workshop is deserted, and mildly trashed. A pile of rubble has been crudely reassembled into the vague shape of the upper body of a feminine figure, apparently fished out of a crate piled with shards of the same formerly-extant statue. The door is open, and Att is nowhere to be found. The window to the outside, though, shows light coming in out of the dark...

...because he's presently out there. The lot behind the building, earmarked for expansion and storage and cleaned up for that very purpose, presently contains a canopy tent, a huge block of stone, a table with a few stools, and piles of gleaming metal. The piles look an awful lot like the components they got from fighting that Elemental Machine, except for one, which is presently shelves full of reddish wibbling slime, glowing faintly. There's a copy-and-paste default-ass campfire outdoors, too, which is the source of the light.

Att Syne is standing in front of the huge block of apparently deliberately-chipped stone, staring at it in the firelight. There are in fact three fires set at equidistant points around the block, and he slowly circles, stops, stares, and starts to circle all over again. Rather than armor, he has a tool apron equipped, and is turning a chisel over in one hand. The head of the chisel catches the moonlight like a polished blade, no matter how he turns it.

He definitely did not hear Proteus. He also has no cannons constructed nearby. It's probably clear.

There's an evil laugh from the periphery of the workshop, and a sound like bubbling muck.

A feminine voice nevertheless growls. "Fuahahahaha!" Before far more sarcastically announcing: "Pop pop! Kaboom!"

Whiskey Sour, in her comically mismatched 'levelling gear' robes and scarves, sits upon the ground cross-legged before a cauldron that is suspended over a fire she tends with a blackened stick.

"I don't know why he broke the marble, but, definitely not cannons. Yet."

Whis produces a pinch of something dark from a bottle, squeezing it between her fingers. "But black powder isn't that easy to come by without industrializaiton."

She didn't get cannons, but she might have gotten something that's wor^H^H^H better: Whiskey Sour. The arrival of the shady botanically-inclined woman causes Proteus to almost leap in surprise, the Imp clearly having been prepared to actually experience some kind of absurd cannonade. The model back on the beach of Ezzo clearly made an impression.

She does, however, settle down, her spear-tipped tail lashing lightly behind her like an irritable cat as her eyes narrow slightly... And then she simply exhales, her posture relaxing she expels the trepidatious stress afflicting her. She tilts her head towards Whis. "... I thought I was joking. Are you actually working on compounding it?" She asks... But then she shakes her head and brings out the satchel, popping it open. From it, she produces a large, paper-wrapped greasy cheeseburger and offers it to Whis. "Just got back from that new restaurant the Crescent Moons opened. Want a burger?" She asks. If accepted, she'll hand it over or deposit it in whatever manner she is indicated to.

In the meantime, there's a matter of Att. "Is he still caught up in... Whatever that is?" She asks Whis, a tinge of mixed concern and awe in her voice. "I've... never seen him like this before." She asides. Still, Att isn't going to feed himself (If he was, she wouldn't have had to make the trip in the first place).

She approaches Att slowly, not wanting to really dispel the heavy, artistic moment with interrupting it even if it is necessary. Her eyes take in the situation, and she carefully watches them all, trying to deduce what's going through her friend's (one of the few she can call friend, anyway) head. Without saying anything, she produces another burger and offers it to Att, waving it towards him in hopes of catching his attention. "Hey Att, brought some food. You like burgers, right?"

Att definitely broke the marble inside. Whis also can attest to having seen him attempt to put those pieces back together to some extent before he did. It was broken when he pulled it out of his inventory, and got more broken after he messed with the broken mirror-style puzzle it has become. Weird.

As for Att-right-now instead of Att-back-then, he's... observing the firelight, apparently. That's what Proteus picks up from the way he's getting really close to the block, squinting along it, and then looking back, shifting position, squinting... At one point, he moves his chisel up to it like he was about to make a cut, but stops, shaking his head slightly and exhaling through his nose. Whatever calculation he's making, he's taking his sweet time about it, and being as deliberate as he can. It's something of a departure from his usual methodology, which is a lot more slap-dash and throwing-things-at-the-wall, excepting of course during raids and the planning that goes with them. It just doesn't usually happen around craft skills.

He doesn't notice Proteus, either, not for a few seconds. When he inhales again after the sharp, disappointed exhalation of his newly-observed angle, he stops, sniffs, turns, and locks eyes on the proferred food object. He blinks a couple of times, then cracks a smile as the intense look on his face flakes away. "Oh! Hi, Proteus. I didn't see you come out. Uh... yeah, of course; who doesn't?" He takes it.

"Is this one of the new ones? I've been meaning to," and then he basically stuffs the whole thing in his face. The horror.

"Black powder? Not really? No point. Sulfur's useful though. As a catalyst, as a reagent. For alchemy."

Whis drops her eyes, her chin following after as she prods an ember back into place.

"Some things work the same. Other things work differently. Do you think Landers have alchemy recipies? They're holding out on me."

She smirks, hidden by the cant on her head. "Well. Most of them. I've got my sources."



"Oh, Att, I did like you said and told everyone you needed help eating."

She told them he was going to be dying eternally. "Ne, ne, this statue thing. Is it supposed to be broken? I started making glue hours ago to offer you, but I stopped and made something else around the...

Whis looks around the area. A teacup sits, dirty in a corner.

"Oh! Tea time."

She looks out into the darkness outside, and draws a flask to hydrate like a nervous tick.

"Drink water, Att. Remember, when you find yourself in a weird place, drink water. Dehydration will kill you! In our case, probably eternally over and over for being so stupid."

The J U I C Y B U R G E R is given an eye, but a distant, clinical one. "Is that one of those new special ham-ba-ga?"

The behavior is weird. Super weird. But Proteus won't be complaining about it, nor will he be bringing this up to Att. Proteus is, after all, not one to talk about strange behavior. Most of Plant Duck are strange in their own special way, after all, and the Island of Misfit Toys doesn't do that to each other.

Still, there is a moment when it looks like Att is about to cut, and Proteus holds her breath, not wanting to mess up whatever intensely calculated move he's doing. It's definitely out of character for the most part but honestly, she's never seen someone really properly carve a statue. And given how much intensity he's putting into it, she really doesn't want to get in the way.

Also, marble is expensive.

Still, there's a moment of relief when she sees Att get some measure of his normal self when he's distracted from his Great Work. Proteus smiles back, a bit of relief spreading across her features... A look of relief that becomes one of horror a moment later as he stuffs it into his face wholesale. "Att! You're going to need to chew, you fool!" She exclaims, producing a mug of water (Proteus doesn't typically carry booze) and handing it over for him to wash it down with. "But yeah, it's from the new place. I went out to get them since I figured you'd want something you could eat one-handed. Unlike the Duck Bentos."

Whis' response gets a nod of acknowledgement. "Sulfur does all kinds of interesting things, but I've never been much of a chemist. You seem to have a better head on your shoulders for potioncraft." A pause. "They probably /are/ holding out on you." Proteus brings a hand up to her chin and rubs it. "There's a couple ways we can go about solving that problem though."

There's a meaningful glance over at the tea set and then back to the crumbled old statue. "It must not have passed muster." She mutters. "Too bad you can't /un/chisel marble, that's some good stone that's not good for too much else now." She turns over to Whis, then, and gestures. "Yeah, but I got them without anything unusual. I was hoping someone would open a takoyaki stand first but I guess no one's fishing too much these days, what with the leviathans and all." Proteus makes the Someone Else's Problem shrug.

Whis looks immediately betrayed.

"Takoyaki is banned." She blurts before gulping.

"Mm... ... ... ... nevermind." Her eyes avert. "The burger distracted me."

Att does not chew. ...at first. Eventually he kind of does. Because, you know, even in VR you can only fit so much in your mouth. This isn't one of *those* games. You know...

The duck simulator kind.

Chew, chew, chew. He works his way through it. It slowly disappears in the manner something vanishes into a woodchipper. Att's expression is one of desperate hunger and sublime joy. You know, once it isn't one of a horrific mouth-gape. Then, he takes the mug and throws that after it. Not the whole thing, fortunately, but the contents. There's an audible gulping. He wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve, gasping for air and passing the rest of the drink-item back.

"I bet you could figure out a way to repair destroyed objects if you had enough skills related to it to fork into it," Att says suddenly. "But that one wasn't good enough." Good guess. "It was missing... something. It was pretty, I guess, but it wasn't..." He struggles to find the words, then gives up, shrugging. Eventually, he sighs, turns, and says, "I heard tea, I think?"

Beat. "Also glue? We probably shouldn't drink anything that goes in glue. Or statues? You shouldn't drink rubble, either, even with glue."

"Takoyaki is banned?!" Proteus blinks, surprised... And then she frowns, grimacing for a moment. "But that's my favorite..." She sighs, shaking her head. "Fine, I'll settle for dumplings."

She turns back to Att, looking at the half-used drink and frowning for a moment to stash it into her inventory. she'll ditch it later. She does, however, just set the rest of the satchel to one side. "Grab more of them when you feel hungry or when someone reminds you." Another pause, and she nods to the rubble. "I probably could. It might actually be useful to do that... if my class combination didn't lock me out of most physical labor." She shrugs at that, shaking her head nonchalantly. "But hey, if it's not good enough, it's not good enough."

She looks between the crumbled pile and the new block. "So what are you going to do with the new one? What's going to be so special about it? What's the plan?"

"Tea was hours ago. When the sun was still out. I was going to make glue, but you didn't seem interested in it, so I pivoted to making..."

Whis sticks her pinky into the bubbling gloop, drawing it out like a line of taffy. "It's like this, now. Part of alchemy is weird accidents that you keep adding things to and seeing what you get, I think. Pioneer spirit!"

Whis begins setting up the kettle again, pouring from a pail she apparently kept handy into the top of the cast iron pot.

"We're not drinking rocks. That's also banned. Making stone soup is hard enough!"

Proteus laments her class not being brawny. "You say that like it's a bad thing." Whis follows this with a rather unmasked sassy laugh. "That's probably a better position to be in that not." She flutters her eyes, tilting her head and putting on her sweetest smile and tone. "Oh no! Player-sempai, I can't lift the big heavy thing! Could a real strong hero help meeeee~?"

Whis really lays it on thick, before breaking out into laughter. "Lean into your weaknesses just like your strengths. Calling for help with jars and stuff is just a skill you pick up with lots of brothers."

Moving some wood from her cauldron to start a second blaze for tea, she mostly stares at Proteus in the interim.

"Oh." Att looks a little awkwardly in the direction of discarded tea cups and hours-old dreams. "Okay. Maybe we don't eat that, either."

Att looks back at his... not-quite-a-creation. There's certainly a lot of pieces that go towards a final product, anyway. Without looking, he sidles over to the satchel and fishes out another burger, unwrapping it and biting into it. Instead of of inhaling it. A slow burn, this time. "I wondered how much of your take-care-of-me was actual asking and how much was being endearing for the social damage resistance," Att murmurs. He sounds vaguely distracted again already. He lapses into silence for a few seconds more.

"I don't know," he says, finally. "Originally it was to test the buffs that these tools could give," Att says, turning the chisel over in his hands, the metal gleaming brightly, "but then I spotted this side quest without any details except that I didn't meet the requirements for it, so I figured..." He trails off. Another second or two passes uncomfortably as he shifts where he stands. "I don't know what I figured. I think mostly that if it said I couldn't do it, I was going to do it to prove I could."

The gloopy morass is a sight to behold, to be sure. Proteus stares at the glop and opens her fangy mouth to say something, but Whis preempts it immediately, and she just shakes her head at the display. "Are you sure it's safe to even touch it if you don't know what it is?" She asks. "Also, I'm fine with not drinking rocks. That's ridiculous." She sighs at that and just flops onto an intact chair and leans back on it, tilting at a 45 degree angle. Casually, she removes a small object from her cloak and begins flicking at it. Some of them might recognize the incredibly complicated triangular sliding puzzle that made up the core of the elemental machine. It makes little click noises as each equilaterally shaped tile is moved magically, the sealed object unable to be altered directly.

Click
Click
Clickclickclick
clickclickclickityclick

The clicking stops as Whis brings up the idea of cuting people into doing her heavy lifting causes her to scowl lightly. "I don't exactly have people to beg for help in most situations that I need something heavy lifted." Proteus points out. "I don't like..." She pauses, about to say something, but stops, before continuing. "... It's just embarassing." She finishes, grumbling for a moment. Her eyes flick back to Whis and her ears perk for a moment. "What?" She asks the staring Were Fang.

Att distracts Proteus by doing the unfathomable act of answering her question directly. She blinks at him, and swivels her head in his direction. "Are you sure this isn't some dev's idea of a cursed object?" She points out. "You've been messing with that for so long that you almost bottomed out your food meter. Good thing you had us to keep an eye on you." Click click click. "Still, I can appreciate the desire. But we need to get this done or you're going to be prowling around here forever. Anything we can do to give you a hand?"

"Of course I'm actually asking. I'm asking you to please take care of me, every time. Not only is it polite, it's what I'm hoping you'll do!"

Whis seems unflustered by the pointed wonderings. "It's both. If you can make allies or enemies, which do you make? Allies, right?"

She carries on: "I don't know?" She shrugs. "You seem tense." Whis answers Proteus' query to her stare. Her pinky still has the string of taffy-like stretched Goop, the color one of the magenta-purple flavors of laffy taffy. Noticing it, largely by the heat, she waggles her finger, before swiping at the trailing string with her other hand, getting both tangled up with the odd, sticky concoction.

Finally, her attention is drawn away.

"Shouldn'tve touched the glue thing...!" She laments, finally leaning down to start chewing herself free. This does seem to work, the Druid managing to free her hands over a few seconds of 'aghn nanghn nan'. It's not... very dignified.

"Embarrasing? I don't get it." Whis offers, after escalating from 'touching the stuff' to 'eating the stuff'.

"

"Pop rocks and soda," Att asides to Proteus, laughing like it's funnier than it actually is.

He looks between the two, then shrugs. "I've had some pretty entertaining rivals, but not so much enemies. Maybe the sense of accomplishment for figuring something out yourself," he suggests to Whiskey, "but then maybe she wouldn't work with me on stuff so much, huh..." He trails off again. Att takes another bite of the burger that has been glued to his hand figuratively instead of literally, chewing contemplatively and necessarily.

"It's not cursed. It's giving me too many bonuses to be cursed. Unless the curse is a sweet legendary quest I can't stop pursuing, but that's just... me, I think. I just usually have something to do besides, like, be in-game twenty-four seven, so I think about it idly instead of engaging in it actively." Att scratches the back of his neck with his free hand, gesturing with the burger. "Apparently, I'm forgetting to eat? So, that's a thing. Maybe ask Gwen or some of the other people that kinda like us and do cookery to set up a rotation of... um... bugging me?"

"There's definitely /some/ element of compulsion, but it's not... quite... it. Maybe it's just a bad interaction of brain and code," Att laments.

"Woooooow, Att-sempai has had rivals. Did you stare deeply into their eyes and had--"

Whis fingerguns at the air, her fingers shooting off sparks and embers alternatingly. "--gacchan, dondon, the meeting of fate?"

Her closed-mouth smile is tired, or perhaps simply distant. "It's nice to hear that's not just manga."

"Of course we're going to take care of you. You're one of us, that's part of how it works." Proteus points out. "Still, there's no harm in it." She smirks a little, her lips quirking up... Then fall again as Whiskey mentions her tenseness. Click click. Click. "I really seem that bad?" She asks. Click click.

But then she blanches at Whis trying to eat herself free. "Do you need help with that?" She asks. "Are you sure that's not poisonous?" She stands, the chair coming level as she walks over to Whis and starts looking over the vat of glop. "I, uh..." She looks over the mess and the increasingly entangled Were Fang. She looks away, not answering the comment about embarassment.

Or perhaps Att provides a good distraction. "Kids' games, Att. We have better things to do, don't we?" She shakes her head. "Allies, enemies... All I really care about is us, here. Everything else I don't really give a damn. There's a lot I want to get done and I'm not really the political type. I'd rather be up to my elbows in a lore node." She nods to Att at the mention of figuring something out.

She then shrugs at the rationalization. "Really? Are the bonuses /that/ good?" She asks. "We'll keep people bothering you in intervals, I guess. The burgers won't last THAT long. I'd cook up something basic for you but I have too much on my plate right now. Those caves under the city are a... thing. Also, there's the Glass issue." She frowns... And then just glances over at the little fingergun thing. "R... really...?"

"I remember it like it was yesterday," Att says, leaning on his staff with the end planted in the ground. He's suddenly holding that, incidentally. His voice gets wistful. "We met during the Hellfire Cauldron raid event. Our eyes locked across the battlefield. Our rolls for the dropped loot came within one point of one another. From that point onward, I knew -- I could /feel/ -- that she was... my rival."

"I dunno if there were sparks and stuff," he adds after. "Probably? Probably were sparks and stuff." Att puts the staff away.

"You can't just tune out the rest of the world now that this /is/ our world, you know," he points out. "Sometimes you've got to do the kids' games so you can get to the part you really want. It's like... needing to do the annoying unlock quest to get into the really cool dungeon. Except in this case, the quest involves a bunch of other players complaining about salty mush for food and causing catastrophes by trying to push up an enormous tower in search of a reward that might not even be there."

"Glass issue?" He blinks, then points at the slime jars. "I've got the glass part handled. I'm gonna cast the slime we got from that sewer tunnel into glowing glass. It'll be sweet as heck. It isn't even an issue. Except for mounting it without cracking it, and I guess sculpting it without clouding it, so maybe there's a couple of issues that I can see now that you point it out --"

Whis wiggles her fingers at Proteus, which are (a little slobbery and) free of goo. "It's fine. It's mostly thickening agents and sweetners, it just looks terrible. It's like a perpetual stew of, um..."

She shrugs. "You know. Stuff. This and that. I forgot some steps zoning out."

"If you're a sucker for knowledge, go to a library, or seek out sages. Maybe check out the city hall. Do you think those concepts still apply? Bits of this and that, just written down for you to find in convenient places?"

Whis moves the kettle off of the heat, the heavy pot having finally heated the water to a low boil. Whis finds a clean corner of a scarf to clean some cups out, hand-crunching up a collection of leaves and bits into some cups and pouring hot water over them.

With Whis, it's always 'herbal tea'. Did you know that 'herbal' tea isn't true tea type? Look it up!

"Look, between the two of us: one of us is tense, and one of us hasn't slept in two months."

Whis barks a single 'ha!' of laughter, the sound hanging around her like a slime, draping across her shoulders as she flops back on the ground, waiting for the tea to steep.

"It's okay to not *always* be on. It's okay to always be on, sure, it's okay to be everything. But if it's scary and tiring, what's the harm in relaxing a little?"

Att comments, and Whis tries to swoosh the layup. "If you care about the present, learn from the past and plan for the future. If you care about a group, then you care about the place it is, and the people that're in it, and the rivals and enemies it has."

Whis sways her arms against the ground, working her shoulders into the ground like it scratches an itch. "Or maybe, my wisdom is 'just because you relax and let your claws retract, doesn't mean they're gone forever.'"

She giggles. "Wooow, Att-Sempai's fiery rabu-rabu romance rival. She'll be big in season three."

"Ugh. Spare me." Proteus says, just putting a hand to her face and grunting at being told to go out and interact with people like a normal person. "We solved the food issue, it was just a matter of thinking outside the box. As for the rest... I'm fully expecting the world to turn on the Scale Alliance soon. I hope they're prepared to pay the price for the mess they're making in their efforts to destroy everything we're working to resolve."

The Imp then waves a hand. "No, no, not that glass issue. But that does sound very interesting. I more mean the person who's apparently showing up when people kill a boss. They're a Lander and Adventurer somehow. Her name seems to be Glass, she's higher level than us, and apparently, she's out to kill the Heroes. She thought I was one too for some reason." She shrugs. "I guess I got into some trouble while you were busy with your sidequest."

The Imp looks back to Whis and grimaces at those spit-slicked fingers. "Well, if you say so. Just... Find Count V or something if you start turning colors." She sighs, getting more advice. "I've been going to them in my pursuit of figuring out what's up with Glass. Unfortunately, most of the best places to find lore just happened to get torn apart and blocked behind an energy shield recently. I used to hang out in Ezzo for a reason, you know."

She waves her hand again nonchalantly. "But yes, you're right. There's a lot of things I need to look into and some of them are even in places that won't instantly try to kill me." She pauses. "Wait. You haven't slept in two months? Do you..." She pauses, thinking. "Why?"

The combination of Life Advice, however, just seems to be too much for her to handle. "Mmmnh." Click click click. More of the triangle tiles shift around, almost to Proteus' mental gymnastics in a staccato beat. "... I guess I'll take it under advisement. I'm going to go... I guess I'm going to sleep or something." She turns away. "I'll see if I can... turn it down, I guess."

At that, she wanders off.

Whis is a very hygenic person, that's why she's a Druid.

Clearly.

"Oh, uh, two? More? Some number. Counting doesn't help the process. Since the apocalypse. When we woke up in this world."

She towels off her hands on a rag, sitting up for tea. "I thought that something like 'ha! since you've slept in this dream world, you can never escape!' so, I decided to not sleep. It's fine. I take..."

"... Stuff for it. If I stop taking the stuff, I'll probably just pass out. If you don't want to turn it down, don't. If that's your natural state, that's fine. I'm not worried you're weird..." The girl who professes to electively decline to sleep flashes a weary smirk. "I'm worried that you're tired."

"Also, *Count V* comes to *me* about those problems. I *am* a Heretic Alchemist, after all! Basically a witch. If the cauldron isn't bubbly, I'm doing my job wrong, right?"

Att wonders if they'll be here long enough for seasons to matter. Both kinds of seasons.

He already misses variant login screens.

"That's weird. Maybe we should figure out if we can spoof Inspect things. Possibly a disguise trick extension, right? Then you could, I dunno, show up as whatever to whoever, or..." Att trails off. He does that a lot right now. It might have to do with his own fatigue being omni-present. Except Whis doesn't sleep, so at least he's rarely alone in this weird and extended fugue state. He's sure he could break long enough to go pass out for a while, but he doesn't know if the quality of rest will be worth it. Sleeping distracted...

"Mm," is all he has for all of this advice-sharing. He raises a hand and says, "Thanks for the food. Um... get some rest! We can shoot the shit about something not so world-shaking later, alright?" Att smiles. It's a friendly kind of smile. He waves with his raised hand once he remembers it's there, as Proteus withdraws.

A moment or two later, the possibly-cursed Spriggan says, "Sometimes I worry about her."

He turns back to the Great Work.

"Oh, she forgot tea." Whis realizes, lifting up an extra teacup. "Do you want... purple, or... orange?" The druid has already selected a 'dirty brown water' colored teacup for herself. She may be angling for the extra as well.

"Definitely orange," Att mutters. "Purple stuff always tastes like medicine, except for the really specific candy kind."

"She'll probably be fine. She's too interesting to just flame out, right?"

Whis recieves her tea-based answers and emits a put-upon scoff. "I see you have no appreciation for hibiscus." Whis observes, scooting the orange-colored-tea cup towards Att.

"Not that... there's any hibiscus in this one. What makes purple? I'm getting excited."

By the time any tea is drunk, unfortunately, it's long cold. Such is the workshop hours.