Setsuna and Goldenblade Face The Music

Uta stands on a chair, just below the main one which states "The Royal Society for the Appreciation and Study of Gelatinous Creatures" holding up a second, smaller sign, to see how it would look like if it was hung. This one bears the tagline, "We pore over porings!"

She has been away from the lab in the last days. According to what people heard, she's been in such places as Alne, Tolbana, Mac Anu, Castle Eas, and goodness knows where else in Yamato. True, part of her movements can be justified with her participation in the Duelist League, but some others just... are out of the way.

In any case, today she is back, and is working on getting important things done.

Like hanging smaller signs below bigger signs.

Goldenblade is, herself, back from the big construction effort on the road to Eas she'd been building. She's got two assistants with her, who have kind of been sent along to mind her. She's a bit headstrong, though, and is leading them to places they don't want to be. Or, rather, they want to be back on the project, and she's leading them to places that are not the project, but they can't physically lead her because they're carrying either end of a heavy trunk. When she enters the Slime Lab, they give up with a sigh, set their load down just outside, and sit down on it like a bench. "When she comes out, she comes out," one tells the other.

For her part, Goldenblade doesn't seem to be aware, at first, of just where she is, and says to Uta, "Ah, there you are, Hanako. I've been wondering when you would get here."

    The door opens and footsteps can be heard, one more of a click or clack then the usual thud of an adventurer's footwear. In fact the sound is almost like what one may hear in a tomb, of a skeleton patroling. However to be fair it is only Setsuna and he doesn't say anything at all as he simply walks over to the slime cages and begins to put in a cup of monster kibble into each slime cage. However with the last one he picks up the slime and stares at it for a moment before fishing in his pocket and pulls out a ring and tries to force it on the slime...though it keeps sliding off...but he will keep trying damn it.

Uta turns at the noise of a crowd gathering underneath. First at Goldenblade with Assistants. "...Hanako?!", she asks, confused. "No, I'm Uta, why do you call me Hanako? Do I look like-" She punches her fist. "HANAKO!", she exclaims. "That must be the name of the Girl from the Menu people keep confusing me with!" Tips of the fingers are drummed together while she casts askance looks either way. "...another piece of the puzzle falls into place..." She slides down the ladder she was perched atop, and as she approaches Goldenblade and assistants to see what the big deal is about, Setsuna walks in, and does his thing.

Uta stares.

"...Setsuna, as probably the foremost slime enthusiast in the region, let me tell you: trying to marry the slimes is taking it a bit tooooo far...."

Goldenblade's late wife was called Hanako, though Goldenblade realizes her mistake when Uta speaks up. She tries to adjust glasses that aren't there, then squints at Uta, then ohs. "You're Uta," she says, backing up Uta's assertion. She asks, "What are you all doing at the Academy?" she wonders curiously, turning to look at Setsuna. "It's not quite shorts weather, I don't think," she says sternly to him. As far as the ring thing, she nods at what Uta says. "Mixed marriages don't often work."

    Setsuna looks up at the other two and then at the slime and nods his head, "You are right...no bones." With that he tips his hand and pours the slime back into it's cage. The glowing damage on his hand would show he took Uta's approach to the matter. Then he is back to mumbling to himself as he continues to go through the process of cleaning up the cages and his other slime management tasks. He is doing it haphazardly though, obviously not fully here really, just running through the motions. Perhaps he has big weekend plans and is already mentally there.

Uta looks down at Goldenblade. Deadpan. "...Paula. Did they accidentally hand you my script? I'm the one supposed to be confused about who people are and where I am! And for once, I am not, and this is-" She turns to Setsuna in moderate painc. "Setsuna! NO! For goodness sake, even /I/ am taking less damage than that now that Rylen gave me basic Monster Handling lessons!"

She paces around the room, "...Oh goodness, I feared that this moment would come one day..." She stops, eyes popped open. ".../I/ am the adult in the room." She reaches into her jacket, pulls out a glob of a squishy red substance, and... squeezes it. As some sort of stress ball. The movement, coupled with breathing exercises, seems to calm her. "I'm fine, I'm fine." The glob is tucked away, and she begins, "...I guess that's what one gets for- OH!" She slaps her forehed.

"RIGHT!", she exclaims, as she slaps her forehead. "Folks? I'm going to need your attention! Please keep silent!" She gestures with her hands to underline the previous request.

Calling her actual name doesn't get Goldenblade's attention immediately. Perhaps because Uta's the only one that uses it, so she's not used to hearing it. She doesn't introduce herself by the name, and though it shows up when she's inspected .... well, it was a weird copy-paste error, and it's far too complicated to explain, if Goldenblade were capable of explaining it. Which she isn't even when she /can/ pay attention for more than ten seconds. But then Uta is calling for her attention, and she will at least make the effort, looking up and then looking through her pockets for something. She hasn't got pockets, so it turns into looking /for/ pockets. This takes most of her attention, but at least she's quiet.

    Setsuna looks over at Uta and tilts his head, he really was trying to be quiet. He had barely said five words since he came in, he simply had decided on a whim to come do his job before he headed out to steal things from totally typical tombs. In particularly stealing the monsters from the tomb. So here he was now standing and looking at Uta curios on what she wanted.

Once silence is achieved, Uta inhales. "Ok, thanks, Setsuna? First of all, I'd like you to go back to whatever you were doing."

She does wait for him to do exactly that, and if he does, she will do that thing she usually does during her fights: she begins vocalizing a song with an operatic voice. Just a vocalization, something between a 'oh' and an 'ah' sound, no lyrics. But the melody is carried out, strong and powerful, the introduction rendered in its microtonal portamento oddity.

As she begins, she keeps an eye on both Setsuna and Goldenblade...

Goldenblade isn't an opera afficionade, herself, Glen Miller is more her speed, but she's familiar with the style, and she will listen to Uta singing scales, or whatever she's singing, distracted from checking her pockets for the moment. After Uta finoshes, she says, "Is it 'Sometimes I'm Happy' by Benny Goodman?"

    Setsuna turns around and goes back to doing what he was doing, I mean thats why he was here , to handle and deal with the monsters after all. However the moment he hears Uta's singing his eyes would take on a distant look as the world fades around him. Continuing on he certainly has no problem with handling the slimes at the moment, if anything the amount of magic he is putting into the skill is probably over kill for the little things as he fidgets with a ring on his finger. The way he is doing it you know any moment he is about to call it his precious. That may indeed happen , however it would appear Uta's singing is good enough to get a ear worm stuck in Setsuna's head as he sings along while organizing all the Slimes into a line.

Uta's eyes dart between Goldenblade and Setsuna. Nothing special seems to be going on with the former, which she expected. And about the latter, well, what she sees seems to please her. "No!", Uta explains to Goldenblade, interrupting her singing. "It's not! For once I can definitively answer that one!", downright giddy. She then turns to Setsuna. She wait for some time in silence, without providing any further vocalization, to observe any specific effects.

When Uta falls silent, and the silence lingers, Goldenblade begins to hum to herself. Off-key and probably not recognizable this far outside its heyday in 1952, but Uta's got her in a sort of musical mood. No words, but she can hum the tune (badly). She looks around thoughtfully, and says, "Wait, this isn't the construction site. I need to get back." Her flunkies perk up at this, apparently what they'd been waiting for.

    Setsuna would of course keep singing, you don't just stop mid song , unless you only remember a part of it. So for a few moments Setsuna's version of the song is stuck in a loop before he turns back and notices the silent, and then Goldenblade saying she is heading back to work, " Oh you are leaving? Thats a shame, we haven't had long to catch up. I had hoped you could give me advice on building a hole. Oh well maybe another day." It seems that for a brief moment Setsuna was back to his normal mujou self. Still in the interim he hums the song.

Uta beckons with an exaggerated gesture of her arm. "Follow me, Setsuna! We're going to follow Paula a bit of the way to the construction site, and if this works as I expect, you can have as much time off as you need to work on your project!" She squints sideways. "Unpaid leave, of course." Back to a normal expression. "Buuuuuut your job will still be here waiting for you."

Whether Goldenblade remains here, or leaves, after a while Uta will begin to vocalize a different melody, and to observe how Goldenblade react. And, assuming Setsuna is still tagging along (or even if not), she'll keep an eye on him as well...

Goldenblade ehs to Setsuna. "Building a hole? Digging one? Or ... you mean like a well, with bricks all around so it doesn't cave in? But that's still digging. You don't build a hole, a hole is where you've taken things out of." She had been preparing to leave, but she's gotten distracted again with building holes, and has called up what seems to be a sort of holographic interface around her head. "Where do you want a hole?" she asks him.

So she's not actually departing now, though she does seem to be humming along. It's not the song she started, though, she seems to have picked up Uta's melody. A few taps at Camelot's Interface, her relic, and a hole begins appearing in the floor. Seems she's decided to dig here.

    Setsuna blinks as Goldenblade seems to have decided where the hole needed to go anyways. Looking over at Uta he has an expression on his face that says he is so sorry before looking back at Goldenblade. "Well we needed it in Tolbana but it appears this is as good a spot as any. The Slimes wanted a wading pool, I'm sure of it. " Yep he was very sorry for asking and hopefully Uta won't take the damages out of his nonexistent paycheck.

Uta cuts her singing off abruptly, and stares at the hole.

"...I'm taking that out of your non-existent paycheck," she declares in Setsuna's direction.

After a few seconds of silence, she seems to catch up, "Actually, no, good idea. It can be a pool for the slime. Good thinking! Thanks for volunteering to finish the job to turn it into a proper pool. I'm giving you a bonus package for this." A short pause. "...well, don't expect money. But still a bonus package. Maybe vacations. Maybe discounts at participating businesses. We'll see." Participating businesses? Well, whether that makes sense or not (it doesn't), Uta seems in too good a mood to object. She runs up to Setsuna, and with unbridled glee, she blurts out, "In any case, you can go home now! Offer still stands! Go finish whatever it is you're working on! Come back whenever you're done! Or whenever you feel like coming back because the project needs it. Just... promise me you won't marry the slimes, okay?"

Almost skipping on air, she runs at Goldenblade, "And you... go back to the construction site! Isn't that on another continent?" She sighs, but smiles. "Ah well, I-" her smile turns into a bit of a scowl. "...I guess that, as your Status Effect says, you two /are/ resonating with some sort of Song..."

'Song', which in the original Japanese, is actually... 'Uta'.

Goldenblade luckily can't dig /too/ deep a hole all at once. It's not fast-going, either, about as fast as fellows shovelling could do it, but within a couple minutes, there's something like a shallow wading pool dug out. "Haven't got any concrete here," she apologizes. "It'll take time to mix some up." As far as digging a hole in Tobana goes, she says, "Won't you fall from one layer of the Tower down to the next?"

Rather than digging a well for Uta, she digs out a shallow basin, then, maybe a meter across and half a meter deep. "Once I mortar it in, it'll hold water more or less indefinitely. Until it evaporates, of course." And then she's sent home, so she shrugs and heads for the exit.

    Setsuna looks at the pool and the question for the mortar but then remembers the question, "No it's on the first floor, so should be no where to go...however if there is a basement to the tower that would be cool. Really I think we are going to have to taper the hole so that its wider on the bottom then on the top. Maybe glass some of the sides. " As Setsuna talks he swears he can hear that song from earlier for a moment but must just be his imagination. FInally looking over at Uta he raises an eyebrow, " Are you sure? I mean I can come in and feed the slimes and everything no problem. "

"...why, Paula, thanks. That is really appreciated. I'm sure the slimes will love it!" Then, back to Setsuna, "You don't worry, really. I know what a Strange Mood can be like. I've never been in one myself, but I've seen plenty of people who have. Just... take care of your things, okay? Now I need to go research a few more things..." Skipping and leaping with joy, she bounces out of the door.

Then she comes back in, "...oh, and... try not to destroy the lab while I'm gone!"

Goldenblade hrms to Setsuna, shrugs about it being on the first floor. "How deep does the world go, then?" she wonders. "If we dig down from ground level, does it open a hole in the sky? Or do you just get to a place where you can't dig any deeper?" But the audience seems to be over, so she says to Setsuna, "Let me know when you want your well dug, and I'll head over as soon as I'm done the road."

    Setsuna nods his head slowly and follows Goldenblade out of the slime lab. That was ok, he had more to do , he needed his own monsters to experiment on, undead monsters particularly. So while he was out and about he would go hunting, there had to be a graveyard or a tomb around here somewhere. So off he would go.