Packing Up

Goldenblade is surrounded by the controlled chaos of the construction management process, but appears to be managing some personal buisiness at the same time. Any personal items are carefully collected and, well, placed into inventory. The blueprints and official paperwork remains out, but her personal things ar gone; pens and pencils, and like that. Looks like she's packing up to go, and she's mentioned as much to her coworkers. "I'm not gonna leave a project unfinished. But I'll be damned if I stay where I'm not wanted. Scale would bend over backwards to get me building for them, they've said before, and if I'm not wanted here, I'm damned sure wanted over there.

She pauses to corral some worker, "No, not there. Look at the drawing, see, that goes over there." Corrected, the worker heads to the correct location.

Something curious passes by. It's a tarveler's cart, built out of a large barrel, so large someone built a mobile home out of it. Circular window, the bottom working as a door, the works. There's even a lantern hanging off the back. Sitting on the conductor's plank in the front, stagecoach-style, Uta is maneuvering a Grunty who is pulling the whole affair. The creature is larger than average, and seems to be wearing a purple wig. It also appears to be wearing a maid's outfit.

Spotting Goldenblade, she waves. "Oh, hey, Paula!", she yells, and pulls on the reins.

Goldenblade takes a moment to look up because no one calls her Paula except one per - oh. "Hello, Uta," she says without looking up. But then the general feel of the situation changes, people boggling, and she does look up, and then she boggles as well. The barrel-wagon-house seems almost normal compared to a grunty with a wig and a maid's outfit. "What .... er .... are you doing?" she asks after a moment as she sorts out what might be going on.

When the cart comes to a complete stop, Uta climbs down from the cart. "Oh, I was doing some bibliographical research at the library. And now I'm headed to the nearby city to find a Messenger. I need to deliver a package."

The grunty, while still grunty-sized, is larger enough than the average to be on the higher end of grunty sizes. And this particular one has a pair of prop Sylph wind, green and gauzy, protruding from its back. Where it found them, hard to tell. "I'm also testing my new traveler's cart." She extends her hands for showing it. "My home away from home!" She stops, and thinks for a moment. "No, actually, this /is/ my home. The slime lab is only my workplace, even if I do have a futon there for those long nights..." She clears her voice, and smiling wide, shows her cart again, "My home!"

A short moment to let that sink in, moment ruined by the grunty sneezing and displacing its wig (but this will be fixed quickly with a flick of its head), Uta then asks Goldenblade, "What about you? What are you up to?"

Goldenblade takes all of Uta's status in. "Research, eh?" she wonders. Well, the world seems to be strangely rich in things to research. "What have you found out?" The grunty gets another stare, and she says, "You know, it reminds me of someone, but I can't think of who." But she shrugs. Grunty issues are not high on her list of things that need to get sorted out. The home away from home draws a sigh, and she says, "That's pretty cool. I hadn't realized you travel so much."

As to what she's doing, she explains, "I'm trying to get this project finished up before I have to leave. And packing up all the junk I unpacked is kind of a pain. But it's all for the best, I think. Well, we shall see. But I'm finishing this up because no matter how bad people are, -I'm- not going to be the one leaving them high and dry."

"Oh, you mean her?" Uta asks, pointing at the Grunty with her thumb. The grunty, as grunty are known to do occasionally, launches into a human-sounding sentence, "I have some ideas!"

"I don't know where she found that purple wig, or those wings," Uta admits with a sigh. "She seems to love those. She always has them on. But for some reason, she switches to a different outfit every day."

A short pause. "I call her Gwenty."

Uta thinks for a bit about what Goldenblade said. "Oh, OH! Is it about the thing on channel? With Proteus?" She goes pffffffft, flicking one hand in dismissal. "I get that stuff all the time. Other people do. People, me included, have simply stopped paying attention to Proteus when she goes on a rant about Scale and the Tower. Multiple people have pointed out to Proteus that she doesn't have the right to tell anyone who should or should not be in this alliance based on their decision to support pushes or not." Unable to stand still, she begins some exercise routine, stretching her legs first. "Proteus isn't the most authoritative member in the Alliance, or the most right. She's just the noisiest."

Goldenblade nods, smirks at Gwenty. "Ah, I see," she says, chuckling. "Gwenty. Does Gwen know?" That ought to be interesting.

But she nods about Proteus and the thing on the channel. "Well," she says, "No one said otherwise, and I don't need that kind of crap. She -is- a leader, isn't she, of their Guild? Not Crescent Moon, but whatever one she's in? And Crescent Moon just said, 'Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out'. No one said shit to Proteus, so I know where I stand. Anyhow, Prophylaxis will be beside himself at gettin a builder working for him."

"Well, I clearly remember Rylen chastising Proteus multiple times and defending you. He may not have been available at that time. I used to counter Proteus' arguments myself back in the day, multiple times, as you may remember. But now..." She shrugs. "Proteus is clearly just talking, not listening. Trying to counter Proteus on the subject of scale is a waste of time." She rubs her chin, frowning in concentration. "No, worse. The longer you try to counter her arguments, the harder she doubles down." Uta shrugs. "She may be a leader of another guild, but definitely not of /our/ Guild. Rylen, from our guild, said it's fine to support tower pushes and won't let Proteus tell people otherwise. And Yuuki, who's the leader of the Sleeping Knights, confirmed that Olympus is agnostic to tower pushes. People may support or oppose them as they please. But, and this is important, that's not an official alliance stance. It's just personal opinion."

Uta adds, as an afterthought, "...no, I don't think Gwen knows..."

Goldenblade nods agreement, "Yeah, I remember the last time Proteus bitched at me, Rylen spoke up. But this time it was different. The feeling on the Crescent Moon channel was 'Oh well, nice knowing you.' It felt like no one cared or had my back, you know? I cut the Olympus chimlink off after that, I didn't need to Proteus frothing at the mouth, telling me I'm wrong to want to see my grandkids." She smirks, nods about Tower pushes. "So, that's actually interesting. One of the Lander leaders, the general in Westlande, actually visits the battle sites in the tower. He saw my sword that was there, stuck in the heart of the tree-stone-thing. I'm working with the Westelanders, they're letting me join up with their order and all."

Uta laughs. "Nah, I can assure you that nobody was thinking 'Oh well, nice knowing you'. More like... 'will you stop-'" She frowns, and rubs her head. "How was that gaming metaphor again? I think it went... 'will you stop feeding the troll?'", She says, with uncertainty. "'Stop encouraging him.' You know, don't challenge a pig to a mud wrestling match, he'll drag you into the mud, et cetera, et cetera." She raises a finger. "To support this, I will point out that, as you may have noticed, nobody supported Proteus, either."

Uta shifts her weight, and moves to stretch her oter leg. "Oh, you're joining the- order? Some religious order?", asks Uta. "Cool, you seem to have left an impression!" There is another short pause. "...what's the tree-stone thing? I... I seem to somehow fail to arrive to tower pushes in time," Uta mumbles. "And as you know, Olympus is terrible at circulating AARs..."

Goldenblade shrugs at the after-analysis of the conversation. "Well, it doesn't matter. Maybe seeing me leave because of her will make people quicker to shut her up next time? Yeah, no one supported her, but no one told her that she was wrong, either. I don't know how you kids do all this stuff, and honestly, I kinda don't care. I'm not going to learn how to put up with people being jerks at my age. In my day, if someone was a jerk, you punched them in the face. And if you couldn't do that, you left. So, I'm leaving. If Crescent Moon doesn't like that, they can damned well ...." she doesn't even know what they can do. "Well, they can miss me. Maybe that'll be the wake up people need to not let unruly children have positions of authority."

"Around these parts we don't like to make scenes like that," Uta mentions. "It is vital to minimize damage to social harmony, especially on Alliance-wide channels. Things are dealt with quietly, after the fact." Uta stands up, and interrupts her exercise routine. "I can assure you that you probably have everyone's support, even if they don't scream about it. Just go around and ask in private. But-" She shrugs. "I would love for you to remain, and have tried my best to convince you to stay. That said, if you are so set in your decision, at least for now, I will respect your choice." She bows to Goldenblade. "Let it be known, out of respect -- not out of disinterest for you. And of course, should you choose to come back, you will be welcome."

Goldenblade sighs about social harmony. "That's the problem with you Japanese, you're too big on social harmony. I grew up in America, and it was different there. Anyhow, no one stood up for /my/ harmony, so I'm taking my harmony on the road." She grumbles. "It's not like I -want- to. But I'm not going to outstay my welcome. But I'll ask on channel, and we'll see which way the vote goes." And there's some fumbling as she manuipulates her channels clumsily because she's got to figure out how to turn the Alliance one back on.

Uta nods, with a scrunch of her mouth. "As said, it's sad that you misunderstood our intentions, and took this decision. But your decision will be respected." She bows, and begins to climb her cart again. "And you are not outstaying your welcome. You have never been unwelcome in Crescent Moon, and I'm pretty sure you'll never be." She pauses for a moment, gaze lost in the distance. "Oh, one last thing..." She says, turning to look at Goldenblade. "Will you do me a favor, and before you leave, have a private talk with Rylen, in person, and explain what happened?" She hunches down a bit, and lowers her voice. "Will you do that for me?"

Goldenblade is about to go out over the chimlink when Uta speaks up. "I was actually just going to ask everyone on channel," she explains. "But I guiess if no one's going to speak up on channel, I guess that's not a meaningful choice." She smiles about not being unwelcome in Crescent Moon, and says, "Yeah, you guys have been very welcoming to me, and helped me through my learning issues. I still have them, obviously," she smirks. "But talk to Rylen? Sure, I think I know where to find him." She bows as Uta climbs back onto her cart. "Take care, then," she offers.

"Later, Paula! You take care yourself.", Uta exclaims, and gets Gwenty to move again.

Slowly.

Hey, she's supposed to be strong, not fast.

"Oh boy, do I know something about still having learning issues...", she mumbles with a frown, but loud enough that Goldenblade can hear her, as she proceeds down the road.