Plort of Call

* * * Some time before... * * *

Uta's strange mood is over.

After making sure that she got all her business in order in Yamato with a few stops at the Slime Labs, Eas, and other places, she is now on her way to the Palace Lands, where her contacts with Scale await her to discover more about the Lander-Adventurer war.

She has recently disembarked from the ship that took her from Carmina Gadelica Marina to the last port before the long, one-week trip back to the new continent. She walks through the crowded port as if in a trance, unresponsive to the loud peddling of the fishmongers, and the smell of their merchandise. Even the colorful hustle and bustle of humanity seems lost on her, as she just proceeds on autopilot, even as a few people bump into her.

    Setsuna walks through the port with a limp, his new leg is quite stiff as if he hasn't moved it in a while. His entourage of monsters is missing and he appears to be in jogging or workout gear. " So you are off to the palace lands? Trying to get more bomb slimes for the lab? Didn't that last one almost take down the back wall?" There are question as he looks as he looks at the boat then over at Uta.

Uta snaps back to pay attention to the world around her. "Oh, hi, Setsuna! You're here too?"

It doesn't matter whether Setsuna just appeared or has been following Uta since she left the Slime Labs. That wouldn't change Uta's statement.

"Exploding Slimes," Uta corrects. "And that is exactly why we needed to have a hole dug off site. So it can explode in peace without... ah... putting a strain on my relations with Rylen."

Uta rubs her head, "No, no, not getting more bombs until we have some means to be safe from sulphur exposure. This is about our continent-wide research about the Lander-Adventurer war. I'm sure Doctor Prophylaxis must have told you about it."

Schneider has been invited here, and is actually coming to meet Uta. He's not sure what he will find, though he's hoping for news about their mutual research efforts. But the snippet he hears about explosive slimes sounds interesting, too. "Explosive slimes, you say?" he wonders. "I wonder if they might have any insight that I could learn..." Because Schneider is all about the boom, of course.

    Setsuna contemplates the topic for a moment, " The Lander-adventrer war. Heard that mentioned a few time, this is whatever happened in the palace lands right?" Pondering for a moment he remembers, " Oh yeah I remember him droning on and on about that a bit ago. I will admit he is not the best presenter, so I may have dozed off a bit. " There is a sound of guilt as he walks over to the edge of the pier and has a seat , dangling his feet above the water. Taking a moment he looks at Uta before adding, " Well if you want to fill me in I will trade you about spider demon god thingy. That was fun times. Also maybe some song stuff, speaking of how did all that go? The singing gig ? You left a note one day bout wanting to become Yamatos top idol?"

"I was building a -Conservatory-!", Uta snaps back. "To preserve, celebrate, and advance Yamato's musical culture. To build better instruments, research how Music affects this world. The first step was building a bunch of Phonographs. I am already planning to meet with of a group of fellow Bards, to officially start a group of Song Hunters."

People who know Uta, at this point, will have noticed that even in everyday speech, Uta's vocal technique has improved, making her voice somehow slightly more pleasant and melodious, but not because she suddenly has a different voice. It's just.. used better.

"And about the Lander-Adventurer war, we don't have much, yet." Uta mumbles, looking down and away. "Just as we were getting started, I got hit by my Strange Mood. Now we have a few weeks of lost work to catch up to." Looking even further down, and mumbling in an even lower tone.

"In any case, I'm not going to be caught unprepared." She flicks one finger, and shimmers a notebook into existence. "I am preparing a dossier about everything I have found out in the Palace Lands. I was planning to share the information with my Alliance, to seek help from other people and compile as much data as we have about this wonderful and mysterious new continent..." She gives a sideways glance. "...and their rather suspicious people." She shakes her head. "Anyway, I've already shared some information on channel, might as well compile it in a nice, exhaustive way and make it available to anyone in our Alliance interested in researching it."

When Schneider approaches, Uta waves at him. "Oh, right, Schneider! Hi!" Uta flicks her menu open, and with a shimmer, materializes a rolled up piece of paper. "Here, this is the map to the Exploding Slime's pit," she says, as she hands the piece of paper to Setsuna. "Feel free to show it to Schneider, but make sure the slime doesn't get killed. We have only one."

There is a pause. "Wait, spider demon god!? Song stuff?" She leans in. "Tell me all about it."

Schneider smiles as Uta greets him, and he hellos back, "Hey, Uta," but then he ehs, "Lander-Adventurer War? What's that? A Palace Lands thing?" As far as the exploding slimes things go, he nods, "I won't interfere with them. Just watching. From a distance." He's no Monster Handler, he knows that score. He looks as Uta passes Setsuna the map for him to the slime lab's explosive slime pit.

    Setsuna looks up over at Schneider, " You know there is more to life then explosions. In fact there is a lot more to life then explosions. " Looking back at Uta and nods his head before he gets back to teasing Uta, " I am sure the conservatory will help you become Yamatos Top Idol, don't worry I support this. " With a grin that would make imps jealous on his face he chuckles for good measure just to make sure it is obvious he is teasing. Finally he heaarss about the war and adds , " I look forward to reading it, has to be tter then Prophylaxis , I swear that guy has to take time to work on his performance skills. Learn to inflect or deflect or whatever to his tone. " Taking the map he looks over at Schneider before he begins to unroll the map. " Oh yeah the spider demon god thing, I can't remember if its a god or demon. Anyways we went to start a dialect, and that was fun. Yeah that monster wants nothing to do with us, but may over all be a good monster. At least from the way they talked to us. One of those you don't mess with us and I will leave you alone... except we kinda did. " Setsuna begins to fold the map into something.

"I am -not- planning to become Yamato's Top Idol!", Uta snaps back, red in the cheeks. "And besides -- the Conservatory, among other services, offers vocal technique lessons. You should sign Prophylaxis up for that. So you can have Briefing: The Musical. Starring Doctor Prophylaxis"

"It is, indeed, a Palace Lands thing," Uta replies to Schneider. "We found out recently. And we need to find out more." She mumbles, "Based on my research, the Palace Landers weren't given any instructions during the Apocalypse. And it's not just that they did not see them because the Babel Tower is one week of travel away from Dol Dona, no. I checked, there was no holographic projection at all on the Tower." Uta crosses her arms and tilts her head down. "I don't have all the facts yet, but one can easily start forming expectations and fill in the gaps between 'Stranded Adventurers With No Goal' and 'Lander-Adventure War'"

"Oh, and apparently, the Babel Tower was built by the Alv to protect the Babylon Device. That's quite interesting, don't you agree? No mention of climbing, or the Keys of Twilight. And nothing about leaving the world. And as far as we know..." She taps her lips. "The Babylon Device is Alba's universal translation system. So... what's up with that tower?"

    "The babel tower, " Setsuna blinks and supposes it makes sense, his current belief on this being is that the Alucard tower will be done after the tenth floor. So just figured the new tower would be in palace lands. Obviously it would mean waves there but it would be fine, as they wouldn't be split over here. Taking another moment as goes back to folding the map into a plane. " So then about the spider god, yeah apparently, we, adventurers of Yamato have released an evil unto the Palace Lands. Quarantine was really meant to keep things in Yamato not the rest of the world out. We released the scrapped princesses, the beast, and who knows what else was being contained here."

Schneider gives Setsuna a skeptical look. More to life than explosions? He looks entirely skeptical. He huhs about the idol thing, which he doesn't quite get because he never had an interest in them back in the real world and doesn't understand the big deal. As to the spider demon god thing, he clarifies, "We tried to start a /dialog/, I think. Starting a dialect would be like making up an accent and chaging the words of a language in a significant way, while they remain broadly recognizable. We tried talking to it, which is starting a dialog. He didn't want to talk to us, it turned out, which was disappointing."

And Uta's singing is not to be come Yamato's Top Idol? "Do the Palace Lands even /have/ a top idol?" He doesn't know! As far as the Palace Landers not being given instructions at all during the Apocalypse, he hrms. "And ... wait, Babel device? There's a Tower housing the translation capability ...?" He's just confused now. Then, "Wait, we released what? I didn't release anything! It was NWA who brought our problems to the world...."

"Wait, we released -what-?!"

Uta even leans forward at the surprise. "I knew that the Quarantine was meant to keep stuff -in-, not -out-, but-" She rubs her temples, as if for easing a headache. "Oooh, man. The Beast. The Scrapped Princesses. What next?" She rubs her face. "I -so- hope this is still a videogame..."

Uta sighs and waves one had at Schneider, almost without even looking at him. "And NWA keeps accusing you of bringing the Waves. You both are accidentally steamrolling down protections, is all. If we were to be pointing fingers, it would be Olympus who should point out that the Waves that Scale produces end up, somehow, constantly damaging our alliance projects. But I won't."

She frowns, serious. "And I'm not passive-aggressive. I'm convinced that whoever our enemies are, either the Otherworlders, or some puppetmaster higher up than them, they're -specifically- trying to pit us against each other. I know our Alliances have political differences, but these attacks should be a clear sign that whoever opposes us, their main strategic goal is to get us to stop working togehter. Let's not give them this satisfaction, not to mention tactical advantage."

"...If the Palace Lands have no Top Idol, I don't plan to become it," she adds, for good measure.

"Oh, which reminds me -- as Schneider here knows, I'm researching more about a person named 'Helba'. She was apparently involved in the first attempt at the Tenth Floor Boss. The one which... did not end that well."

    Setsuna looks at Schneider and then gestures to what Uta is saying about finger pointing. " At the end of the day it doesn't matter who as it is easier to just say Yamato Adventurers. " Looking back over at Uta, "Apparently its not normal behavior for monsters to talk , or make altars , or organize or anything like that. That stuff is only stuff we were dealing up to about five months ago, say around news year. After that "we" let stuff out and now at least spider demon said doesn't want to deal with us go away." Finally he finishes folding the map to the exploding slimes into a paper airplane and the moment he throws it , it dives bomb onto a plank of the pier, fortunately there is no breeze or it would have gone into the water. The necromancer quickly scrambles to grab it. " Anyways thats about what I got."

Schneider shrugs about the Waves, glancing between Uta and Setsuna. "You might as well complain about the clouds bringing rain as complain about the Waves," he grumbles sourly. "It's not the cloud's fault. The Wave is just a game mechanic. You want to blame anyone, blame the idiot game designer who built it into a game. 'You need to climb the Tower to get out,' he mimics what he thinks of as a geeky tone. 'But if you climb the Tower, we'll throw attackers at rhe world!'. Scale never asked for that. And we /help/ with them, too, when we can be there." It's a long trip from the top of the Tower back to wherever the Wave is. "Anyhow, that's clearly a machanic built into the game so the whole playerbase doesn't storm the Tower at once. If we did, we'd be /out/ of here by now," he asserts boldly. "But going to another server and getting them involved was /entirely optional/ and they went and did it out of spite because they've been useless up until now, apart from covering the Waves." No bad blood, no.

As far as Helba goes, he met her, briefly, now that he's reminded who she was. "Yeah," he says to Uta, "but, she didn't give us her phone number, though," he points out. Meaning, no way to contact her.

"That's exactly what I'm saying, Schneider. If this is a game, it's the game designers that did this. If it's not a game, and this is really a new world, then it's the Otherworlders' doing. In either case, all of Scale, Olympus, and New World are the victims here, not the perpetrators. Based on what people know, there is no wrongdoing, or as little as possible. In any case, it's important not to blame each other, try and cooperate, which, by the way, Scale has shown they're perfectly capable of."

Uta sighs, and pinches the bridge of her nose. "We have enough trouble within Olympus with many important figures distinctly against the Tower Climb. Olympus is supposed to be Tower-Agnostic, but these days, it's only us newbies in Crescent Moon that still maintain a clearly Tower-neutral policy." Uta looks down and away, hugging herself. "And the things that I'm discovering about Aincrad of Late aren't helping either. I won't divulge them, for fear of destabilizing Yamato further, but I'm starting to suspect there's something very fishy going on with Aincrad."

After this moment of doubt, Uta snaps to face Setsuna and Schneider with determination. "Please don't think I'm opposing you. I am a firm believer that -if this is nothing more than a game-," She emphasizes the condition, "and we're still hooked up to a virtual reality headeset, getting everyone out is the right thing to do, even if the price is wiping this whole world."

    Setsuna shrugs at Uta's proclamation of support, " Uta if I cared about your opinion on the tower I would have asked thee day I put in my job application. You don't have to declare yourself one way or another. You do you. However if you were to ever put a docket on Aincrad and leave it lying around the lab signed Setsuna don't read this, I wouldn't be upset about that." Taking a moment he begins to start over on his map plane, " Speaking of the tower Uta did you ever make it up to the fifth floor and do your magic in the pit of goblin hell where the goblin queen and king were ? "

Schneider shrugs to Uta about keeping the peace. "You don't need to say that to /me/, I'm just complaining," he complains. "Tell that to NWA who's armed goblins to kill players and Landers. The NWA that claims to love Landers got more Landers killed that Scale ever did." Well, maybe? There's no official score. He shrugs to Uta's Tower-neutral stance. "I mean, we've worked together /in the Tower/." Recently at the Alv ruins he'd turned up. "Anyhow, if we're /not/ still hooked up to the game machine, I'd like to see some evidence. I've heard all kinds of crack-brained theories and crazy ideas, but zero actual evidence that we're anything other than in a game. I know I am, I'm the one that logged in. I know my password and everything."

"I might do just that," Uta mutters, low. "And I can trust you not to read it at all, and especially, not to confidentially pass it on to Prophylaxis, but otherwise make sure that nobody else in Scale gets to read it on the way -- and it would be only Prophylaxis that decides what to do with the information. Because partial, unconfirmed information might throw a whole Alliance into chaos, and what we need most, at this moment, is stability."

A pause.

"Theoretically speaking, of course. That's just a completely hypothetical scenario whose degree of convolution clearly proves how unlikely it is."

"In the same vein, it would also be nice and not at all offensive if I mysteriously found some response marked 'Not To Be Shared With Olympus, Crescent Moon in particular.' Which would be peculiar, given how Crescent Moon is the most tower-agnostic Olympus guild, hence probably the safest guild to discuss tower-related topics in."

Uta nods at Schneider. "Yeah, all sorts of crazy theories. Until we have proof of what actually happened, I pick my actions in a way that is compatible with both of the most likely options: that we're either trapped in a game, or actually living in a new reality, physical or cybernetic as it may be. The day I find out with certainty which one it is, I'm leaving Olympus and joining either Scale or New World, respectively."

Uta sighs. "Oh, yeah, that work. I'll have to mention that to Prophylaxis as well. I think he needs to know." A short pause. "Well, after, of course, he promises, like you did, that he'll share anything he'll find."

Uta snaps back to look at Setsuna. "No, I don't even know what happened there. What happened there?"

Uta adds, "...and one of those days, remind me that we should take a look at that book by Chudelkin as well."

    Setsuna nods his head , " So we got to the bottom of Karluin, literally found a goblin king and queen. When we were down there , a strange ominous song started. " Tries his best to recall if he ever heard it before for a moment and a number pops into his head, before he tries to hum a bit of the 44th song. After a momemnt of a horrible humming session , seriously it hurt to listen to , before he finally stops. " Sadly the queen escaped out into the world. Who knows where she is, maybe she made it to the palace lands. " Shrugs his shoulders as he continues thinking for a few minutes and then adds, "That shit was creepy."

Schneider shrugs to Uta about all the politics. It makes his head spin, honestly, and it's /way/ too much to keep track of. "Theoretically," he agrees with Uta, sort of. Though he flateyes at her list of likely options. Seems he's as skeptical about choice 2 as all the other odd ideas. But then he huhs? "Book by Chudelkin?" He desn't recall that at all.

He does nod in confirmation of Setsuna's tale of the goblins, though he can't really sing any better. Nor so you could know or repeat the song. As far as creepy, he shrugs. "It's a game, it's just a thing."

"Uh," Uta replies to the story of the Goblins. "That is... not good. I'll need the -whole- story about that. In any case, yeah, the 44th Song. Erufu taught me that. I'm working on songs myself, as part of the Conservatory. I'm going through all of them. To prepare a file for the Song Hunters. It seems like the high-numbered songs are pretty bad. I'm not even sure how good the 43rd is, to be fair. You know, the one the Chims sang when we tried to calm them. But." She sighs.

Anyway, long story short. "I'm working my way by trying to reconstruct and deduce information about Songs, all the way from the 1st up to the 47th. Skipping the holes, of course." Uta looks down, and mumbles, "We've got a lot of holes, and despite this, it's going to take time" after which she resumes her regular tone, "That's the kind of information I'm going to share with the Song Hunters. The songs above the 42nd in particular... I'm not sure how good it would be if the -Landers- learnt of them. Or the general population. Responsible disclosure, you know."

"Oh, it's a book of fairy tales," Uta replies to Schneider. "They mention a thing called the Wyvern Riders of Londonia. That was the basis for my Shadow Festival costume of last year." She shakes her head. "I mean, the book has no visual references, so we needed to make things up a lot, but...."

Schneider can't really follow the discussion of songs anyway. How do songs do any of this? It makes less sense to him than the rest of magic. He nods slowly as Uta mentiones the book of fairy tales. "Wyvern riders," he murmurs. "That seems like a thing players have been trying to do." He eyes Setsuna. As for the whole story, he's got an apologetic look, and says, "They don't brief anyone on the Lore, it's just go in, attack, get out if you can. I mean, it was the end of our big goblin-crushing campaign, so ... Setsuna, you or Proph can probably explain better than I can." Schneider is just pawn in game of life.

    Setsuna looks at the group and stands up slowly giving a yawn, rubbing his now non skeleton leg for a moment before looking around. " Yeah I have a lead on that but I can't go follow it through until the hunter's guild finishes processing my paperwork. Anyways Ihave to go , Yuuki will be looking for me soon and wondering why I am not doing sprints through the sixth floor maze. If she finds me before I get started I am in for a hellish 24 hours." With out much more explination he hands schneider his paper airplane of the map to the exploding shrine. The paper airplane is shapped like a rose.

"OH, Setsuna? While I'm gone, make sure you contact Paula and ask her to dig a second pit. I was thinking that maybe we could store Slime Shady." Paula being, of course, Goldenblade, and Slime Shady being the Dark Slime from the Fifth Wave of Calamity. "As you know, he's super aggressive and since the pit for the Exploding slime has been so convenient at containing danger, that we might as well store Slime Shady in the same general area, far away from the Slime Labs."

"I will ask about it then," she says to Schneider. "In any case, I have to go now. I have a boat to catch..."

She bows to Schneider and Setsuna, and resumes walking towards a boat. "Hmm... there was something odd about Setsuna's leg today..." Silence, as she walks on. "...ah well, maybe he got new pants and I didn't notice. Good thing the discussion didn't come up."