Sad Affairs of State in a Sad State of Affairs

*** SOME TIME AGO, IN YAMATO... ***

The quiet crashing and retreating of waves at dusk provide a quiet soundtrack for Uta. She leaves footprints on the sand as she proceeds parallel to the ocean. Index finger on her lips, gaze lost in the distance, her head turns left and right.

She appears to be looking for something. Or someone.

Perhaps that person is Jazz. Perhaps not. Perhaps the ocean is telling her it wants her to mind her own business. Either way, she might be physically present, but her eyes are unfocused as she gazed out over the horizon. Her knees are tucked up under her and her hands are splayed loosely out to either side. She's as lost in thought as Uta is just generally lost.

It is still unclear to the Adventurer whether Uta whether Uta now -is- a Spriggan, or just plays one on the internet. This does not change the main point: in this world, she's sneaky. Silent and deadly, her steps further covered by the silent surface the sand provides, not to mention the sound of the sea, after straying a bit from the previous trajectory, she approaches the Undine from behind (as possibly from a side as well) and-

She trips.

After tumbling some on the sand, she pushes herself to her knees with a moan, rubs her head, only one eye open, and finally exclaims, "Oh! Jazz! Nice to meet you!" She immediately looks to a side, and asks, "Have you seen Estelle? I need to speak with her again."

The tripping of Uta causes some brief tentacle twitching and then a slow turn of her head to stare at her. "No, not since we found her." Then she turns herself back to the waves. Regardless, whatever world or body Jazz inhabits, it's gonna be a sad one.

"Oh," Uta says. "I was going to ask her if she has more information about the Origin of Songs. I've become a Sage of Song, and been given a quest. I think that, somehow, the question I asked Estelle can get me closer to my goal."

Uta moves to sit on the sand next to the Undine; after sitting down, she hugs her own knees, and taps her feet a little. Maybe she even rocks a bit to and fro.

"What's up with you? You look sad today," she finally asks. "Sad for your standards, I mean."

"I'm tired, Uta," replies Jazz. Just call her a doctor jazzhattan. "Just thinking about irony lately" One luminous amber eye closes.

"When I was little," she begins, "I'd busy myself with dragons and magic. Fantasy was how I armed myself to survive the day.l"

Uta stays silent.

She buries her face in her knees, and squeezes her knees between her arms.

"I did that until the day before the Apocalypse," Uta admits, not without a hint of shame.

"Not only dragons and magic. All sorts of literature. Prose and poetry alike."

There's more foot and heel tapping, and a little exhalation. "Same thing, really. And it's ironic that it took the fantasy world of a videogame for reality to finally smack me in the face."

Lost in her own melancholy for a moment, she finally snaps back to attention. "Oh, sorry. This is not about me. This is about you. Please continue."

"A lot of people did. A certain kind of person gets drawn to this level of immersion, sometimes. It's how we shelter our soul from pain. How we bear the stupid, pointless cruelty that abounded. Still abounds, honestly. I know you've seen it."

She continues to stare out into the waves.
% "No, it's fine," she tells Uta. "It's not really about me, anyway."

Uta thinks for a moment. Her usual posture, face tilted upwards, finger on her lips, eyes lost in the distance. "I don't know, at first I just liked it, but..." Silence. Her voice's volume is lowered slightly, as is her pitch, "...I suppose you are right. After... pain hit, it was probably something like that."

Uta turns to look at the waves along with Jazz.

She lets the white foam crash and scatter with a woosh, five or six times, and then asks, "What is it about then?"

"Meaning," answers Jazz after a moment.

"I might've sheltered my heart in fantasy, but in the end, it's always about meaning. It's about how significant or ... insignificant we are. Magic is the stand in for the potential that we hope exists in all of us -- the potential to matter, to affect the world around us. People were hungry for meaning, but I'm not sure anyone knows what's meaningful here. I don't."

Jazz props her chin up on her small hand, the scaling along the edges of her face illumating softly in the dim light as she considers.

"A lot of people felt as insigifnicant amongst the people in the world as a grain of sand and now that they have a chance not to be, and the power that goes along with being what we are here, how long will it be before they become the kind of monsters we're all too familiar with?"

Uta takes some time to process the words of Jazz. She ruminates.

"We already are, Jazz. Or, rather, the monsters are within us. You are right, magic is a stand-in for potential. But in many stories the villain must be the dark side of the hero. Each hero's journey is about overcoming something within the hero himself, and the villain, like a dark mirror, must represent what the hero would become if he didn't defeat that negative aspect of themselves. The monsters are what we would become if we let ourselves just drift, without changing. Or, worse, acted to satisfy wants instead of needs."

"But I might be pedantic there. I get what you mean. You're asking if we're doing enough to defeat this inner monster."

Uta smiles. Barely a hint of a smile, melancholic, but it counts. "I do not know what is meaningful, myself. Most people seem to think of me as the weirdo who's always petting slimes and nothing more, but actually, they have no idea of how I toil away behind the scenes, scrounging libraries, poking at this world, trying to unlock the first step to understand where we fit: find out what has happened to us." She looks down, and mumbles, "...of course, I tend to do that in the holes between rather long slime-petting sessions..."

Back to Jazz, "And hey, don't sell yourself short. You did matter. Not only you have found a new island, lifted the Quarantine, and opened the way to a new Continent, a feat nobody else had done before. You also are an amazing person I can trust and someone I can turn on for advice on so many matters. I hope that means at least a little?"

"You may not have noticed, Uta, but I'm already short, but like I said, this isn't about me except in the sense that now I've got that fantasy life and I'm finding I didn't really want it. Of course, being .... being this doesn't help." Her hat slips down over her eyes as she lowers her head to look down at the Undine Maid Form she's got. Tentacles twitch.

"And you are a weirdo," she adds. "But a nice weirdo. When you're not dragging me into races or along on horribly painful adventures."

"As cynical as I might sound," Uta starts, "I fear that you are doing many people a favour by saying they are looking for meaning. I think a bunch of us are just looking for loot, literal or metaphorical it may be. I don't judge, I suppose it's a leftover of our evolutionary history as amoebas or something. I went for a literature major, not a science one. Although now I'm starting to regret it."

Uta shakes her head. "I don't think many of us do want that life. Except those who do. Again, needs and wants. I-"

Uta curls herself into a tighter ball, and shivers. "I don't want this world. I don't want... *this*", she says, freeing her two hands to point at her own avatar with both hands, kept flat. " Yet I cannot shake the feeling I am here, as -this-, for a reason. The symbolism is too uncanny."

Uta turns to look to Jazz. "Thanks, Jazz. It means a lot. Present Reasonably Rational me would like to apologize in advance for what Future Incoherent Me will do."

"I wasn't talking about everyone," says Jazz, "but I'd point out that all of what you just described is still confers value, which confers meaning, especially for people brain-poisoned by capitalism."

"I don't want it either. Don't want this body, certainly. Worried I'll get used to it and have a nasty case of dysphoria when I wake up to the real world again.. .if we wake up to the real world again. I imagine we all will. Years spent moving in tune with a body not our own, with magic to call on and what have you. It's going to be hard. I suspect a lot of people who come back will get a nasty care of deppression and suicidal ideation." She props her chin up in her hands again.

"I mean, it could be worse, Uta."

"You could be the girl in the menu."

Uta bursts out in... well, not quite outright laughter. She bursts out in a puff of air.

"There are rare moments of lucidity when I know who the girl from the menu is, Jazz," she begins, betraying a hint of embarrassment. "This is one of those. But don't worry, it will pass soon enough. Case in point, I will probably forget this whole conversation, or a whole part of it."

Uta flicks her menu open, and with a shimmer, materializes a little stretchy ball, which she proceeds to squeeze. Slowly. Resolutely. One, two. Breathe in. One, two, breathe out.

"I don't know if this will lead to Dark Thoughs, Jazz. And I prefer not to think about it. Not for now, at least. We'll jump off that bridge when we get to it."

Uta smirks at Jazz. "So, hey, guess what? It turns out that I -am- the girl from the menu. Things just got worse."

"Gasp," remarks Jazz, utterly unphased by hearing Uta's admission, but she does peer at her a moment. "You *are* doing better today. Usually, you're just ... I mean, I /get/ it, you know. I understand. But you're usually needing the bumpers or else you'll roll the gutter ball every time."

She just compared Uta to a bowling ball. In fairness, it's probably not a complete inaccurate sentiment.

"Don't be afraid of the dark thoughts," she adds after a moment.

"I usually don't play with a full set of pins, no," Uta admits. "But there are specific circumstances that can help make things better or worse. Stress is a big factor..." Uta trails off, and gives her ball a couple more squeezes, harder than before. The elastic mass bulges out of the top and bottom of her fist.

"...but I can usually keep things in check for a short amount of time by taking appropriate measures. Under the right circumstances."

She returns to look at the ocean. "Plus, things have been great, recently. Massively reduced stress. I built a Conservatory. Music has been a blessing. So many people happy to just celebrate music. So many artisans busy building the best instruments they can, be them established master craftsmen or apprentices. After discovering I have the power to just Know Things, people have started to involve me into major research projects. I am making impressive headway in the research on the Alv language. Things are good, and I think my mental health is somehow benefitting from it."

Uta flashes a genuine smile. "All in all, things are looking good for the future."

"I'm glad for you, Uta," says Jazz, after a moments pause. Acknowledgment.

"The squeezy ball helps, huh?" Her hair floats in place for a moment, its curls and lengths flicking and wafting as if was still immersed in the waves.

"You deserve good things, joy, and happiness. Even if you don't know it half the time. You know things? The only thing I know is how uncertain it all is, how tenuous. The more complicated we make things, the more that has a chance to go wrong. The more advanced systems we build, the greater the collapse will be when we're absent to maintain it. Every complex system collapses as part of a journey towards greater complexity in the future. So enjoy the building phase."

Trust Jazz to have the dimmest outlook on things possible.

Uta stops squeezing. "Oh."

She sinks her head in her shoulders. "The Core of the Narehate helps, yes." Uta chuckles giving it a couple more squeezes. "Bondrewd would probably have a fit if he knew I'm using his relic as a stress ball." Squeeze. Release.

Pause.

Mischievous smile.

Squeeeeeeeze.

Grin.

"I gave the piece I had to Estelle," remarks Jazz, "I imagine she'll have a good time with it." Her hair falls in front of her face, shrouding it in the most anime way possible as she speaks. She even has that anime-girl-flat-affect!

It's amazing how good Jazz is, unintentionally, at being an anime girl.

Uta squeezes her ball more. "Piece? What piece?" A beat. "Oh, you mean the Broken Bondrewd Piece people collected after a Wave of Calamity?"

Uta thinks some more, then squeezes the ball a few times. "I need to speak with her for -two- reasons now. I think it might learn useful things by extracting information from that piece."

"Yeah, that's the one. No reason you can't take a look at it too, I guess. I just sensed she's get something out of it and so figured she'd like it."

Jazz looks down again. Is she mildly soft on the fox?