your eyes are broken bottles [ 2024 catchall ]

[lunardreaming]

who: lucy kushinada (lunardreaming) + others
when: all throughout 2024
where:
what: 2024 catchall, open quest starters
warnings: will add as necessary




[ note: open starters will be posted in the comments! if you'd like to do something with Lucy, hit me up at cosmonautdelta ]

Comments

2fer

[gilgamess]

These two really keep encountering each other, huh? It's really probably because Gilgamesh is just a very adventure-seeking man and not one to be outdone with these challenges and, for that matter, he too is one for the money.

"Ah... again, I encounter you..." Though he still does not quite address her by name. This is Gilgamesh, though, so even "you" and not "mongrel" is a step up. And by now, no doubt they probably have exchanged names at some point. But he is still inclined to be a little more distant. "Not to worry. This sort of arena is my specialty."

He was after all the one who had journeyed through all the world and conquered various challenges.

"I have invented a simplistic mechanism by which we can generate Bios."

It's sort of... a move unto itself, but one that will require another person. He wonders if they have all been developing something like this. Knowing these acts of cooperation seemed to be necessary for various activities in this world, well, surely other Otherworlders were crafting ideas for what they would do in moments of need.

[lunardreaming]

Lucy guesses it shouldn't really be surprised when she keeps running into Otherworlders in this big city -- there's so few of them, and so many people in this city, but they're all after the same things. Money, answers. Mostly answers, in her case.

Gilgamesh, at the very least, she thinks she can tentatively trust. He's strange, and has an ego on him, but he's also helpful and generous when he doesn't need to be. He's smart enough to power his way through most challenges, Lucy's guessing, but here he is, offering to help her with Bios, something she still hasn't quite figured out how to generate herself.

For a quick, hidden moment, Lucy allows herself to feel grateful. It's not an emotion she permits herself often.

"Really?" she asks, curious but guarded. She can see her own Bios in the white-purple lines of her EMP Threading, but the use of it is still eluding her. She thinks Synthesis with another person might be necessary, but... that requires another person. Still, it's worth hearing him out. "You think these shadow things are after the Bios in the flowers?"

[gilgamess]

"Let us take matters one at a time. To begin with, the topics of Bios and Synthesis..."

Gilgamesh casts a glance at the raccoon which was still furtively watching them.

"If I am understanding correctly, Synthesis is merely a matter of Otherworlders engaging in some manner of cooperation. However, specifically, it seems to refer to acts which embody duality of some kind."

It was built into the name: Otherworlders essentially ... coming together, as it were, to solve problems, but manifested through some physical/symbolic act. Was that not, essentially, Synthesis?

"I have heard that all manner of touch can be a conduit of this ability, yet I think it more practical for each person to devise for themselves an act which, in any or most situations, including one such as that which we now find ourselves in, we can use to generate Bios."

That made sense, right? Because at any given moment in this world, they may -- in a pinch -- need to generate Bios. That was just The Way here. And therefore, it made sense for each of them to have an almost kneejerk, instinctive method that they honed for doing so.

"The method I have been honing has been to have an object on hand that both of us may grasp simultaneously, channeling our Bios and generating new." It was a simple and flexible method. Plus, he could summon shiny cool shit from his vault and do a lot of Dramatic Hero Pose stuff while grasping whatever object with the other person -- say, grasping the hilt his axe, or his tablet, or even the aXess Link, or another weapon. But, again, he looks at that creature...

"To the matter of your other question... well, I am no expert on such matters." He, too, was a new arrival, just like her. "But that seems both sensible and also what the natives have given us to understand as their own speculation. The question, to my mind, would be: Why? Why is it that these creatures are behaving as though they are starving for Bios? And just what exactly are these 'shadow creatures'? Are there merely nocturnal animals, or a manifestation of something more complex and perhaps more sinister? If Bios is light and life energy, and they are blackened... could it be that something has happened to the Bios within these animals' bodies?"

That was simply a guess on his part, but the combination of their hunger -- an apparent lack -- and their black, shadowy bodies: had the Bios within them been ... altered? Voided, somehow? Was that even possible?

[lunardreaming]

[ There's something about the way that Gilgamesh explains it that... just makes it a lot easier to understand. Just makes the knowledge sort of click.

So, she needs to figure out how to generate her own Bios, and she needs to figure out some kind of cooperative shorthand, something she can do with another person to symbolize partnership and synchronicity in order to generate Synthesis. If she understands things correctly, then Bios is now being used to fuel her pre-existing cybergear, but Synthesis grants her the ability to do things she's not currently capable of.

And to do that, she needs to cooperate with someone. It's something of a foreign idea for Lucy, who's used to acting alone even while running with a group. ]

Maybe something did happen to the Bios inside them. Maybe it got... corrupted somehow, with a disease. Or they got exposed to a kind of magic that twisted them around.

[ She crouches down on the edge of the path, where she can see little shadows underneath the bushes. Her mouth takes on an uneasy slant. ]

And if that's true-- could it happen to people, too?

[gilgamess]

[ Lucy might have faced some challenges in grasping concepts such as magic or Synthesis, but she does, Gilgamesh thinks, have a talent for asking probing questions and arriving at useful insights. ]

Mm... [ he folds his arms, raising a hand to idly touch his fingers to his chin in thought. ] ... the thought had occurred to me. In my world, heroic spirits -- called "Servants" -- such as myself, are sustained by something known as mana. From what I have gathered, the mana that sustains a being such as myself is comparable in many ways to Bios.

In fact, it is apparently Bios itself that sustains me in place of mana, now. An equivalence, as it were.

[ honestly, that might be why he seemed to struggle a little less with the concepts, despite being from the ancient past. like Musashi, Gilgamesh was a "ghost" sustained by the mystical energies of magecraft. mana. and like Bios, the glow of mana could come in many different colors. yet there were also differences: as just one example, the people of his world did not, overall, incorporate mana into everyday life, in lights and electricity and the makeup of cities themselves. perhaps nearer to his own era, the Age of the Gods, but certainly not in more modern times. the Bios of this world was a source of magic and perhaps mystery, but it was also ubiquitous as a power for everything else. so that was... different.

still, there was much similarity. ]

There were indeed methods of darkening mana. Corruption. The madness enhancement of the Berserker class was a form thereof, and a corrupted form of the Holy Grail could also affect Servants... ... well, it would have no effect on me, as I am exceptional, but certainly, there were Servants who would blacken, their demeanors changing under such circumstances. We referred to them as "Alters."

[ Gilgamesh follows her gaze at the shadows giving Lucy a probably much-needed break from Fate/-jargon explanations lbr. ]

Well, in any case, I suppose there are no Grails nearby, nor any reason to suppose this darkening of Bios, if it is indeed some similar form of corruption, derives from a similar source. Yet it may be interesting to uncover what source it does originate from.

... though, I suppose more immediately, we had ought to find some means of supplying them food.

[ y'know, before they start acting like Raccoon/Bunny/Chipmunk/Etc. Alters and going all rabid on them. so far, they seemed more skittish, but if it really was That kind of corruption, one could never be too careful. ]

[lunardreaming]

[ Just when she thinks she's got Gilgamesh reasonably figured out, he goes and... says all that. Lucy narrowly resists the urge to slap her palm to her forehead.

Still, it's not hard to get what he's saying. She's familiar with the idea of mana -- she's played video games, obviously -- and in his world, there were methods of corrupting the magic within. If it's possible in one world, it's possible here, too. The source could be anything. Someone could have deliberately corrupted their Bios, magically or technologically. If Lucy gets really wild with her theories and go full fiction, it could even be something like negative emotion or bad thoughts. It's probably not that, because if that was the case, her Bios would be wildly corrupted, but still. She's got to think of all the possibilities.

But Gilgamesh is right. They should probably calm the critters before they get too hungry. ]

I don't have any way of manifesting Bios on my own.

[ She bets other people probably do. The people with magic. But for her, Bios only fuels what she could already do with her cyberware, and she can't... produce globs of digital stuff for them to eat. Or.

Wait. Can she?? Could she somehow project a digital frequency at them and feed them with Bios that way? They don't have any way of receiving digital frequencies, though, and she's hardly telepathic. She might have to experiment with that, though. ]

Wanna see if we can come up with something with Synthesis?

[gilgamess]

[ Gilgamesh would certainly not be supposing bad thoughts/emotions to be the source of the corruption. after all, that could potentially extend to him and others among them in some ways, as well. but he definitely finds himself wondering whether there's any sort of deliberation to these circumstances -- whether someone or something has actively created this outcome.

if so, that would be quite the thing to explore and delve more into.

but, as they have both observed, better to focus for now on the more immediate conundrum at hand. ]

Hmph... well, it does seem an opportunity for experimentation and ingenuity. [ a small smirk touches his lips. Gilgamesh was not much for cooperation per se, but he was a bit intrigued at seeing what they might be able to accomplish with Bios and their native powers. ] Do you wish to utilize my method, or do you have another idea in mind?

[ cooperation could take many forms, after all. ]