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

[lunardreaming]

Jesus. His hair and eyes are actually kind of hard to look at. It does look pretty funny paired with the grumpy expression underneath, though.

"Same," Lucy agrees wryly. "I'm never getting all of this glitter out of my clothes."

She eyes her Bursterfly again, oscillating with color as it picks up on the energy being put off by the berries. Lucy extracts one of the berries with a pair of tweezers, eyeing it.

"You sound like you're a lot more familiar with magic than I am, though. What do you make of these?"

[emet_sulk]

[ He glances at the berry. It doesn't really reveal much more than it did the first time he looked at one. ]

'Tis overflowing with aether - or I suppose Bios, as they call it here. Whether 'tis an innate property or a side effect, I don't know. I imagine if something could be made to counteract it then it may remove these effects from us.

[ Maybe a sort of 'wavelength' of bios that cancels the hexberry out. Or a cure to neutralise this particular, volatile bios. ]

[lunardreaming]

"That's what I've been thinking," Lucy agrees, turning the berry from side to side. The color is kind of eye-rending, but it's not... like, glowing or anything. Whatever magic it's putting off, she can't see it. "I can measure the frequency these things are putting out, but it's changing all the time, and I wouldn't even know how to broadcast the opposite frequency to try cancel it out."

Maybe it all comes down to Bios.

[emet_sulk]

[ He shrugs and offers airily: ]

If only one could Synthesise with a berry.

[ --But since that's obviously not possible(?), Emet-Selch waves off his own suggestion and gives the matter some deeper thought. ]

It may be ever-changing but is the change itself regular?

[lunardreaming]

"I'm... not sure I'd want to, even if it was possible," Lucy says dubiously. "Sounds like a great way to explode your brain via non-compatibility or something."

His question makes her frown thoughtfully, and flick her gaze over to her Bursterfly. Its lights are changing colors with every new frequency, and...

"Looks like it is, yeah." The color change is steady, like a pulse. "I don't know which of those frequencies is making me shed glitter-- or which of them is making you change color." She pauses, and an amused little smirk touches her expression, casting a glance at Emet-Selch. "You up for eating another one in the name of science?"

apologies for wait ;;

[emet_sulk]

"Why would I do something as foolish as that?" he asks in exasperation. "That would add another factor and make it even more difficult to cure. Or worse: extend the effects."

Also, he doesn't want to shed glitter. No thanks! That would be a nightmare to clean.

[lunardreaming]

[ Yeah, Lucy didn't think he'd go for that. Lucy's not sure she wants to go for that either, since really, it would only identify one frequency. ]

Okay, 'scrolling through all possible frequencies picked up so far' it is, then.

[ Luckily, she's been keeping a log of the frequencies the berry has been putting off so far, and it's relatively easy to have her Bursterfly start outputting the opposite, a sonorous hum that raises and falls in pitch, changing tone every ten seconds or so. ]

Now we wait and see which of these makes your hair stop looking like a nightclub.

[emet_sulk]

[ It surprises him how quickly her little insect manages to reflect the berry's output. How long had she been recording? Would it be enough to counter his ever-changing hair?

He can do little but wait. At first, there's no change. But at some point one of the wavelengths matches a pattern emitted when his hair is about to change its colour again and it abruptly turns back to its proper white. Not ten seconds later, it shifts to another neon colour.

Emet-Selch, having created a small, handheld mirror to observe his own hair in this time, let's out an 'Aha!'. ]

It worked! Briefly, but the theory seems to be sound.

[lunardreaming]

[ Lucy briefly looks victorious, and changes the audio channel back to the one that canceled out the effect on Emet-Selch's hair and eyes. There; he's back to normal now. At least for now. ]

The problem is, I can't follow you around with this until the berry effect wears off. Maybe if I just do this for long enough, it'll... work like an antibiotic.

[emet_sulk]

More's the pity. Since it was a food, I would imagine the effect will fade after it has passed through completely.

[ It doesn't really solve the problem but it's a step towards it. Maybe? ]

What of yourself? [ A vague gesture at her glittery state. ] That cannot be comfortable.

[lunardreaming]

Mmm, you've got a point. Unless the food triggers some kind of permanent magical effect, but that's... hopefully not the case? I don't know.

[ She tinkers with the Bursterfly's settings until it puts out two different frequencies at once, an overlaid hum. The next time she moves her hand, it's decidedly glitter free. Thank fuck. ]

Now I just have to hope the glitter fades too, otherwise the carpet cleaners here are going to kill me.

[emet_sulk]

I'm sure they've developed ways to efficiently clean this...glitter.

[ He watches the Bursterfly for a short while, frowning thoughtfully. ]

That thing is more useful than I first thought. I wonder if he'll be able to make full use of it...

[ Probably not at first. But then, Rhea'li always manages to surprise him somehow. ]