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Who: Faris & open
Status: Open
Where: The places where MANTA quests are happening!
What: Faris and you taking on MANTA board quests.
Warnings: None so far.

Model at your own risk

[Faris has a serious sense of deja vu about this one... ugh. The ones that go over multiple months are always the most bothersome, aren't they? He just hopes that this one doesn't involve some creepy guy trying to resurrect a wife and creating succubi instead.]

Ahoy there! Artist bloke! [Faris looks around, a hand on the hilt of his sword, but there's nothing jumping out as a threat. Just a lot of art supplies scattered about.] Can't tell if this is from a struggle or just the normal state of things 'round here.

[And just as he leans forward towards one of the paintings--SWOOSH. In he goes!]

Celestial Navigation

[Faris looks up at the darkening sky, watching the stars wink on to replace the sunset.]

'Tis a funny thing. I've seen the sky change before, but not like this. [He looks down at his parchment, where he's already recorded what he knows of the old sky from memory.] Ever do this before?

Begrudged

[Faris does not often answer the bounties on creatures, and in fact, he's coming to the conviction that he'd like to do something about the ones that are out to hunt down hides and shells solely for profit.

But some are justified. This sounds to be one of those... but as Faris watches the tonberry, he frowns.]

This beast is meant to be dangerous? It's moving like a snail--a snail filled with molasses.

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[ Sherlock has been investigating the missing people related to this artist, but so far he hasn't made any major progress beyond the artist being a definite suspect. He has an idea where the people might have disappeared even if he doesn't understand the magic behind it. However, where are the missing people now? How can he rescue them? (Is their anyone alive to rescue?)

Those are his thoughts when he returns to pour over the crime scene and hears someone in the home studio. ]

Wait!

[ He rushes into the studio in hopes of helping the painting's newest victim when he's pulled in as well. The world around him changes to something unreal. It's as if he's fallen into one of those wax museums, which is better than another world he's been pulled into before. Sherlock is simply glad that this place appears to lack giant swinging axes. He doesn't immediately see anyone else. ]

Hullo? Is anyone else here?

[Faris grabs his head, blinking hard at the sights around him. The place is so vibrant and so full of shapes and lines... it's too real to be real.

But he looks up sharply when he hears another human voice. Who is that? Faris doesn't recognize him, but he looks like a real man, not a painted one.]

I am. [Faris looks down at the brightly colored path and up to see just what kind of painting they're in. Looks like a pastoral scene. But he doesn't trust it.] You got yanked in too?

[ Ah, the man he saw get pulled in. Good, that makes things marginally easier. ]

Yes, I saw you get taken by the painting.

[ This pastoral scene is something he could find in a museum, and it's unnerving to see the golden blades of grass formed of thick paint strokes bend by an absent gentle wind. The air is still, but the grass is stuck in the illusion of motion. ]

All my investigations showed that the victims and paintings are linked, and this only proves it.

[ Sherlock looks behind him, but he doesn't see the artist's gallery. It's only more of this pastoral scene. Damn. Then how do they leave this place? ]

[Hmph. Faris doesn't think he approves of someone going in after him. Although it's better than someone picking the thing up and taking it off somewhere else or cutting it up; no telling what would happen then. Maybe he just doesn't like being called a victim of something, even if he technically is.]

You've managed to test your theory out on yourself. [Faris also looks over the man's shoulder. Looks like more hyperverdant nature, but just to test it out, he strides back in that direction.

The strides take him beyond the point where the boundary of the canvas was, he's certain, and he stops.]

Not a frame or a fray in sight... but if there's a way in there's a way out. Let's start by seeing if we can find someone else who got pulled in.

[[ ooc: Sorry for the delay. I went out of town and am still playing catch up. ]]

[ Similarly, Sherlock doesn't approve of himself being caught in the trap set out by the artist. (Or it seems fitting to call it a trap) Nothing to do for it now, however. ]

We should encounter someone. For all my search, I could not find evidence of violence in the gallery, so all the missing people should be in the paintings.

[ Unless being here for any length of time causes them to disappear further like a cube of sugar in coffee. Sherlock sets off in a direction that seems to lead to some kind of building. It's hard to tell at this painterly distance. ]

How familiar are you with magic?

[ooc: no worries!]

...That's true. [Now that he mentions it, Faris doesn't remember seeing any blood, or hell, anything even knocked about.] I'd have thought to see some paint tipped over at least if someone was trying to fight against getting dragged in. It must have surprised them just as much as it did us.

Magic's commonplace where I'm from. I can use it myself. [Albeit he can't just swap around what kind he uses by putting on a different set of clothes anymore.] What about yourself?

[ By violence, Sherlock mostly means blood or other bodily fluids. No smells to suggest someone buried in the walls or under the floor as a means to hide the bodies. Sherlock frowns as he catches himself assuming that the aim of the artist was to cause grave harm. He needs to keep an open mind, not guess. In a twisted moral sense, the artist could have meant well despite unwilling victims. He doesn't have the evidence to really say. ]

Magic is not at all common. It is reserved mostly for those doing tricks involving misdirection and slight of hand.

[ And cultist leaders trying to awaken Old Ones from the Abyss.... Sherlock still wars with what was real. Every answer points to damning implications and his own insanity. ]

Have you seen anything like this before?

[What? How do you have a world where magic isn't common? Faris is about to ask how they light fires, keep their water clean, deal with wounds--everything--but the next question reminds him that they have more pressing matters than interrogating each other on their worlds.]

I've seen illusions, false images laid over a castle to hide the way in and make it appear as something other than it was. [The image of a normal castle laid over a hideous construction made of bones and flesh, specifically... but also the invisible paths through the Interdimensional Rift, and the Siren's projection of Papa, not to mention some spells Faris had used himself.] There's ways to break such things... let's look for something that's out of place.

[He holds his hands out in front of them, turning them back and forth. They still look like real hands, not a painting.]

Things that look like they haven't been painted.

[ Sherlock looks at his own hands when the other man does. They are still flesh and bone, and to Sherlock's relief, they are not trembling. It helps that this world looks so different than that other world Sherlock had found himself trapped in at times. ]

Even if that isn't a way out of here, it could lead us to where some of the kidnapped are.

[ As they continue walking, that suggestion of a building in the distance starts to render into something better resembling a building made of paint strokes. ]

Considering we are now stuck in this together, I might has well introduce myself. I'm Sherlock Holmes.

Faris Scherwiz.

[It's not like Faris to be glad that he's in trouble together with someone he doesn't know well, but after the misadventure with Garuda last month, he finds it reassuring that he's not the only person in this mess. It'll be harder to die that way. And it'll be harder for Sherlock to die, too.

His adventures with Lenna, Bartz, and the Baldesions hadn't started with him knowing them at all, either.]

You say your folk don't use much magic. How about fighting? [Faris frowns at the building as it starts to come into focus. Rather, it comes into focus the way something an impressionist painting does, clear at a distance, abstract up close.] It's strange to me walking through a wilderness without monsters leaping out to attack.

I've my pistol with me, and I am a fair shot.

[ He also does a lot of property damage and tactical dodge rolls in a battle. Hopefully, his decline in health won't hamper him too much. As it is, Sherlock is more concerned with how this scenery will allow them to move should action be required. Would it be possible to reach that building in the distance before actually walking there because the world changed perspective? Could they run into something when trying to escape? What are the rules of this place? ]

Most people in my time and place do not have to worry about monsters jumping out from the wilderness. Man does enough of that their own, and those are who I deal with.

[ ... and a cult worshiping the coming of some eldritch being sleeping beneath the depths. However, that is not his usual adversary and a one time incident. He hopes. ]

Mankind's pretty creative about making trouble for itself, isn't it.

[Between the war fifty years ago that near wiped out the wind drakes and then the crystal machines that threatened the actual ability of life to live on the planet... even if the idea of a full-scale war now is pretty damn unlikely, there's plenty of other manmade mischief that gets almost as bad.

You know, like piracy.]

...what d'you think would happen if you fired off a shot into the sky right now?

Quite.

[ The actions of man are bad enough even without considering wars, but those innocent are still swept up into the evils all the same. To what end? ]

There is but one way to find out.

[ Sherlock aims upward and at an angle back the way they came to reduce any chance of the bullet injuring anyone as it fell from the sky. The shot goes off like normal. However, soon the suggestion of a bullet shot is "painted" in the air. There's no puncture in the canvas. The bullet trajectory has become part of the scenery.

He didn't expect that. ]

I wonder what became of the bullet...

[Faris has been here long enough to become familiar with handheld firearms, but he'd be lying if he said that being able to keep a tiny cannon on your belt didn't still impress him. He watches the bullet--hard though that is given its speed--but then it becomes easier. There's just a hint in the trail in the paintstrokes of the sky.]

I don't particularly like that. [...] If the bullet's become part of the painting, imagine what's going to happen to us if we spend too long a time figuring this out.

This does not bode well for the other people lost to this world.

[ If they come across people, they may not be a part of the painting originally. The matter then concerns how to reverse the process... or tell of their sad fates. Sherlock shakes his head. ]

We can move more quickly and still watch for traps.

[ He starts to move quicker towards the building in the distance. That's the main landmark they have in this scene. It's still the best hope to finding evidence someone besides them. (That doesn't solve how to leave the painting, however....) ]

[ Being a relatively new arrival, Sumina likely isn't quite as familiar with the skies here, but what she lacks in familiarity, she does her best to make up for with diligence. Sumina has several star charts rolled up in her arms, which she's starting to roll out for reference. She's certainly looked at many star charts in her life because of her work, though she's never had the honor of actually helping amend them before. This is so exciting...! ]

No, never! I'm a bit familiar with reading these sorts of maps, but being responsible for documenting such changes is certainly a novel experience for me! How about you, sir?

Changes? Only about the once. [That was when Exdeath had jammed two planets back together--taking one right out of the night sky of the other.] But it was an important job. Suddenly there were a lot more points of light.

What was your line of work that you know your way around maps?

[ Without missing a beat: ]

Innkeeping.

[ ...Which she realizes might not explain quite how she can read these particular kinds of maps, but: ]

Ah! Of the, ah, magical sort, specifically. We receive otherworldly travelers, so these kinds of maps can be quite useful for those who like to be a bit bold and go from one sky to another. That sort of thing.

Do you, now? [Faris looks away from the sky in interest. He's not heard of any place where interworld voyagers are so routine that they're common at inns.] So I suppose getting whisked off to another world is old hat to you, eh?

Well... In a sense. I rarely stepped outside of the inn unless it was on business or errands, to be quite honest...

[ It's a lot of work to run an inn! And she's a certified workaholic, besides. ]

Oh? Why's that?

[Come to think of it, Faris doesn't remember seeing the various innkeepers he grew to know over a year of sailing and flying 'round the world outside their establishments, either.

Which, given the state they were often in and the stuff they tracked across the floor... maybe not surprising.]

Adventurers kept you hopping, did they?

[ Yeah... he's got the right of it... ]

Precisely that. Even back then, there was never a dull moment in my life. So many rooms to clean, meals to prepare, people to send off on their continuing adventures, but...

[ She lifts a hand and gestures up at the night sky. ]

Seems it might be my turn for such adventures now, somehow.

Might even say as you're overdue for some.

[Maybe it's the pink hair, maybe it's a sense of lingering obligation to all those innkeepers who had to deal with four tired, cranky, muddy, bloody Light Warriors dragging themselves into their inns at all hours... Faris finds himself feeling a little worried about an innkeeper getting dropped into a world of piracy and seafaring.

He looks up at the sky, tracing the shapes in the stars.]

Any shapes jumping out to you yet up there?

[ She offers a bit of a withering laugh at his remark; she's never been one to seek out adventure, herself, unlike the rest of her family, but it seems the powers that be have different imaginations for her.

In any case, at his prompting, Sumina falls into a contemplative silence, focusing her own starlit eyes above. Before overlong, she points up to a grouping of stars. ]

That, right there... [ she tries to trace the shape with her finger, in an attempt to show him just where she means. ] Perhaps that could make the shape of a key...?

[ she's still thinking about work... ]

[Faris gives her a glance at that laugh, raising his eyebrows. Maybe it's because of the manner in which adventure has been chosen for her? Faris had decided to join the other Light Warriors in their quest to save the crystals and the world. Not for the reasons those crystals would have had him join, but it had been his own decision nonetheless.

But Faris has never been one to ask after the confusing feelings of others--at least, not to start with. So he waits for the silence to break as he too returns to the stars.]

A key? [He follows the line she traces. Yes, the line, the teeth at the top... he can see it.] Could be.

[His eyes search the sky nearby. A few lines of stars, almost boxlike.]

And that could draw out the treasure chest it fits.

[ Sumina dutifully searches for those selfsame stars, seeing before long the grouping of brighter stars that does quite resemble a box! ]

Aha! There?

[ She points, just to make sure they're looking at the same stars. ]

Spoken like a true adventurer! Always on the lookout for treasure, hm?

[ Playfully! ]

Of course. You never know when you'll find something that will come in handy, even among the stars.

Helps to bribe the innkeepers when you're tracking blood into their carpets, too.

Ah, that's right...

[ Her eyes narrow at him suspiciously... sounds like that was spoken from experience, sir!! An experience she's all too familiar with, herself. ]

The best bribe you can give an innkeeper in that situation is to clean the mess up yourself.

[ Nimona may have just let the sea slugs live when they were asked to collect slime. They seemed harmless enough at the time, and more useful left alive. Only felt right to come take care of this now that it's become a problem.

She heads out to the beach, stretching along the way, only to see someone else out there. ]

You here to get all slimy fighting this thing, too?

[Faris looks over. Ah, Nimona. Little miss dragon friend.]

It seems so. [He cracks his knuckles, rolls out his neck, and checks his weapons. So far the giant slug hasn't noticed them, but it's only a matter of time--brief time, at that.] Don't suppose you've got any tips? Looks like he's gonna be a tough old bugger.

[ That's her! And they sure will get slimy if Nimona has anything to say about it. ]

Don't slip in the slime trail? Make it vibrate so much it just explodes? I don't know, never fought walking flan before.

[ A pause. ]

Oo oo oo! [ She sounds like a gorilla. ] Overbake it with fire? Maybe it'll get all hard and then we can hit it.

[Faris chuckles at the gorillish sound Nimona makes. He's heard of imitating bird calls as a signal, but monkey is a new one. ~~shush he never learned primate taxonomy~~]

Fire, eh? [Faris didn't bond as well with the Black Mage and the other ancient warriors who could shoot straight fire, but he's got a few ways to compensate for that.

The kaiju slug has ponderously turned its head, and the many slugs that make up its eyestalks are now focusing on the two of them. Faris dives into his pockets, pulling out a pouch of gunpowder.] Ever shot off a cannon before, lass?

[ Nimona could make any animal noise she wants, but they could save that for when they aren't about to go up against a large flan.

She had been about to fire up her extra special ability, right up until Faris shows off gunpowder and talks about shooting cannons. Then an excited light enters her eyes. ]

Nope, but we're in the land of Corsairs and Paladins - seems like a good time to get started.

Right.

[Faris grins and makes a gesture with his hand. One minute, there wasn't a cannon sitting on the sand, and now there is. It's not big, not more than eighteen inches long, but it gets the job done.

The slug kaiju is still bearing down on them, but Faris doesn't appear to be in any kind of hurry as he hands Nimona the powder. From his coat he produces a miniature rammer.]

Powder down into the barrel, ram it down with this. Then, [like a conjurer pulling a rabbit from a hat, he pulls out a glowing linstock] touch this to the vent-hole.

[ Nimona's eyes glitter in excitement when a cannon appears. It might be smaller than average, but it's still a cannon and she's being given permission to fire it.

She takes the powder and pours down the barrel before taking rammer. Perhaps Nimona's expression is a little too diabolic, but how often does a person allow her to play with the stuff that explodes?!

Her tongue sticks out while she takes aim with the cannon before even thinking about taking the linstock. ]

Kraken off the bow! Take aim, you scallywags! [ She points the linstock at the flan, then lights that cannon up. The attack is dead-on and turns a portion of the jiggling creature into charcoal. ]

Reload the cannons!

[A diabolic expression is the right expression. Otherwise what would be the point?

He chuckles at Nimona's nautical banter and covers his ears as the little cannon goes BOOM. The attack looks delightfully effective--the charred-up bits ooze and tumble off the rest of the slug. Of course, now that it's been hurt, it's mad, and it starts putting on a higher turn of speed to reach them.

Faster than Faris had expected. Oh well. He sponges the cannon out and then loads it up with another charge.]

Ready to fire! Give 'er the jaws of hell!

[ Now she's going to want to play with cannons all the time, and her dad might not let her.

While Faris covers his ears, Nimona lets the BOOM ring in her ears - it's not really going to harm her anyway. She doesn't cower back at making the giant jiggling flan angry and now heading their way. ]

A little to the left, calculate in the wind speed... [ Muttering to herself as she realigns the cannon for a more deadly shot.

Then she straightens and points at the flan. ]

Heed my words, you overgrown bowl of Jello! Turn back now and no one has to get hurt. [ crickets ] How dare you insult those of us who have bones! I, the Great Pink Dragon Captain Nimona, will strike you down today!

Light the cannons! [ She's the one lighting it. ] Go back to the bowels of the earth! [ Then gently nudges Faris with her elbow. ] Get it... bowels, because Jello is edible?

[Jill takes up hunting when she's in need of doubloons and this is one of those occasions. She also doesn't hesitate to take on those that are causing trouble in the area. However, she didn't expect to see the familiar face of a Tonberry, or at least its seafaring cousin, staring right back at her. But at least she knows the true secret of dealing with these creatures:]

Mind the knife. It's not as slow as the rest of it.

[The creature turns its attention onto her and begins stepping unhurriedly towards her. She still backs up, holding an arm out in front of Faris.]

One would be foolish to think slowness meant less lethality.

Edited 2024-06-09 17:27 (UTC)

[Faris decides to take the cue from Jill and backs up alongside her.

Now that he sees the glint across the knife's edge, the way the light plays over its robe from the swinging lantern... hell. He has seen this before, in the one cavern beneath the waterfalls.]

...Aye, you're right there. I think I do recall something like these from home. And they weren't easy to stop once they got started.

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Model at your own risk

sorry for late/ty for patience! traveling slowness

No worries! Tag at your pace

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celestial navigation

ty for patience!! was on a trip

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wildcard - Kaiju

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» begrudged

so I misremembered whether or not tonberries were in ffv (reader, it was their debut)