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Tangling with a Tortoise

Scene details

Setting: Our heroes open negotiations with their erstwhile foe: an especially surly giant tortoise that lives a little ways down the coast. Should they succeed, they may acquire an ally and beast of burden effective in their efforts to traverse the inland deserts of the cactus forest. Should they fail... rock to the face.

Log


 An orange glow suffuses the sands as the sun sets over the coastline of the Isle of Blessed Winds, pink and purple streaking the horizon. The light of the golden hour falls upon the charred coals of the party's bonfire earlier that day and, further down the shore, some of our heroes may be spotted advancing -- gradually.
 "Ugghhh."
 Ivo, wincing, clutches at his stomach, more shambling than walking, his eyes glazed. Thanks to their alchemical wherewithal, his Poison status effect has been cured, but it seems that not all of the consequences of consuming Destruction-tainted megamarmot meat can be entirely avoided.
 "You sick?" A tall and statuesque tigress-eared woman clad in a leather harness now scoured by seawater glances down at him as she strides by his side. "Want to stay in camp and rest?"
 "I... I'm fine," the Cosmopolitan groans unconvincingly. "I... I wouldn't miss these... negotiations for the world. Ooogghh."
 "Like I said, animals and I, we understand each other," the barbarian woman notes. "But it's not like we have a... conversation. You know? I can figure out how the tortoise feels or what it wants, generally."
 "Sure," Ivo manages. "A more intuitive process than conceptual, yes?"
 "Okay," Zuna replies, clearly not interested in the meaning of this fine distinction. "Want me to carry you?"
 "I... I'm fine."
 The party members not remaining in camp proceed toward the array of large boulders where Reize's nemesis, the surly giant tortoise, was last encountered, in hopes of acquiring a beast of burden for their upcoming venture into the desert of the cactus forest. At least, thanks to Ruidosa's hunting prowess, they seem to have acquired one beast-like ally already.

> Zuna, Catgirl Barbarian, has joined the party as a guest.

 "H-how is Flechette?" Ivo forces out, before doubling over.
 "Fixing her dress with some of that fabric you found," Zuna replies, "and fine. She didn't have any of that meat. She had fish."
 "Oh? What fish?"
 Zuna blinks, hesitates, and slowly looks away as she walks.

Ruidosa is grouchy about her crabfish catch, but still, thusly, is following along for Tortoise negotiation. "I already tried to speak to it but it doesn't speak bat." she says as she huffs and crosses her arms. She strides along, carrying her book in her arms and she huffs.

She then says. "I hope you can figure it out. Maybe it speaks in carrots and sticks." she shrugs.


  "Ugh.. my stomach hurts."

 Reize whines as he continues to walk along with Ivo and Zuna. Luckily, Reize remembered to take the alchemical wherewithal, himself. This helped out with curing the Poison status that once haunted both Pro- and Bro-tagonist. Perhaps eating the Destruction-tainted meat was not the best idea. He seasoned it as much as he could in hopes that would fix everything.

 After a few moments of walking, he starts to regain a sense of cheerfulness. They get to see a good friend.

  Further down the path within shore, past a few boulders, lies a creature that is as large as one of the smaller boulders and slightly shorter than the young boy at a 150cm height. The tortoise is relaxing, burying its face against the sand. However, it lifts an eye open and tilts his head to see a group of people approaching it.

 "Oooi!" Reize calls out to the tortoise. "Remember m---"

 *PLINK!*

  A rock greets Reize right in the head and he drops to the ground with a thud.

 The tortoise, after spitting out the rock, gives an annoyed look.
 


 "Reeeeeeize!" Ivo shouts from behind Zuna as their fearless leader is felled, the brotagonist shielded by her brawny body in what is surely a coincidence of positioning. The barbarian, for her part, does not even blink as Reize drops, keeping her cat eyes on the enormous shelled reptile. The irritated tortoise shifts its own smoldering gaze to her.
 There follows a tense silence.
 "Stay out of this," Zuna quietly remarks.
 "Hm?" Ivo, just sick, not cowering, glances up curiously. "Wh--"

> BGM Change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7gm_r8hXoU

 The tortoise belches a small boulder that rockets toward Zuna in the mere blink of an eye. Fortunately, Zuna has not been blinking. She catches the rock midflight, lowering her stance to brace, skidding back along the sand from the impact but unflinching.
 "Gaahh!"
 Ivo, of course, standing behind her, is promptly buttslammed out of the way and sent collapsing to the sand by Reize's side, which Zuna does not appear to notice. Already, the tortoise is preparing another projectile, which it fires at Zuna again. With primal swiftness, she brings the first boulder in her hands down in a hammerblow, smashing the second boulder to dust, then breaking into a sprint.
 "Hrrrraaaahh!" she roars, twisting and returning fire by hurling the heavy rock like a discus at the tortoise's head. It withdraws with startling speed for such a creature, such that the rock bounces off of its unyielding shell without even leaving a mark. But either this was Zuna's intention or she is supremely adaptable. She jumps, briefly alighting on her own reflected projectile, and then kicks off of it to land behind the tortoise. As its head peeks out, one can almost see the little question mark pop over it. But by the time it senses any danger, Zuna has grasped its rear legs and, with a ferocious straining, flipped the tortoise over.
 Stillness falls again.
 Finally, slowly but surely, the giant tortoise begins to rock back and forth, and after about fifteen seconds or so, it is able to flip itself upright again.
 "It's ready to negotiate," Zuna claims. "Guys?"
 "..."

> Ivo is incapacitated.

"Reize, maybe you shoul---"

> Reize is incapacitated.

"Ivo, maybe we should help--"

> Ivo is incapacitated.

"Oh brother." says Ruidosa as she rolls her eyes.

Zuna, does her thing where she flips the tortoise and watches it flip back up.

"I think everyone got bouldered over. Ha...!"

Then the beast spits out a rock at her. She falls down like a brick being smacked in the chest for the pun.5R5R> Ruidosa La Crima is incapacitated.

  • Character: Iris
  • 10 months, 2 weeks ago


 MEANWHILE:

 It's been a productive day of gathering a specific kind of seashell which, when ground up into a powder, makes an ink that's conducive to water-elemental rune inscriptions. Honestly, when she encountered them after her own shipwreck (well, 'shipwreck'), Iris was pretty pleased to discover them. Not what she came here for, but a nice bonus.

 This is why, as Zuna is preparing to sumo a tortoise and both Reize and Ivo have been bitched out by Kame-Sennin 2.0's Rock Throw technique, the prism-haired smith is vaguely visible walking along the beach in the near distance, scak of shells hauled over her back, whistling some completely unidentifiable tune.

 FUN FACT 1: The distance is not as far as you might think
 FUN FACT 2: This is why the rebound of Zuna's deflected boulder throw suddenly whistles instantly past her eyes and into the undergrowth with a loud crashing sound.

 Turning, Iris blinks as Zuna engages the tortoise, Ruidosa looks on in something approximating incredible exhaustion, and Reize and Ivo lie there shaking off impending concussions.

 What to do in this situation, would be the question a normal person would be asking.

 "Well, good to see you got that meat out of your system," a cheerful Iris says, stepping over Ivo's unconscious body gingerly.


  The tortoise wanted to drive the nuisances away, so a few pelts to their heads would drive them away and make them think twice about approaching it again.

 The first nuisance drops. Serves that annoyance right.

 The other one is very durable and tough. The tortoise keeps spitting the rocks out, determined to dismiss the intruders. However, it is quite surprised at the tenacity of the larger catgirl as she adapts to its movements. Once the rock is tossed its way, it held in its shell. Emerging its head out, it soon fell for the threat.

 Eyes widen as the rear legs are held, it is flipped onto its back. It rocks back and forth, struggling. Then, it plops itself back upright.

 'Fine, you win.'

 And of course, Ruidosa got a rock out of the pun. An angry crosshair would appear over the tortoise's head.

 In turn, hearing the cheerful Iris's comment, the boy raises a hand to give a thumbs up. Then his eyes roll to the back of his head as the hand drops down.

> Reize is incapacitated.


 This would lead to a bit of time passing until the incapacitated trio can recover and have negotations with the tortoise.
 


 "If the guest character is still conscious, it's not a wipe."
  - Ivo Galvan's Words of Wisdom

 "Guys? ...Hmm."
 The screen briefly fades to black. NOW LOADING appears in the corner, with a small pixel animation of Zuna gesturing at the tortoise, whose head rhythmically bounces up and down, and Iris making whatever she can of this interaction.

> Incapacitated party members have recovered with 1 LF.

 "Mmm, so, it's something like this."
 Zuna is drawing something in some damp coastal sand with her foot as she speaks to her recovering allies.
 "He'll come with us and carry our stuff if we can beat this enemy of his nearby. Seems like he holds a grudge and doesn't want to leave this place until it's dealt with. Something like... this."
 The barbarian has many skills, but representative art is not one of them. The outline in the sand is vaguely humanoid, but jagged, as though some it were some sort of violently wavering phantom. There is not a lot of detail to go on.
 "I see," Ivo manages, now contending with stomache ache and headache alike. "How... avant garde."
 "Okay," Zuna says again, not interested in what that means either. "It's over that a way, a bit inland. Want me to carry you?"
 "I... I'm fine, really," Ivo demurs, and seeming eager to change the subject, he looks over to Iris, trying to brighten. "Find anything interesting while exploring, Iris?"
 "Want me to carry *you*?" Zuna is asking Reize, not seeming to be reflecting on the fact that she has carried him before, specifically when kidnapping him.

Ruidosa La Crima wheezes as she coughs and restores with 1 HP.

She eats POISIONED MARMOT MEAT.

Darkness infused meat empowers her. Ruidosa regains some HP!

Ruidosa sighs. "Guess we're fighting some ridiculous phantom or jagged humanoid." she says with a ''sigh''.

"Great. Awesome."

"I want to do this." she says lethargically.

  • Character: Iris
  • 10 months, 2 weeks ago


 How can you not be entertained watching this? As it is, Iris is sitting a bit off to the side, having rolled down the side of the bag she was carrying so that the shells she collected are sitting on the bottom of it but the cloth is spread out a bit around them. With an idle motion, she extends a hand out perpendicular to the ground and traces a rune in the air, which glitters before becoming, of all things, a warhammer, which she grasps with the extended hand before testing its weight a bit and nodding.

 "So to be clear, you're going to bargain with a turtle who just brained you with a rock to carry your stuff across the--" She pauses, mid-sentence, lining up her arm and then bringing it down on one of the shells with a loud *WHAM*, reducing it to dust, before turning to look back at Zuna. "--desert bit? What kinda stuff are you--" *WHAM* "--carrying, anyway? Seems like a lotta hassle to--" *WHAM* "--me."


  The tortoise bobs its head up and down, as if nodding at Zuna's comment.

 "... An enemy of his?" Reize steps in closer towards Zuna, albeit still wary considering that she did kidnap him at one point. Reize eyes the drawing that Zuna made, studying the vaguely humanoid looking creature.

 "Uhhh..." He hangs his head low, then he glances at Ruidosa. "Well, this shouldn't be too out of the ordinary for us! We've face more threatening beings before!" He offers Ruidosa a comforting smile. Of course, he takes the moment to rub his head.

 "We should be able to find our way...." When Zuna makes an offer to Reize, the boy's eyes widen. His antenna hair droops down and his eyes become thin saucers. His mind reflects back to when the glass shattered, he was hoisted up and carried off. And then his mind wanders to the sea, the shaking sea where everything turned for the worst.

 "...N-no. I am alright. I can walk myself." And maybe walk off the remnants of the marmot meat.

 Iris's question earns a chirp. "That's right! We need all the help that we can get on getting the supplies in order to fix the Romancing SaGa. At the very least, the tortoise isn't a demon..." He looks back, albeit nervously, "...Just grouchy."
 


 As Ivo observes Iris's manifested runic weapon and improvized pestling alike with interest, he reaches into a rough and unadorned satchel of freshly tanned megamarmot hide and withdraws, of all things, a coconut. It appears to be corked with some sort of waxy substance which he peels away, lifting the fruit and pouring the water into his mouth some small distance from his lips.
 "Ahh... whew."

> The Healing Coconut has restored some of Ivo's vitality.

 "Want some, chief?"
 As Ivo offers some of the apparently restorative item to Reize, Zuna nods affirmatively to Ruidosa.
 "That's the spirit," she says. Animal Communication is one of her skills. Detecting Subtext is not. "I'll lead the way." She looks over to Iris, who seems to have already opened the Crafting Window. "Want me to carry you while you do that?"
 "Would that even work?" Ivo murmurs.
 "I can carry the shells at the same time, too. I'll just brace myself every time she hits them with her hammer."
 "You have a very specific set of talents, don't you?"
 Zuna, smiling for the first time, nods.

> BGM Change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQHMy3J1ZsY

 The Isle of Blessed Winds' myriad biomes never cease to amaze. It is not long until the giant boulders that litter the sands of the coastline, the products of primordial volcanic activity, are left behind along with the tracks they leave in the sand. Coconut trees and palm fronds sway in the breeze as small marmots duck amidst iceplant that lines the dunes and little lizards scamper beneath sun-warmed rocks. As the sea breeze fades, the effective temperature begins to rise, but so too do large cacti, saguaro and agave and prickly pear, begin to dot the landscape and offer shade. It helps that their pace is slow, as well, since it seems that the giant tortoise has elected to accompany them in their face-off against his rival, and he only goes so quickly.
 "Although we still lack any proper alchemical facilities," Ivo is saying to Iris in a lively tone, the prospect of exposition seeming to restore his morale, "one of our companions is a skilled alchemist and her partner is a homunculus who functions as a walking distillery. She helped us to produce this restorative item just from what we've been able to acquire so far." He gestures as the Healing Coconut. "If you're seeking to distill concentrated aether, we could surely assist. And I'd love to know more about this weapon of yours..."
 At least he doesn't have to worry about catching his breath, considering how slowly they're walking. They'll reach their destination soon, probably, eventually.