Seaside

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

At Raheeda's arrival, Harley breathes a huge sigh of relief. He calls out after the fleeing man "Yeah, and stay away!"

Then his own adrenaline begins to ebb and he rubs his shoulder, breathing heavily. "That's gonna leave a bruise." His head is also starting to throb from slamming into the first sailor, but he can't really- oh yeah, the first sailor. Harley turns back to him, trying to see if he's unconscious or not.

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

That man is is still awake and is struggling to get up from the ground. Bleeding profoundly from his nose.
Yet he looks at them with absolute fear. His struggles more than a little desperate.

"Don't run away! We- we come in peace!" Raheeda tries to insist but her words fall on deaf ears once more. These two acting like scared animals. "Man, this sucks!"

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

Harley gives Raheeda a sidelong glance. "They shot at us, remember? Don't we want them to run away?" he says, sounding a little confused. "I mean we do come in peace I guess. Yeah."

He looks around, trying to locate his dropped spear and finding it sticking out of a log. "There you are," he mutters, pulling it out with a light thunk sound. He looks at it for a moment, then suddenly staggers, reaching a hand up to his mask. "Really shouldn't have headbutted that guy."

[Hraithre]

[Empty beach - some distance away from Deep Harbour and the Drunk Dog tavern]

After a brisk walk through streets of Inside and quick stop by Knight & Bishop pawnshop, Hoshiki Senshi takes TASbot through his smuggler's mirror and to what he presumes to be a small Seaside island. He wouldn't really know, he's only been here once, briefly, and didn't walk around all that much.

In search of a good training spot, they quickly leave the harbour town behind. When coming upon a reasonably flat rocky beach that stretches for a hundred meters or so before them, Hoshiki stops. "What do you think?" The beach is currently empty of other human life, though not of signs of it. There's some trash scattered among the rocks and what migh be remains of an abandoned fishing boat washed ashore A flock of gulls are eyeing the pair warily from a nearby cliffside.

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

Harley gives Raheeda a sidelong glance. "They shot at us, remember? Don't we want them to run away?" he says, sounding a little confused. "I mean we do come in peace I guess. Yeah."

He looks around, trying to locate his dropped spear and finding it sticking out of a log. "There you are," he mutters, pulling it out with a light thunk sound. He looks at it for a moment, then suddenly staggers, reaching a hand up to his mask. "Really shouldn't have headbutted that guy."

Jungle

"But it was a misunderstanding! Wouldn't it be better if we worked things out and get to know what's going on here?" Raheeda could easily follow the fleeing men but she seems reluctant to. "Since I got no idea what's up with these guys!"

She puts a hand on his shoulder as he staggers. Handing some support. "You okay, dude?"

It should be noted that not far from where the two sailors were standing is a wooden door which must lead into the structure they were standing on before they were fired upon.
Also, the two left behind more than just their weapons. There's a spyglass and what appears to be a sewing kit with torn clothes and rags laying scattered around it. The tiny amount of blood on the ground suggests that the needle was used for more than just repairing clothes however.

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

Harley leans against Raheeda for support, his breath sharp and ragged. "Yeah, just need some rest," he mutters. After a moment he follows up with "You're right of course. Damn. I was just trying to stop them attacking us, but they're just scared, and between them and you I'm adding a lot of time." He sighs, and looks at the wooden structure, waving vaguely towards it.

"At least we have shelter. And this is exactly what I need." Moving away from her, Harley drops to his knees and seizes the sewing kit, checking that it still has enough supplies to stitch his own wounds.

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

"Oh yeah. Injuries." Raheeda awkwardly rubs the back of her head.
She had forgotten about those.
"I'm not good at those. I used to travel with a rat- and a otterman. They took care of all the injuries with magic so I never had to worry about it." She walks of to Harley and offers her hand for support. "Still though, anything I can do to help? We found shelter at least."

With the thunder in the distance quickly growing closer that was probably just in time.

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

Harley takes Raheeda's hand, pulling himself back up with a grunt. "Magic healing sounds pretty great right about now. But no, I can patch myself up. Although I would love the distraction of your conversation while I do so," he says.

Taking a last look at the sky, he gestures towards the doorway with the medical kit. "Shall we?" And assuming Raheeda is willing, he heads inside. Hopefully it's not locked.

[Gold]

[Empty beach - I don't know where or what either of those places are]

TASBot looks around himself with hands on his hips, taking in the scenery. After a while, he exclaims "I think it's great! There's space to run, and train, and..."

The robot looks the nearby cliffside up and down, finishing his assessment with "...and I'm totally gonna climb that cliff sometime."

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

"Sure." Though just as Harley is taking a last look at the sky he notices something odd.

Something huge emerges from the black clouds. It's hard to tell just how enormous it it is from this distance but it looks like the head of a serpentine creature and what's more it seems to be staring back at him. Though that might just be his imagination considering the distances involved.

Then just as quickly as it emerged it disappears back into the clouds once more.

Which is just when Raheeda opens the door. "So are you coming? Think it's a... storage room or something." If he looks back it does seem to be filled with wooden boxes stacked upon one another in big piles.

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

Harley blinks as he sees the sky serpent. Is it just pareidolia at work with the writhing clouds? Or is it... he glances at his scaled companion. Hm. Something to explore later, after treating his wounds.

"I don't really care what this place is, as long as it's safe and dry." He steps past Raheeda, heading for the nearest large box and sitting on it. He's curious about what might be in them, but first thing's first.

Struggling out of his jacket, its clear some some of his gashes from the beach have bled through the stolen clothing. He begins to unbutton his shirt after laying the medical kit down beside him.

"Do you think these boxes might be cargo from the ship?" he wonders aloud.

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

The sky-serpents scale were a dark purple, almost the same color as the clouds themselves.
Quite unlike Raheeda's brightly colored body.
"Maybe? Let's have a look inside." Raheeda remarks as she after some struggle manages to open one of the boxes.
It's filled with a black powder.
She sticks out her serpentine tongue and this time her angle gives him a bit of a better idea how it works. In the middle of her human tongue there's a round flesh pocket of sort and that's from where he second tongue emerges from it seems. Though as soon as the forked tongue tastes the air it retreats back into her mouth. "EW!" Raheeda makes a face.

"Smells terrible. Like... fire-mountain stuff. I thought it was food or something. Then again, there's no way most food would last long in this climate." She quickly closes the lid of the box again. "Completely useless."

[Hraithre]

[Empty Beach]

TASbot is excused for not knowing where this place is - Hoshiki himself couldn't place Deep Harbour on a map or even tell how far from Inside they are at the moment. It's just where his associate Frigate left the other end of his mirror portal.

Hoshiki nods at the bot's words. "Good. We'll be coming here, then, in the near future. Climbing that cliff sound like a good warm up. But first, let's talk some theory." He takes off his black haori, folds it on a nearby boulder, then does the same with his shirt. The loose clothes made him look bigger than he is, but they also hid that the man underneath is ripped.

"Your note mentioned 'kung fu'. I take you meant skills of the Chinese", he says as he adopts the three battles stance, "good folks, used to have a lot of fruitful trade with them in the past. They divided the many dimensions of martial skills to external and internal. The former, is simple. It deals with the tangible, that which can be seen from the outside: speed, strength, form of technique." He breathes in through his nose, then exhales through his mouth, throwing his arms forward and then pulling them close very slowly. It's technically a very simple motion and doesn't look very impressive, but if TASbot pays attention, he may notice all the muscles in the man's body tensing. "The latter, less so. It deals with intention, feeling, the flow of energy through one's body. Things that direct the technique, but might be observable only to the one performing it. One part, perhaps the most important part, of that concerns breathing."

"With that in mind: do you breathe?"

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

Harley doesn't recognize the black powder, although he does observe Raheeda's snakey tongue with obvious interest.

"Still think that's pretty cool," he says. "The way you can smell with your tongue, I mean. And yeah, it's probably fuel or something."

He begins to sew up his wounds, his breath hitching as he does so. It's clearly not something he's very used to doing, judging by his slow pace and shaky hands. As he works, he keeps talking, clearly trying to distract himself.

"So this storm goddess you mentioned. She doesn't happen to look, well. Snakelike, does she?" He knows this is a touchy subject, but he has a hunch.

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

"Oh, uh, that? Normally it just freaks people out." Raheeda shrugs. "Guess people can't stand some kind of elves." A very specific kind apparently.
"And Yul you mean? I mean, she's more than a storm goddess. She represents magic, wisdom, the undead and all sorts of disasters. Like earthquakes, droughts... that kind of stuff. She's pretty snake-like though, yeah. Since... uhh... crap."
Raheeda pauses, looking increasingly nervous. "...since she represents the snake-like elves. My people." There's a nod.

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

"Takes a lot to freak me out," says Harley with a chuckle. He listens curiously to Raheeda as she talks about Yul. Okay, it's time to get to the bottom of this. He pauses in his sewing to look up at her.

"Hey look, I know we just met and you have no reason to trust me, but I just want you to know that I don't care if you're an elf, or some other kind of snake person, or whatever. Whatever you're scared of, you don't need to be. It's fine if you don't want to tell me what you are, but you don't need to lie." He pauses for a moment, then adds "Also I think your goddess Yul might be causing the storm, because I just saw like, a giant purple snake in the sky. Seems like a pretty big coincidence if it's not her."

Harley gives a helpless shrug before inserting the needle again. "Ow."

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

Raheeda doesn't seem sure how to reply to that at first, until when he adds the possibility that Yul might be here. Then her eyes widen and she looks at him as if he were crazy.

"Giant purple snake?! D-did it have three heads?" She gestures at her amulet which has three serpentine heads entwined into its design. "Was it blue?" She grabs onto Harley, getting right in his face but stops herself just before she was to shake him. That would have been pretty bad considering what he was doing.

This sudden awareness of his situation seems to make her focus completely shift for a moment considering her next question. "...you cleaned the needle before using it, right? They say you should always do that. With, like, fire."

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

"Uh, I only saw one head..." says Harley before he is grabbed. This isn't the reaction he expected at all, and he freezes like a deer in the headlights.

"Hi. Uh, it was pretty dark so it might have been blue?" He glances down at the needle without moving his head. "N....ooo? I wiped it off, I think it had a little blood on it already. Is that bad?" Ignorance is bliss when it comes to germ theory. He looks back, his eyes conveying a pretty substantial amount of confusion about the whole situation.

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

"Uh, I think so yeah. I was always told that sharp objects like that get haunted if you stick them in someone. You get parts of their ghost with them when you pull them out which try to take revenge if you let them get inside you. Same reason you ought to stay away from corpses and why you purify both with fire." Raheeda explains with a nod. "Otherwise you get haunted once the ghost get inside you, see?"

She lets go of Harley and starts to walk across the storage room. "But... you didn't get a good look at it then? Since if it's Yul it's bad." She starts to wander back and forth as she's talking. "Very, very bad."

She stops, looks at the still open door and then back to him. "Gods can't just... manifest whenever they want, can they? There's like rules and stuff, right? Since I never actually seen a god just... exist. Besides maybe you I guess. But they've always been just projections or whatever."

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

Harley lifts up the needle, peering dubiously at it. "Haunted, huh? Well, I think I'm already probably haunted from the boat, so what's a little more? Plus I don't know how to make fire." As Raheeda begins pacing, he continues to sew up his remaining wounds.

"I just caught a glimpse, it might have even just been a cloud, but it sure looked like a really big snake. Why is it bad if it's Yul, because she brings disaster or...?"

He ties off the thread and takes a break, sighing. "I think the rules are different for different gods. I'm very much not one anymore, but when I was I could pretty much go anywhere as a physical being. But I think the more powerful a god is, the less likely it is for them to appear in person. And I'm kind of guessing that Yul is a pretty powerful one, right?"

Tensing himself, he starts on his last and biggest gash.

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

"Since Yul is a bitch. Like, all the gods of my people are straight-up assholes." Raheeda insists. "Since they're the kind that want blood, a lot of blood. So if she's really here you might be as good as dead and so would everyone else around here." She looks out the door. "I... just don't know why she would bother coming to me if she could manifest like that. I imagine she'd be busy eating a city's population or something and then raise them all as undead." She sinks down on the floor with a sigh.

"So that's why I'm asking you if you're sure. It's kind of a matter of life and death."

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

Harley stares at Raheeda for a good few moments of silence, needle motionless. "Wow," he finally says, "And I thought I was bad."

He thinks for a moment. "I mean no, I'm not sure at all. I saw what might have been a giant snake in the sky. But it might have been a hallucination brought on by blood loss, or it could be some other snake. Like I said, it only had one head, so. Maybe it was a vision or something."

Finishing the last stitch, he wraps the thread around his finger and breaks it off, then shrugs his shirt back on and slides down to sit on the floor facing Raheeda. "I didn't mean to scare you. But if it is her and she's as bad as you say, then there's nothing much we can do anyway, right?" Well, that's not exactly comforting.

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

"We could try to run away. But there's no way she'd be here unless it was for me. Though I dunno why she would even want to see me. We have a... uh, complicated relationship. I'm kind of, uh, her champion. You know, the person the god sends on tasks and such? I'm sure you had your own champions back when you were a god." She drums her fingers against the floor impatiently as if she wants to do something but wasn't sure what.

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

Harley slowly shakes his head. "No, no champions for me. I wasn't a very traditional god, I guess. But if you're her champion that's like, a big impressive deal, right? Why would she turn on you?" He pauses for a moment. "Wait, did you have any choice in the matter?"

Then he glances at the door. "And if you do want to run, go for it, but I can't go anywhere until I've rested a while. I'd slow you down anyway, and I just want you to be safe," he says, his voice even more tired than usual.

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

"Yeah, exactly! Why would she? I'm her champion." Raheeda rhetorically asks out loud. Since surely she wouldn't do that?
Then she remembers herself. "...actually, that's not- I mean, I don't actually think she'd eat me. That's not really what's freaking me out. What's freaking me out is the, uh, prospect of her being here at all, y'know? Since that would probably be bad for everyone else. So running away wouldn't really solve that problem. If she's here she's my responsibility and I would have to face her head on." There's an air of resignation in her voice as she let's out a sigh.

But before the two can get any further in their discussion there's suddenly a all-too human scream of pure terror echoing through the jungle. It sounded like a man's voice.

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

"Oh yeah. Other people. That'd be bad." It seems like Harley genuinely didn't even consider this possibility. "When you say face her- is there really anything you can do against-" oh that's a scream.

Harley's head droops in exhaustion. "I suppose there's no chance I can convince you not to check that out?" he jokes, already starting to push himself up to his feet.

[Gold]

[Empty Beach]

TASBot considers taking his shirt off as well, but decides not to. If it was going to impede him, he wouldn't be wearing it in the first place, after all.

The android listens intently to Hoshiki's preamble, making mental note of his stance. Then, when the swordsman asks if he breathes, he stops, turns his head, and thinks for a moment.

"Well... I don't have lungs, exactly, but what I do have is an air intake, and ventilation system, for regulating temperature. Sometimes I focus on my ventilation, just to center myself," TASBot explains. Then, looking back up at Hoshiki, he asks "Do you think that's enough like breathing to work?"

[Hraithre]

[Empty Beach]

Hoshiki relaxes and rubs his chin and considers this. "That... may actually be close enough", he says, "what matters is the internal experience - as you said, focusing on your air intake to center yourself. It's possible your designer deliberately made it work that way so you could relate to human experience of the same." Hoshiki nows nothing of how or why TASbot was made, but he figures there is a reason for why the robot mimics human form. That makes him hopeful that he can teach the robot human martial arts.

"We'll get back to it in a while. Before that, let's warm up a bit. You said you wanted to climb that cliff, so let's climb that cliff." Hoshiki slaps his hand together loudly and rubs them together as he approaches the foot of the cliff. It's steep, but with many handholds and not very tall - a moderate challenge for a skilled human climber. Might be a bit risky with no ropes or other safeties, but TASbot looks sturdy enough to survive falling down. Hoshiki himself is confident he can scale it in half a minute, minute tops, at a leisurely pace. But he waits for TASbot to go first to see how the robot will do.

[Shadowcaller]

Jungle

"Oh yeah. Other people. That'd be bad." It seems like Harley genuinely didn't even consider this possibility. "When you say face her- is there really anything you can do against-" oh that's a scream.

Harley's head droops in exhaustion. "I suppose there's no chance I can convince you not to check that out?" he jokes, already starting to push himself up to his feet.

Jungle

Raheeda hesitates for a moment before tipping over to the door. "...I'm just gonna..."

She peeks outside.

As she does so Harley might notice something. Or rather the lack of something.
Since once more the jungle has grown unnaturally quiet and this time he was probably faster on picking it up as it has happened before.

Raheeda looks around and then up.
"Can't see anything, but I think the storm is about to hit any minute now. Nearly above us."

A beat.

"Crap! I forgot the wobblerstopper." She looks back to him. "I'm just gonna go and get it, ok? Then maybe I can scout around a little before getting back here."

[quillpleasant]

Jungle

Harley is unnerved by the lack of noise. That's never a good thing, and he's guessing it's more than just the storm.

At Raheeda's realization, he gives a quick, frustrated stomp. "Why didn't I just carry it here? I could have just carried it." He sighs, gesturing towards her. "Okay, we know there's some really dangerous stuff out there. Are you dead set on risking your life for a bra? Or a wobblestopper, whatever. Point being, you can get a new one, but you can't get a new life."

He's silent for a moment, then says "But I know you're very tough and good at tracking, so if you really want to go I won't stop you. Just be careful?"