phantasmalrift | [open] Harriet keeps busy

[open] Harriet keeps busy

Who: Harriet and anyone (one bit specifically for Merry)
What: Training and hanging out
When: July 16 to August 8
Where: In and near Keystone Station and Keystone Rise
Warnings: Fight Club, possible discussion of mind control

For the first week and a bit after arriving at Keystone, Harriet's busy nesting: swapping furniture with other, unused apartments in Keystone Rise (and with apartments in use if their occupants are congenial) to make the mismatched furniture at least look deliberately mismatched; hanging framed art prints that she got from somewhere, presumably the Fissure; trading for bric-a-brac, curtains and bedding, and generally sprucing up her apartment until it looks like somewhere that someone might want to live for a while.

She attends Fight Club religiously, mainly studying unarmed combat. She's hopeless at it to begin with, but determined to improve—on the surface, cheerfully so, masking an iron core. She starts working out in the gym on mornings when there's no Fight Club.

In the afternoons, she reads books on magic, mostly introductory-level, trying to bootstrap herself to the point that she can actually understand the advanced text she borrowed from Alex.

One evening a week, she studies first aid with Jetshard; another evening, she learns the mysteries of the soul from Sonja; the remaining evenings she spends with Merry, if Merry's free and amenable, or loitering in the common areas in Keystone Station looking for people to talk to, if she isn't.

One Fight Club morning in late July, Harriet seems to experience some kind of epiphany: her technique suddenly, miraculously improves, until she's fighting nearly on a level with the best non-supernaturally-aided combatants, at least until her wind gives out. In the following days, she starts branching out into weapon techniques: rapier, saber and jian; knives, single and double; batons and clubs, single and double; staves; and chain weapons. It only takes her a few days of practice to get to the equivalent of a black belt in a given style. Her muscle and fitness are slowly improving with time spent in the gym, but she has a very long way to go before her physique catches up to her technique.

On August 8th, the day of the big thunderstorm, she spends the entire afternoon and evening, well into the night, sitting on the viewing deck, watching the lightning dance across the sky as the rain lashes the sea and the beach.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The central lounge area of the library seems as good a place for this sort of thing as any; the lessons Sonja's promised are esoteric, but hardly secret. She just hopes that Neathy theosophistry is applicable to the girl's situation, but even if some of the metaphysics don't exactly match up, a point of comparison might be useful.

"Evening, dear," she says cheerily as she comes in, a slim file under one arm.

"Evening, Sonja," Harriet says. "How're things?" She's got a notebook and pen sitting in front of her. Her everpresent companion or possibly tormentor, Alex's copy of On the Soul and Its Shadow, sits to one side, closed.

"Very well, thanks," she replies with a grin, sliding into her own seat. The file - dark green cardstock, but unlabled - she sets down before her, but doesn't open. "Yourself? Been finding enough to do around this place?"

Maybe she's noticed in passing that Harriet's been keeping her days full. Maybe just a little.

"Trying to structure my days," Harriet says. "Looking forward to the next expedition."

Harriet remembers resenting the demands school placed on her time. She could laze around here and do nothing. No one's holding the whip. Hell, Merry seems to be doing great with a lot of relaxation, beach time, reading.

Harriet also remembers playing host to Nirvahara, having a Mission, the fate of the universe riding on her and her friends. Chewing her metaphorical nails over every wasted moment.

Who would have guessed she'd miss it?

"I must admit, I'm more than a little put out that I haven't any memories of the last one. Not that I'm ungrateful to have come back at all, but..." Sonja shrugs. Maybe a week of lost time is a small price to pay for her continued existence. She's still annoyed about it.

"I can only imagine. It would gnaw at me, not knowing what I did or how I died." Harriet frowns a little. "Uh, sorry to harp on it. Hey, did you ever talk to Dr. Watson? You were still out of it when I suggested that to Jetshard, dunno if the message got passed on, but he can talk to ghosts. So if you left a ghost…"

"I haven't. I'll be sure to ask, when I get a chance, although I don't know if I'd be haunting anything. I never have in the past, but the metaphysics here a good bit different."

"You've never…haunted anything in the past…something tells me you don't mean a favorite coffee shop or used bookstore?" Harriet makes a face. "You've died often enough to have habits?"

Sonja shrugs, with an ever so slightly sheepish smile. "Death doesn't quite function properly in the Neath," she explains. "So long as the body's reasonably intact, anyway. I... may have lost count of exactly how many times I've made my way back. Not enough to consign me to the Tomb Colonies for good, at least."

"Whoa," is all Harriet can manage for a moment. After a pause, she swallows and says, "So, souls."

Not hard to see how she might have interest and expertise, Harriet thinks.

It'd be a good guess that her repeated deaths have something to do with her interest in the soul. Not an entirely accurate guess, but a reasonable one.

"Souls," she agrees. "Perhaps to begin - what is your understanding of the nature of the soul?"

"Um." Harriet looks thoughtful for a while. "It's a non-material entity," she finally says, "specific to the individual, though some beings lack one. I don't know whether it's involved with ghosts, or whether there even is an afterlife, or reincarnation, or whether that's consistent from universe to universe. It connects to a living being very early, either at syzygy, at first breath, or somewhere in between, and departs the body at death, for some value of 'death.' Um…it probably bears traces of the spiritual weight of the individual's deeds in life, though what that weight is and how it affects the soul in detail is a matter of dispute, like afterlives and reincarnation." She shrugs. "That's what I know, or mostly what I know I don't know. Oh, and I know it can be removed, held captive, traded, and so on."

Sonja listens attentively to Harriet's summary, nodding at a few points, frowning at a few others - mostly the mention of afterlives, and at that last bit, about the removal and trading of souls.

She waits until Harriet has finished speaking before she responds. "Not a bad overview," she says finally. "I'll admit I don't know a great deal about hauntings specifically - I'm more familiar with the function of the soul in a living person, or with the more straightforward kinds of afterlife. This may be a neathy thing, though. Just a hypothesis, but I suspect that the kind of metaphysical atmosphere that makes returning so easy may also prevent things from getting... 'stuck.'"

"In the living, the soul functions as the seat of emotion and, through this, of morality and passion. It's not inaccurate to say that it bears spiritual signs of the person's deeds, although mostly in the way that the body bears physical signs."

Harriet nods slowly. "So—would you say that the soul is a vessel of identity? Like, some people associate identity with memory or personality, or both. If the soul is the seat of emotion, is it tied up in that?" Before Sonja can answer, she frowns and continues, "I should maybe elaborate on why I want to study with you, what my priorities are.

"I have the ability to sense and manipulate the cosmic…energy fields, I guess…called the shinma, acquired by having played host to a personified aspect of shinma Nirguna for my whole life up until minutes before I arrived here. I'm interested in learning some self-defense techniques to protect my soul from tampering, and my guess is that I can achieve that by abjuring That which does not suffer itself to be named, thus reinforcing my identity. If the soul is the seat of passion, though, shinma Dharma might be involved as well…anyway, this isn't just a theoretical exercise for me, but I'm going to be struggling, probably, to integrate what I already know with what I'm learning, given that you probably come from a totally different theoretical background than I'm familiar with. So if I ask any questions that would better be left for later on, just say so, but please do try to get back to them? And if I start talking in apparent gibberish sprinkled with bad Sanskrit, please bear with me.

"And once we've gotten that far, maybe other avenues of inquiry will occur to me, if you haven't given up on me as a student. Also, if you want to learn to deal with the shinma, I'm game to try teaching."

Sonja listens with clear fascination to Harriet's explanation, nodding occasionally but letting the girl speak without any interruption. When Harriet's finished, she grins. "I think you may well be much better suited to... hands-on techniques, as it were, and if I haven't driven you batty I'd very much like to try learning any tricks you're able to teach me."

"So. Identity. It's a complicated thing; not everything in the Neath that speaks and remembers has a soul, or at least not a soul of the sort that Hell can make use of. There are, quite frankly, many Londoners who are walking around without theirs - certain Anarchist factions claim that as much as eleven percent of the city's population is soulless, and even the official line of the Brass Embassy admits to eight or nine percent.

"So - one can continue to function without the soul. I think it is safe to say, though, that if one is concerned with preserving the self, safeguarding the soul is a good place to start. It's difficult to be concerned with anything if the soul is missing - or, in theory, sufficiently damaged." She pauses a brief moment, with a slightly sheepish expression. "I speak from experience on the point of soullessness, by the way. I got mine back. Most people don't."

"You lost your soul…and got it back…" Harriet shakes her head. "Wow. That must have been interesting." The words "TELL ME EVERYTHING PLEASE PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE" might as well be glowing above her head, but she doesn't ask.

"Well, 'embarrassing' is probably the better word for the loss," she says, although she's not actually reluctant to tell the story. She'd rather thought the admission would pique Harriet's interest, after all. "I was a little older than you when I first came to the Neath, and just worldly enough to really get myself into real trouble. I was... more flattered than alarmed when the devils started taking an interest in me; I thought I was sharp enough to enjoy their company without endangering myself."

She shrugs. "And in fairness to my young stupid self, it did take a certain Quiet Deviless the better part of two years to wear down my defenses and persuade me into an Abstraction.

"I'm not sure which I'm more annoyed about, that she seduced me into selling it, or that when I finally decided to go try and bargain for it back, she'd hocked it to cover her gambling debts. Though I suppose it she hadn't, it likely would have been in the Brass Embassy vaults long before I thought to get it back."

It's taken her a while to actually venture down to join in Fight Cub, and even then Ruto mostly sat and watched the first few rounds. But now she's finally ready to join in, and she's even dressed the part. Rather than her more usual robes, she's even dressed far more appropriately in leathers and furs, her Monk soul crystal slotted into place.

Ruto catches sight of Harriet practicing with unarmed combat and perks up, heading her way. "Hey there! Interested in a spar?" She's still not entirely certain of the exact ruleset of this club, but hopefully a friendly offer won't go amiss.

"Uh...sure!" Harriet is very uncertain whether this is a wise idea, but turning down someone's polite request doesn't feel mannerly. And Ruto seemed nice, the couple of times they've interacted. "Just...I'm about the worst fighter here, I'm totally still learning, so I won't be much challenge. But I'm game!"

"We all have to start somewhere, don't worry. You should have seen me when I got going - I was tripping over my tail as often as I was hitting the target." Ruto gives her a wry, unashamed grin. "I primarily specialize in magic, and so I was in pretty poor shape when I started with the Pugilist's Guild."

"Well…OK then!" Harriet says, standing at attention and bowing, then assuming an overly tense ready stance.

Ruto returns the bow, and then raises an eyebrow at the incredibly stiff stance. It's not from any sort of style that she knows, but maybe that's what Harriet knows, and it works for her. Only one way to find out, really!

The Miqo'te bounces lightly on her feet once or twice, loose-jointed and ready to move, and then darts forward with a simple, basic punch, ready to follow it up with a kick-combo depending on Harriet's reactions.

[ooc: We can either roll for attacks/defenses, or RP out the fight as we want, or summarize how it goes in general - up to you and your preferences!]

[ooc: let's RP it out, following the script that Harriet is stiff, clumsy, tentative, weak and short on wind, but at least doesn't flinch from taking a hit—until when she's pretty clearly beaten, all of a sudden she's about a 5th degree black belt. But still weak and short on wind.]

Harriet sidesteps and manages to deflect Ruto's punch out of line, but her return blow "crossing the bridge" is slow and telegraphed, easy for Ruto to avoid. She's a little looser now because she's paying less attention to standing the way she's "supposed" to stand, and more to not getting hit.

Edited (clarify "black belt" since it covers a huge range of actual competence) 2018-08-13 06:33 (UTC)

[ooc: Sounds good to me! Ruto's going to be going pretty easy on her for the most part, especially since she's mentioned that she's still learning.]

"Not bad, not bad!" Ruto almost drifts aside from the return strike, having not even bothered to drop into one of her Fists before starting this out. It's more like helping around the Pugilist's Guild more than it is sparring with Widargelt or the other girls, and she grins as her shift to the side lets her bring her leg up in a kick-combination, three quick strikes that she makes sure to pull for now.

Harriet tries a combination low block and blocking-kick, and it almost works—she deflects Ruto's first and second kicks, but winds up taking the third on the back of her thigh just above the knee. The hit puts her off-balance, and she stumbles backward to recover, nearly falling on her butt. If Ruto had gone full-force, Harriet would be down now.

Grinning sheepishly at her own clumsiness, Harriet closes with a triangular step, trying to rotate past Ruto's defensive axis long enough to flick a blow at the back of her head.

Ruto's balance is just off enough that she can't quite drop beneath the flick fast enough, but she's moving with it so that it doesn't do much worse than shake her head about. She turns the drop downward into a leg sweep, aiming to take out Harriet's still somewhat-shaky stance, even if it is better than it had been to start with.

The leg sweep connects, and Harriet topples backward--

--into a handspring, and bounces back to her feet. Her body is looser, her weight balanced. Her fists guard her centerline, and her knees are slightly bent, ready for her to move in any direction. It's like Ruto's fighting an entirely different opponent.

Even as this is becoming apparent, Harriet closes with rapid steps, feints high, unleashes a roundhouse kick, and drops to a crouch, ready to grab any counterattack and turn it into a throw, or close to grappling distance if Ruto doesn't counter.

Ruto stills for a moment as Harriet springs back and her stance all but changes completely, and the Miqo'te's surprise is such that she's left wide open when Hariet closes again. She flinches back reflexively from the feint, and then the roundhouse connects solidly, and she's sent tumbling.

She stares blankly up at the sky for a moment before sitting up and blinking at Harriet.

"...did you just level up?"

"I--huh?" Harriet is as confused as Ruto, perhaps more so. "I don't know what happened. Something about my relationship to shinma Nishkriya just shifted. All of a sudden." She stares at her hands as if she's never seen them before, leans awkwardly and stares at the shin that hit Ruto.

After a moment, she shakes it off, and offers Ruto a hand up. "Uh, sorry, I know I tried to pull that kick, but--I kinda...anyway. Um, I guess 'leveled up' is as good a metaphor as any. Strictly a metaphor in my case, not like, say, Pidonus..." She shakes her head. "I feel like Keanu Reeves. 'I know kung fu!' Ha."

Ruto continues to stare blankly for another moment before tensing her stomach muscles, rocking back onto her shoulders and hands, and kipping up into a standing position with a big, broad smile.

"Nice! I didn't see the usual flash that I'm used to for levels back home, so it took me a bit by surprise. But things here work all sorts of differently, I suppose! Anyway, who or what is shinma Nishkriya?" It sounds almost like something she'd hear from the Ananta, though she doesn't actually recognize it.

"Um, I work with cosmic...energy fields, is what I've been labeling them when I explain, though that's way oversimplified. Called the shinma. One of them, shinma Nishkriya, defines violence, destruction, and the potential to effect lasting change in the world. That is, Nishkriya is perfectly meek and at rest, so everything that isn't Nishkriya has destructive potential...

"I, uh, I feel like I'm a blade, and someone drew my edge against Nishkriya like a cosmic whetstone. Everything I've been learning from Lin in the last couple of weeks suddenly...came into focus. Just like that."

She grins. "Go again?"

Ruto's head tilts to the side thoughtfully as she takes in the explanation. The philosophy doesn't quite match up to anything in particular from her world, but she's getting better at not expecting that as much any longer. Though it almost makes her think of the Kojin and their relations with their Kami...

Still!

"Sounds exciting! And let's definitely go again, though this time..." Ruto shifts her stance, and light flares around her for a moment as she drops into Fists of Earth. "There we go. Nothing to make me hit harder, but it'll help mitigate any extra damage that you can dish out now." She grins and winks at the other woman, tail flicking with excitement.

...this is a dream. But it's so different from Merry's usual dreams that she takes note - she's lucid and aware in seconds.

She's in some kind of space station, white, pristine, wheel shaped, at a comm console, a monitoring console. And outside, on sensor, is a massive distortion - gravity, potential energy, non-light, a black hole and a star forge. A mecha, if not an ANIMa.

Visually, it looks impossibly huge and beautiful. Veiled and armored, creating implosions of nonlight that supernova into stars and back down into short-lived black holes before winking out of existence.

She turns. Behind her, asleep in a glass tube full of something vicious and blue, is Harriet. She shudders, but at least Harriet is twitching and frowning, not grinning ear-to-ear.

How can she see so clearly into her dreams with nothing more electric than clothed arms around her?

Meredith taps the mike before her, and sighs, and speaks.

"Going for a joyride? Take care. We called them Nightmares for a reason."

"Can't be any worse than Ravana," comes the reply, in Harriet's usual cheery bravado. "DARKFORCE REQUITAL is ready to deploy. Guide me, Anchor."

The station's long-range sensors are spiking. Something vast is at the edge of the star system, tearing its way out of hyperspace.

She sighs, smiling despite herself. It's... good, that she can make an escapist dream out of her stories, isn't it? Good to think of Pilots as heroes?

"Four-ten on that. Plotting a course. It involves a gravitational whip around the fifth planet, prepare for the G-forces. Your chassis is looking pretty bare, though. Who will you wield?"

"Loading…Plasma Barrier Generator." A buckler of flame forms along the mecha's left forearm, symbolic of Harriet's trust in Alex.

"Solar Wings." Sweeping wings of white metal trail from the mecha's shoulders, representing Zoë.

"And—Macrocosmos Hammer!" A long haft of black metal leading to a head of pure, annihilating nothingness. Nirvahara's legacy.

[ooc: I know one normally can't equip absent characters' relationships, but this isn't actually Bliss Stage and Harriet's not clear on the concept anyway]

[Absent friends... her fellow superheroes? Ah, no, the loadout indicates that one is a recent one. Alex. Still...

And one is Nirvahara, and it refuses to have a coherent metastable resonance factor. It flickers, it wavers, it refuses to stay put. Just as well this dream has little substance. It's not something you want to channel into an ANIMa, from all she's learned...]

I see three. Designating alpha, beta, gamma. Hunin-class; fighter pattern. You'll need to get to range. Use the tidal beams.

Launching now.

((OOC: No skin off my nose, this dream is just a dream.))

Edited 2018-08-17 04:05 (UTC)

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[open] Harriet keeps busy

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Fight Club

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Secret Wildcard Dream Prompt, used with prior discussion

Re: Secret Wildcard Dream Prompt, used with prior discussion

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