and for the dark; and for the light

[founderinglight]

Who: Izunia and you! Especially if you are Ardyn or Maddie.
What: Birthday bros! And a few other conversations. Also, Armiger practice.
Where: Rise kitchens, library, a few other places.
When: The last few days of August and the first week of September.
Warnings: Murdergame discussion likely in Ardyn's thread; child abuse/neglect discussion likely in Maddie's.

[Aug 30; Text -> Kitchens, closed to Ardyn]

[Early afternoon comes a message from Ardyn's least favorite twin - ]

If you're still willing to participate in birthday cake production and related activities, I'll be settling up in the kitchens here in about an hour.

[Always leave him room to back out - truthfully Izunia is still extremely surprised that Ardyn agreed to the idea in the first place. But he'll be at the kitchens at the appointed hour, idly scrubbing pans and loading the dishwasher while he waits, very much not starting on the cake itself until Ardyn arrives.]

[Aug 30; Kitchens/common room, later]

[It appears that someone has set up... a surprising quantity of nicely decorated cake out? And there's also ice cream cake in the freezer. How'd that happen.

If you fail to run into the culprit, you might discover Izunia sprawled across one of the common room couches, a plate with no less than three kinds of cake on it. Most of them are the well-decorated ones, but there's also a very plain one that just says CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'VE AGED on it.

He's also keeping a particular eye out for Maddie if she passes through.]

[Library, Aug 28-Sept 3rd minus the 30th]

[Outside of his birthday celebrations - lowkey as they are - Izunia can mostly be found in the library this week. As usual, a good portion of what he can be caught reading is magic-related texts, but there's also a genuinely shocking number of children's and YA novels getting stacked up next to him, sorted into a series of piles. He seems to be churning through them in about half an hour to an hour a piece, so it's... getting to be a lot by the time he packs it in for the day each day, even with the usual amount of Nap.]

[Beach, Sept 4th, night]

[It's a very far way off from the Station that the flashes of blue light can be seen, and likely to very unusual to those who recognize their source. It's hardly just the trails and afterimages of warping and phasing that hang in the air, though. The shapes of Royal Arms hanging in the air, but also the orbs of light that are seemingly his to conjure now -

It's rare to see Izunia push himself, usually confident in his abilities, but it seems like he's doing so now. And it's suitably impressive, but something about his posture seems unsatisfied...

Hopefully, you weren't so foolish as to approach without a light, though, because if you hadn't heard, the guy flinging explosive balls of light and a variety of magical weapons around is Jumpy in the Dark.

And much later that night, you might catch him returning to the station, physically exhausted but with the usual air of warm gentleness about him, and rather a lot of sand still clinging to his clothes.]

Comments

[founderinglight]

True, but there's a built-in break time while everything bakes. The ice cream will still be churning at that point.

[Eggs, hello eggs.]

We'll get the coffee and chocolate first, that's probably the one you're most interested in anyway.

[burninglight]

You would be correct in this assumption.

[founderinglight]

I've seen how you live.

[The day he doesn't know his brother's coffee habits will be a sad day. Izunia pulls a metal canister of some sort from the assortment of dishes, opens the lid, and starts reading the instructions.]

Yes, this should work fine... Do you know how to separate egg yolks or are you on measuring duty?

[burninglight]

I'm not completely inept in a kitchen. I can do that just fine.

[founderinglight]

Excellent.

[We're just going to crib through the recipe instructions here, Izunia's got a cookbook set out on part of the counter, let's just roll.]

[burninglight]

[screw it it's fine whatever]

[ardyn's just gonna stay relatively quiet and get this shit done, anyway]

[founderinglight]

[Izunia's just happy to be here.

Though he does at one point catch himself humming Stand By Me and swear under his breath - ]

Stupid catchy -

[burninglight]

...

[Ardyn almost smiled at that, just a little.]

That did go quite a bit further than I'd ever planned, didn't it?

[founderinglight]

I can't even blame people for thinking it was scripted when it worked out that well.

[burninglight]

It's hard to argue with that much.

[founderinglight]

Mmm. I meant to talk to you anyway, since I'm between seasons now. Get more of the context.

[burninglight]

Ah...right.

[fucking fantastic.]

So I guess I should just start with what happened after we blew up the mansion and give a bit of a rough summary from there. You can ask whatever you're going to after that.

[founderinglight]

If you don't want to today, you don't have to.

[It is the subject it is, after all.]

[burninglight]

Mm...might as well get it over with, really.

[Deep breath, sigh.]

A few days' journey or so later we met the previous season's survivors--their de facto leader in much the same slapdash effect as I was for us was a man by the name of Xander. Following their own escape they'd been traveling in their slightly larger ship, Temerity by name--watching our season trying to track us down, so you can imagine it was a bit of a surprise for our paths to cross.

[Bitterly:] Complete coincidence, I'm sure you've figured.

[spoilers it was not]

We ended up traveling together while trying not to throttle each other, and sparing the finer details, we eventually found out about a scheduled autograph signing featuring three 'cast members' that were supposed to be dead. Max from the first season, Lightning from the second, and Finn from our own.

...Obviously, we're idiots and couldn't leave well enough alone.

[founderinglight]

Of course you are. I've seen your family.

[Fondly.]

And Yuuri did say something about Junpei ding-dong-ditching a prison, which I presume was in the middle of all this somewhere.

[burninglight]

[Ardyn laughed, though it came across sounding a bit nervous. Nope, gonna focus on working and cleaning up instead of looking at Izunia, no sir.]

It was a trap, obviously. We presumed as much, but we had to be sure; so we rigged up some disguises and one hardlight and went in anyway. Split into two groups infiltrating from the front and backstage. ...Then, when things started going wrong Xander and I put up a distraction to let the kids get back to the Temerity. We took off backstage to get Leonard, the Doctor, and Yurika's group and get the hell out; the two of us were the only ones trained in combat and Xander was carrying his own blade, so I'd hoped we stood a chance.

...Needless to say, it didn't go well. Got my first scar in millennia that I didn't take from someone else in the process. [Ardyn tried to sound dismissive, but his hands were a little unsteady by that point.]

Long story short, half of us woke up in fucking space prison hoping the others got away.

[he's fine. this is fine.]

[founderinglight]

Is that what happened to your leg?

[Hello he might not have an eye for twin swaps anymore but he still notices incredibly small details like that.]

[burninglight]

Wh- [That did enough to snap him out of his thoughts, Ardyn taking a second or two to process the question.] Oh--right.

[He reached down to pull the leg of his pants up a few inches, enough to show a faint scar from a puncture wound in his shin.]

Would you believe electrified crossbows are a thing that some lunatic decided was necessary, because apparently they are. I would have killed at least one guard with the kitchen knives I was stuck using if I hadn't missed that one. [...He'd had the Armiger space and basically nothing else, so improvised weapons it was.] Nanites took care of the worst of it, but I could hardly walk at all for a couple days. Is it still that obvious?

[founderinglight]

It wouldn't have been if I hadn't watched your season in the first place. Your lack of limp there was far more obvious than the difference between this limp and the one you had.

[burninglight]

[Beat.]

My...what, sorry?

[founderinglight]

[Izunia just.

Stares at him for a moment.]

You had a limp for two thousand years and then just forgot about it?!

[burninglight]

I had a muted sense of pain, how the fuck would I notice something like that?!

...Shiva's multiform bullshit, either it was psychosomatic or Intergal fucked this body up somewhere.

[founderinglight]

You definitely had a limp, far worse than the one you have now. Hip injury, significantly impacted your range of movement with that leg.

[A sigh.]

Honestly, it's fairly low on the level of bullshit that's happened.

[burninglight]

Nina, you incompetent underfed treant-...programmed fake Starscourge and missed something like that, how stupid.

[Ardyn pressed a hand to his head.]

Never mind. Should I keep going?

[founderinglight]

You cannot possibly be complaining about having a full range of movement on that side.

By all means. Pass those eggs over here when you're done with them, if you would.