diatuooc | Test Drive #5 Is Alive

Test Drive #5

Class Is In Session

The Metacurriculum of Glyphics contains within it the fine and honored art of potionmaking, in which glyphs scribed into a cauldron are distilled within a liquid especially prepared to hold the enchantment. The task is remarkably finicky, and thus not particularly utilized outside of the classroom; generations of teachers have been forced to deal with the question of "when will we ever use this in real life?!", to their inevitable despair.

A pinch of cilantro, a dash of goat hoof, stir carefully and apply liberal amounts of electricity -- and you foolishly used alternating current instead of direct. Rather than a Potion of Supreme Might, your mixture has turned a vile grey, and a dark spirit has arisen from it to tell you that your personal hygiene leaves much to be desired and that your soul is so black with sin no heaven will ever accept it. This is no good -- the syllabus explicitly states that profane manifestations of magic are only worth partial credit at best. Can you and your partner rectify your mistake before the professor pops by to see how you're doing?

Shady Business

"'Ey! You!" calls a voice from the Merchant District Alley, coming from the throat of a pop-eyed, scraggle-faced man that couldn't be a shadier character if he was real slim. On catching your attention, he motions you over. "Sees that you're wizard-likes," he says, rolling his words around in his mouth in a particularly rhythmic sort of way that doesn't disguise his inability to hold one accent for more than a phrase. "Well I've got summat'll knock your bonzer socks off. Behold!"

Sweeping one hand towards a ratty old table, he whips off a cloth to reveal a rack of weapons. Pointy swords, massive maces, warhammers that resemble the smaller historical version rather than the fantasy types one pictures dwarves with, a bow and arrows, a stiletto, any number of different implements of death. "Priced as marked," the shady guy says, "and sold as is. No refunds! Some of them are probably cursed, is what I'm hinting at. Full disclosure."

The price is so good, the risk of a curse might be worth it. Did you purchase the Sword of Flaming Death, or the Dagger of Wedgies-to-the-Wielder? Is the greataxe mighty and potent, or actually foil-covered chocolate? Choose your weapon wisely. We -- we recommend you don't pick up the one that causes you to attack the nearest person in a rage of bloodlust, but what do we know?

Etreia Day

Everyone looks forward to Etreia Day in the dining hall, that special day when the food delivered to students and staff comes from that landlocked nation deep in the Tier Mountains. Little cultural blending and spices unique to the deep peaks and valleys of the isolated country have lead to a unique and renowned cultural menu that everyone is eager to partake of.

The effect isn't magical, merely biochemical, but no one can deny that Etreian food affects human emotions significantly. Light sauces and dry-rubbed fowl are terrific for energy and mood, pushing the eater into a flurry of cheerful activity that their body will likely pay for later. Sour dishes and dark bastes produce solemn moods and inhibit playfulness. Spicy foods are something of a wildcard, pushing different people to different extremes, be they happy or sad, angry or joyous. To those who expect this, experiencing these different emotions is as much a part of the meal as the taste and texture of the food itself.

To those who don't expect this, well, it's a bit of a surprise.

Labwork

Not every magical disaster is caused by some wayward student you don't know. Many of them are caused by you instead. To wit: you're on the spot in one of the magical labs, being called on to demonstrate a technique more advanced than others you've mastered so far. Failure is expected, and the wards should prevent any injury to others from a miscast spell. But will the sparks of your magic just sputter out and die? Or will you inadvertently mispronounce, misform, misshape, or miscalculate in a way that brings chaos to you and your lab partner?

(You could also manage to succeed in casting the spell, but that isn't very fun.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Obviously his friends are nowhere around him and so Noctis stays by himself as has been a habit when he was a little boy. Carrots are placed on a napkin away from him but there's a dessert or two that's not too far away.

He's managed to eat a few of the uneaten spicy things but hasn't quite decided as to when those will fit in with the steak looking dish covered in a dark sauce.

Looking up from his food ponderings, blue eyes meet a brighter pair of blue. Silver feathery hair frames the face and for a moment the king stares trying to remember something.

But then he remembers a reprimand from Ignis that it wasn't polite to stare, so Noctis lowers his gaze although it's only momentarily.

"Don't I know you from somewhere?"

He had asked the question, but with a more attentive look, he notices the vegetables set aside and the plate seems barely touched. One man's tastes were his own, but that didn't bode well for what he had on his own dish, as good as it smelled. There wasn't a concern that he would die if he ate what was in front of him, but he wondered if he might be repulsed.

And then he wondered what the man meant. The voice wasn't ringing a bell, and neither was the face. Maybe the eyes, but the man looked away and he still couldn't place it. The tail behind him swayed gently as he rolled the image around in his mind.

"I'm afraid you don't look familiar." Or did he?

(ooc: Taking this as if Kuja has only ever seen Noctis at the very end, when they fought in that mock battle, unless you had another thought.)

Noctis waited, looking at Kuja with a more puzzled look. Flashes of memories came into his head but shook his head again.

The prounouncement gave the king nothing to go on, so at this point he had to shrug. "My mistake." He would've said 'my bad' but that was something he said to the guys, not to a complete stranger if that was the case. Noctis still believed he'd seen the man though he couldn't place him.

Many things had happened to the king, so maybe he had it wrong, but he didn't think he was wrong here. So he wasn't going to argue it, but a few moments passed and a name came to him. This was the last attempt he would make at this.

"I don't suppose the name Materia means anything to you."

(ooc: Yup!^^)

A case of mistaken identity here, in this place, was rare as far as he knew. Or it could have been. What were the chances that two people drawn from worlds far enough apart that they had never known about each other before now would find a former friend on a stranger's face? They had enough variety about them that he'd noticed some similarities - dark hair, light eyes, light skin - but that could have been any number of people on Gaia.

But the name did have meaning to him. He gave the man a new look, reaching for a name of his own that he didn't have for him. Then it hit him, eyes widening by slight only briefly.

"Yes, it does."

He wondered what the man would know of him. Kuja remembered the final fight with Materia's champions, the faces he had seen then. Not all of them were familiar to him from the cycles before it, but he had been too geared for the end result than he had cared about who he threw his magic at so long as they bore the light. They were there to lure out Shinryu, then to turn their fury on the dragon, then - hopefully - to return home.

To return Zidane home.

Kuja remembered the man now, but the resemblance was fleeting. "You were younger then, under her banner."

Well there was some satisfaction on Noctis face when he saw the eyes widen a bit. And truthfully Noctis didn't know a lot about the man in front of him but it was just a teasing memory, something he barely half remembered.

But it brought to mind his adventures with the Warrior of Light and Cecil, who'd he told to call him 'Noct'. And as the king tried to place the other God's name besides Materia's, Kuja hit him with the truth.

Well there it was. He had been younger then. So Noctis self consciously raised a hand to put through his hair.

"Ya..you could say that."

He recognizes that embarrassment, though he has never known it himself and likely never would. Men grew old and feeble past a point, but this one hadn't reached that milestone yet.

Behind him, his tail waved slowly and was still, contemplating his next words. "I did. Is something the matter? I meant nothing of it, only that it has been some time since we last met." Even for him - Kuja had already been here in this place longer than a month, the days made longer still by his frustrations with it all and the monotony of too much free time and not enough access to information critical to his own research.

His eyes narrowed again in thought. The man had been Materia's warrior, but as of yet, there had been none of the expected hostilities, none of the aggression, none of the suspicious looks. "What do you recall of that time?"

Noctis shook his head. "It's fine."

The truth was the truth and so much time had passed since he was dealing with that dream or those forgotten memories. But..hadn't he said something like that to someone with pinkish hair? They'd sopken only briefly and that was at his arrival.

So much had happened since then and at the question, Noctis looked at the other man finally recalling the other God's name.

"Not much. Weren't you on Spiritus' side?"

He tilts his head in a nod and considers his plate without actually seeing it. Of far more interest to him is the man sitting in front of him while he stands here, holding half of a conversation with him. Well, and maybe it still smells good, but he isn't so very inclined to take a bite at this moment. Not, at least, until he knows whether or not what he has to say will be triggering.

"I was, whether or not I wanted to be. His predecessor, Chaos, seemed to take a liking to me as well, but you weren't there for that travesty. Consider yourself lucky." Kuja watches the man carefully, waiting to see what he will do.

For his part, Noctis is getting pictures in his head almost like ones from Prompto's camera roll. He can remember snippets of conversations, people, and places. Nothing registers for this Chaos that the other man was talking about though. So no luck there.

He looked down at his cooling plate and feels no vested interest in taking up Materia's side here. Not with everything else that's gone on his life and well, death. His fighting days were over and so was everything else, or so he'd thought.

"If memory serves, none of us had a choice to be there."

Edited 2019-05-18 04:45 (UTC)

Not a threat, not an angry look. Satisfied that this particular former warrior for Materia wasn't about to upend a table to fulfill some chain to honor, Kuja seats himself in a chair near to the man, but not directly next to him, and sets his plate in his lap. By this rate, his food would be cold, but even picking at it with his fork, it didn't seem that appealing anymore.

He managed a bite anyway, because he needed it, and didn't find it regrettable or enticing for what it was. A moment later, the spice hit him and he grimaced and took a quick sip of water to wash it down. "I do not recommend these." He gestured to the rest of the greens with his fork and nudged them to one side of his plate to sit, uneaten.

Suddenly the rest of his meal looked even less appealing than it had. "In that, you are correct. No one called to fight for those gods was presented the option, and if they were, they never said otherwise. One moment, I was on Gaia..." He trailed off into silence, then waved his hand and shook his head, as if to erase what he had been about to say. "The next, I was in Chaos's world before him, ordered to fight, with no memory of where I had been or what I had been doing there."

Test Drive #5 Is Alive

/sliding NT canon into the background here because I can!

8DDDDD

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