lucetilogs | In ur community housing, using ur kitchen. [CLOSED]

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Current Location: fifth floor kitchen, community housing building 1

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In ur community housing, using ur kitchen. [CLOSED]

Who: Anita/

redhaired_anita, Sheena/

corrinesbell, Lloyd/

kid_in_red
What: her home has flooded, and she's taking refuge in a kitchen
When: midmorning of the flooded river day
Where: the fifth floor kitchen of the community housing
Summary: After her home starts leaking water, Anita decides to go to the next safest place that would keep her dry. Sheena and Lloyd join her.
Rating: G, but it can go up.
A drenched redhead slowly climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. Nothing special about her, except for the soaked wings and small knapsack she was carrying.

When Anita got as high as she could, she took a look and made a beeline to the kitchen. Nobody else was there, her first stroke of good luck.

The first thing Anita did was turn on the stove. After figuring out how to work the rustic oven, Anita added heat and started unloading her bag: seven black metal containers, each holding a thick book's worth of paper. She carefully unloaded the paper, grimacing at the wetness, then set the paper by the oven to dry.

The next thing Anita did was scrawl a quick note in her journal, in case Sheena was worried about where she went.

The last thing Anita did was strip off her shirt, leaving her with only pants and a black bodysuit. The girl went over to the sink and started squeezing the shirt out, appreciating the warmth that was slowly rising from the oven.

((I don't know what type of technology exists in the kitchen, if someone would kindly clarify it, I would most appreciate it.))

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"A summon spirit is..." She stopped. This would require a more in-depth explanation than usual. "A summon spirit is a being representative of mana, the life force of our world. They're like...guardians, I guess. In order to be able to summon, the summoner - that's me - has to make a pact with each spirit, by stating a vow. If I break the vow, my pact with that spirit is ended, and someone else is free to make a new pact with them."

She stopped for a second. Hopefully Anita was following this. "It takes a lot of mana and strength to summon. Usually I can only do it once, and with a lot of preparation beforehand. ...Every once in a while the situation is desperate enough that I can just call them, though."

Anita mulled over Sheena's explanation. It wasn't something from Earth, that was for sure - more like a story from one of Mi-nee's books. It definitely sounded powerful - strong enough to fight the Malnosso, even!

"Can you call them here?" Anita asked. "The...summon spirits?" She remembered something Sheena has said earlier. "Or is there...not enough mana?"

She looked away, silent. When she did speak again, it was quiet, and almost bitter.

"Whatever they did...must have interfered with my summoning ability. Even if there were enough mana, or something like it, here..." Sheena sighed, looking back at Anita steadily. "I don't know if I can. But I would try."

"What do you need to do a summoning?" asked Anita.

"Aside from a lot of mana and concentration?" She thought about this. It wasn't something she'd ever really explained to anyone, how summoning worked for the summoner. "It's...uh, the summoner is basically a channel for the summon spirit's power, which is why it takes so much energy. ...So I'd need to be able to access the summon spirits. And I don't know if that will work here."

"...What happens if it doesn't work?"

Sheena glanced at Lloyd. He was being oddly quiet through all this. Apparently for once he wasn't bored already.

"...I don't know what happens if I try to summon and fail. I've always known if I had enough mana available, before...but here, I have no way to tell."

Lloyd wasn't completely bored yet, but he was getting tired of the technical talk. "You'll be fine, Sheena," he said, trying to alleviate his friend's worries. "Even if the summoning fails what could really happen? There'd just be no spirit. ...It'd probably be better if you tried it when we aren't about to die, though."

"Yeah."

It was easier to just agree. To consider what would happen to the summoner who used all that energy only to find her summoning blocked...wasn't worth it, right then.

"Well...it wouldn't hurt to try, would it?" Anita asked. "At least we know if we've got something like that to help us or not, y'know?"

Anita cocked her head to the side, then got up. She retrieved the paper she had set to dry from the stove and her boxes. Anita girl sat down at the table and started loading the pages back inside; she continued to talk as she did so.

"If you could get killed doing that, yeah, I can understand why you don't want to," Anita reasoned. "But we should be able to figure out how strong everyone is so we have something to rely on and stuff. Like...practicing, or something."

"That's a good plan," Lloyd agreed. "If we're going to fight back, we have to know what we can and can't still do."

He glanced over at the window, rain still pouring past the glass and lightning flickering in the distance. "...That is if the rain ever stops to let us practice."

"I don't have my cards, either. I can use other weapons, but...well, that's what I'm best at."

She looked over at Anita curiously. "Can you...fight?" she asked. Not that she doubted her, or anything, but it didn't seem like the girl was from a world where a lot of fighting occurred.

Anita paused for a moment, then continued loading her paper.

"Yeah."

Edited 2007-11-10 05:44 (UTC)

Lloyd was interested again now that the topic had turned to fighting. "What kind of weapon do you use?" he asked Anita. "I'm a swordsman myself."

"Paper."

"Really? How do you use your paper?" After all, guardian cards were basically paper, too.

"Mmm...it's hard to explain..."

Anita picked up a piece of paper. She glared at it, and a blade formed along the edge. Anita threw it, and it lodged into a chair leg across the room.

"I can do some stuff with it, but since I got here I haven't really been able to do anything," Anita said. She looked at her hand. "All the water's made my paper too weak. But it feels like there's something missing about it."

Sheena watched with interest. "That's still pretty cool, though," she said, smiling just a bit. "And at least you have a weapon with you, if we should need one for some reason."

"Yeah..." Anita looked a little embarassed. "I'm still getting used to it. I'm used to just...using it, but before all the rain came it felt more like...I don't know, like I was missing an arm or something. I can still use it, it's just...changed."

"That is awesome!" Lloyd said, eyes nearly twice their normal size as he admired Anita's paper blade. "Man, I wish I could do that! I tried fighting with paper once before, but it didn't work too well." He was of course referring to a disastrous incident involving the joke weapons they'd acquired in Luin - his own were a pair of paper fans.

"I guess it is..." Anita said, now even more embarassed. She went over and tugged the paper loose. "I never really thought about it."

"Hey, it takes skill to fight with paper." She grinned at Lloyd, her voice taking on a dry tone. "Anyone can tear stuff up with a sword."

"Hey, that isn't true!" Lloyd replied, looking irritated. "It takes a lot of skill to be a swordsman! Especially a dual swordsman! You saw how much effort I put into training, Sheena."

"What, like I didn't put effort into my training?" she shot back, crossing her arms. "...I guess you did work pretty hard at it, though. But that doesn't change the fact that it's easier to do damage in a fight with something that's already sharp."

"She's got a point."

"It might be easier to stab things but it's not any easier to keep yourself from being stabbed..." Lloyd sighed. It was really pointless arguing, especially since a few months ago he'd probably be agreeing that wildly swinging swords were better than paper any day.

"You have a point, too."

Sheena went back to staring out the window. There really wasn't much they could do, now, aside from wait for the rain to finally stop.

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In ur community housing, using ur kitchen. [CLOSED]

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