[ he has never been anyone's pal in his entire life. that said, raven does get the honor of being the first person he's ever had over to his apartment here, if only because he hasn't been up to commuting to work since he got back from that run-down subway station three days ago.
[Maybe all Rideaux really needs is a bumbling but lovable patient/customer to show him the joys of having pals. ...Or maybe Raven is just that weirdly chummy with most people he's just met.]
Got it! I'll give ya a shout if I get lost.
[Fortunately he doesn't actually get lost, because a little while after the exchange, there's a knock at Rideaux's apartment.]
[ even though he's expecting the knock on the door, it takes him a minute to get there -- he's got to get up from the couch and onto his crutches and make his way across the room.
he fucking hates this, and looking back, it's a wonder he managed to spend so much time on them as a child without wanting to break everything in the room out of frustration. he'd been used to it, he supposes, and having never had normal physical capabilities at the time, he hadn't really grasped how much easier it was for everyone else.
finally opening the door, he moves back out of the way as best he can to let raven inside. ]
Welcome. [ it's not actually said in the most welcoming tone, but hey, it's a greeting. ] If you don't mind closing the door behind you.
[Raven's visibly taken aback to see him on crutches. He tries not to gawk for too long, though, entering and obliging to close the door behind him.]
Guess this is why I'm makin' the house call instead of the other way around, huh?
[He offers a wry smile and passes Rideaux, looking around. He seems like the kind of guy who would appreciate dark humour a little more than fussing or concern, which suits Raven just fine.]
[ he's perfectly fine with not having to explain himself. it saves him the trouble of having to come up with an explanation that sounds less stupid than "the floor gave out and then a locker fell on my leg."
he does, at least, smile a bit at the compliment -- god knows he'll always take those -- and looks at his decor with some renewed appreciation as he heads back to the couch. ]
Thank you. I do like to think I have an eye for that kind of thing.
[ he sits down as gracefully as he can manage under the circumstances, and leans his crutches against the couch cushion. there's an open bottle of scotch on the coffee table next to a couple of glasses, one clean and one already half-empty. he pours just enough to appear hospitable into the empty glass and slides it down the table. ]
[Raven, on the other hand, plops himself down with no attempt at being graceful. The scotch is very appreciatively received, and he takes a drink of it before he starts.]
...Two things. [He sets the glass back down again.] First, I ran into a little bother with CERES. Maybe you did too?
[A pointed look at Rideaux's injured leg, before he focuses his attention back on his face. Given how widespread the incidents seem to be, it's Raven's best guess. It's not as though it was long since they last spoke, and Rideaux was definitely uninjured then.]
I won't bore ya with all the details, but let's just say I kicked the bucket. I woke up in one of their hospitals this mornin'. [It's worryingly easy for him to sound so nonchalant about it, even if he can't quite mask how weary he is. You die once or twice, you've died a thousand times.]
Before I woke up, one of their robots was pokin' around with my blastia for who knows how long. I wanna check everything's still workin' like it should.
[The second thing, he'll get to later. This one takes priority.]
Hm. [ rideaux doesn't so much as raise an eyebrow at that. a member of his group had "kicked the bucket" as well, and he's heard similar things from others here since that day, so it's not exactly unexpected news at this point. ] It won't be as easy to tell if anything's changed when I didn't see how it was working before, but I can certainly take a look.
[ he'd had similar concerns upon arriving here, and he's still wary of the foreign technology CERES replaced his own spyrix organs with.
which isn't to say he's sympathetic, but he's curious, especially if there's a chance it might give him some further insight into his own situation. ]
And this "poking around" was something one of your companions observed and relayed to you after the fact, or...?
Nah, the damn thing was what woke me up. I was havin' such a nice dream, too. [About being dead. Truly the unattainable dream.
He doesn't mind the lack of sympathy, at least. He'd much rather just pretend the whole thing never happened than exhaust himself thinking about it too much.]
Anyway, it's okay if ya can't do much. Maybe ya can just monitor it? All I need ta know is whether I'm gonna keel over again any time soon.
Then did you wake up because it was bothering you or because it had just gotten it functioning again?
[ he's not sure if that's actually a question that can be answered by someone who was barely conscious at the time, but it's worth asking, even if rhetorically. ]
We didn't go into any detail before, so tell me how it usually works -- what biological functions it supports, what it uses for a power source, whether its effect is direct and mechanical or more complex... anything you think relevant.
[ he picks up his drink and takes a sip as he awaits the explanation. ]
Your guess is as good as mine. [He shrugs to the question. He'd be surprised if they even knew how it worked, let alone how to start it up again if it stopped. But where to start with the explanation... At the hardest part, he supposes.]
I'll cut a long and sad story short. Ten years ago, I fought in a war and lost my life. But my boss had been researching new blastia technology, the kind that could even raise the dead, and I was one of his little success stories.
[Not that Raven ever considered it that way, if the way he's reaching to take another drink is any indication. Booze is bound to make this conversation easier to get through. Once he's given Rideaux a few seconds for that to sink in, he continues.]
The blastia replaced my lost heart, and it was powerful enough to bring me back to life and keep me that way. Usually blastia are machines that convert aer into energy using a formula, lettin' people manipulate the elements to use magic or create barriers or change the weather or whatever. Mine's different: it runs on my own vitality instead of aer. That means I have ta try not to push it too hard, or I'm a goner.
[Hopefully Rideaux understands his problem, even if he'll never be a blastia expert. If it's not running as efficiently as it should because CERES have tampered with it, he'll be in trouble soon enough.]
[ so he'd already died and come back before this, then, back in his own world? hm... that is a pretty impressive piece of technology, then.
and there's no doubt in rideaux's mind that if it had existed in his world, and he'd met some untimely end before canaan appeared, bisley would have used it to bring him back just so he could kill him again when he needed his bridge.
bosses are the same in every world, he supposes. ]
So it functions in place of your heart to keep your circulation going, then.
[ almost everything raven just said sounds like he could have been talking about spyrix, which is interesting, though the concept of converting air into energy is something new that he doesn't quite understand (he can't hear that difference in spelling, okay), as is raven's description of his own situation. ]
"Runs on vitality," though? Meaning what, exactly? It's like some kind of perpetual motion machine where the pressure and kinetic energy of the flowing blood are what trigger the blastia to keep it pumping in the absence of contracting heart muscles?
[It takes a few seconds to actually get what Rideaux is trying to say, in absence of Rita to translate. ...Though really, if Rita were here, he wouldn't need to have this conversation in the first place. She was the only one he could really count on for help with his blastia, with Alexei out of the picture.]
Hmm... That's a scientific and less of a poetic way of puttin' it, but yeah, it's somethin' like that. [He scratches his stubble thoughtfully. He's not even going to get into ideas like apatheia or the spirits for now. Best to just keep the explanation down to the nuts and bolts of it.]
So, d'you think you can help this old man or not? I can pay however much you need for the hassle.
I do, but we can discuss the financials afterward. Honestly, it sounds fairly similar to the spyrix technology I'm used to working with. Though for something like an organ replacement the device would usually be implanted internally where the original organ was without anything visible outside.
[ that's how his are, and aside from the scarring, you wouldn't even know anything had been done from looking at him. ]
How deeply is it embedded? Does it extend all the way into the chest cavity where your heart was before and push the blood through directly, or is it just sending signals to a simpler device inside?
Maybe mine coulda been like that, but the way I died, there was just this big hole in my chest. Ya couldn't just stick it in, then sew me back up, and call it good.
[He grimaces. He's never had someone want to know all the gruesome details before, even if it is for a good reason.]
It's easier to show ya than to just explain. [He unbuttons his shirt, enough for Rideaux to take a look.] Blastia have two parts, the body and the core. The metal stuff you can see is the body, which controls the core. The red thing in the middle is the core itself. It's a sphere, so it's bigger than what you can just see on the outside. Then there'll be more of the body inside my chest holdin' it in place.
[ rideaux nods, again showing little outward reaction to any of this; but he wouldn't be much of a doctor if he were put off by talk of nasty injuries. anyway, he thinks he can picture the internal parts of it well enough from that, even if his understanding of the precise mechanics is still vague. ]
All right. So is there some external control mechanism, or does maintenance actually involve going inside to make adjustments?
The only external mechanism I'm aware of was one to shut the whole thing off. That's lost along with my world, though.
[And lost along with Alexei. Good riddance to it.] Real maintenance needs a knowledge of formulas, which I can't give ya. The rest takes care of itself, unless it were to get damaged. Luckily it's seen it's fair share of battles without getting messed up.
[ thankfully a remote shutoff function is something rideaux has never had to worry about since he's the only one who knows all the codes, but if bisley had been the one to develop the technology like raven's boss had, he imagines he probably would have set up something similar to keep an even firmer handle on him. ]
There would have to be some way of inputting those formulas, though, correct?
Sure there is. But again, I can't show ya it, because that's kinda the only thing a blastia pro can do.
[And if Alexei had taught him about how to use formulas or maintain his own blastia in the first place, well, that would involve handing over too much power when he wanted to keep him on a leash. Not that Raven cared -- at least not until recently.]
So, unless CERES are nice enough ta bring along some blastia instruction manual from Terca Lumireis, that's about all I can tell ya.
[ ugh... he may be a genius with this kind of thing, but it's still annoying having to work backwards from a finished product without any reference documents and when he can't exactly take it out to look at it in its entirety. ]
How do blastia generally work, then? You said this one was an outlier, but it must share some commonalities with other forms.
They're all used for different things, like I said. Water, generatin' barriers, combat... I could list 'em all off the top of my head, but maybe it's easier ta write down?
[He rummages through his pockets and pulls out his Cerevice even before Rideaux answers. They're pretty handy, all things considered.]
I guess the commonalities are that they all convert one form of energy into magic, even if the energy sources are different. And regardless of its original function, a lotta blastia can even be adapted ta use that magical energy as a weapon -- includin' mine.
All right, so the simplest weapon types, then, let's say -- how would you activate them? [ or maybe this is worth a shot... ] You don't happen to have any of those more ordinary ones here in this world, do you? That would certainly make this all a lot easier.
Those are bodhi blastia, and they can help the user use and learn different artes. [And assuming he doesn't know what artes are...] Y'know, magic, special attacks, stuff like that.
I know a couple of kids who might be willing ta loan me one of theirs, if ya like.
I know what artes are. [ he's not some non-jrpg philistine. ] And those sound similar to our Allium Orbs in that case.
If they actually have them with them, then yes, that would be ideal. If I can get a look at its inner workings to better understand the concepts behind the technology I should be able to apply that knowledge to yours as well.
[ maybe that sounds overly sure of himself, but this is the kind of thing he's famous for in his world, after all. ]
With that said, I don't think you have too much to worry about in the meantime as long as nothing feels off to you. There's no inflammation or anything that would indicate that they actually detached it from your skin and got inside to make any adjustments.
[ of course there hadn't been any outward sign that they'd gotten inside to switch rideaux's out either, but that replacement had been carried out before he even remembered waking up here, so those were likely special circumstances. ]
Then I'll see what I can do. No promises they'll be willin' to part with them, but if I explain the situation they might.
[They'd been committed to giving up blastia back home, and so anything happening to their blastia here wouldn't exactly be much different... Handy as they are to have around. To Rideaux's assessment, he nods.]
Yeah. Nothing feels off, and if it wasn't working right I'd probably know about it long before now. But better safe than sorry. [He buttons up his shirt again. The less Raven has to worry about his dumb heart, the better.] Oh -- and I mentioned I had two favours to ask ya, right?
[He produces a vial, and holds it up for Rideaux to see.] This is the second. It's something me and my group swiped on our little misadventure, but it ain't labelled aside from some code number. Ya think you could identify it for us?
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no worries!
Nah, I'll make my own way over. What's the address?
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aaand insert address here. ]
I'll be expecting you soon, then.
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Got it! I'll give ya a shout if I get lost.
[Fortunately he doesn't actually get lost, because a little while after the exchange, there's a knock at Rideaux's apartment.]
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he fucking hates this, and looking back, it's a wonder he managed to spend so much time on them as a child without wanting to break everything in the room out of frustration. he'd been used to it, he supposes, and having never had normal physical capabilities at the time, he hadn't really grasped how much easier it was for everyone else.
finally opening the door, he moves back out of the way as best he can to let raven inside. ]
Welcome. [ it's not actually said in the most welcoming tone, but hey, it's a greeting. ] If you don't mind closing the door behind you.
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Guess this is why I'm makin' the house call instead of the other way around, huh?
[He offers a wry smile and passes Rideaux, looking around. He seems like the kind of guy who would appreciate dark humour a little more than fussing or concern, which suits Raven just fine.]
Pretty snazzy place ya got here.
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[ he's perfectly fine with not having to explain himself. it saves him the trouble of having to come up with an explanation that sounds less stupid than "the floor gave out and then a locker fell on my leg."
he does, at least, smile a bit at the compliment -- god knows he'll always take those -- and looks at his decor with some renewed appreciation as he heads back to the couch. ]
Thank you. I do like to think I have an eye for that kind of thing.
[ he sits down as gracefully as he can manage under the circumstances, and leans his crutches against the couch cushion. there's an open bottle of scotch on the coffee table next to a couple of glasses, one clean and one already half-empty. he pours just enough to appear hospitable into the empty glass and slides it down the table. ]
So. What brings you here so soon?
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...Two things. [He sets the glass back down again.] First, I ran into a little bother with CERES. Maybe you did too?
[A pointed look at Rideaux's injured leg, before he focuses his attention back on his face. Given how widespread the incidents seem to be, it's Raven's best guess. It's not as though it was long since they last spoke, and Rideaux was definitely uninjured then.]
I won't bore ya with all the details, but let's just say I kicked the bucket. I woke up in one of their hospitals this mornin'. [It's worryingly easy for him to sound so nonchalant about it, even if he can't quite mask how weary he is. You die once or twice, you've died a thousand times.]
Before I woke up, one of their robots was pokin' around with my blastia for who knows how long. I wanna check everything's still workin' like it should.
[The second thing, he'll get to later. This one takes priority.]
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[ he'd had similar concerns upon arriving here, and he's still wary of the foreign technology CERES replaced his own spyrix organs with.
which isn't to say he's sympathetic, but he's curious, especially if there's a chance it might give him some further insight into his own situation. ]
And this "poking around" was something one of your companions observed and relayed to you after the fact, or...?
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He doesn't mind the lack of sympathy, at least. He'd much rather just pretend the whole thing never happened than exhaust himself thinking about it too much.]
Anyway, it's okay if ya can't do much. Maybe ya can just monitor it? All I need ta know is whether I'm gonna keel over again any time soon.
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[ he's not sure if that's actually a question that can be answered by someone who was barely conscious at the time, but it's worth asking, even if rhetorically. ]
We didn't go into any detail before, so tell me how it usually works -- what biological functions it supports, what it uses for a power source, whether its effect is direct and mechanical or more complex... anything you think relevant.
[ he picks up his drink and takes a sip as he awaits the explanation. ]
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I'll cut a long and sad story short. Ten years ago, I fought in a war and lost my life. But my boss had been researching new blastia technology, the kind that could even raise the dead, and I was one of his little success stories.
[Not that Raven ever considered it that way, if the way he's reaching to take another drink is any indication. Booze is bound to make this conversation easier to get through. Once he's given Rideaux a few seconds for that to sink in, he continues.]
The blastia replaced my lost heart, and it was powerful enough to bring me back to life and keep me that way. Usually blastia are machines that convert aer into energy using a formula, lettin' people manipulate the elements to use magic or create barriers or change the weather or whatever. Mine's different: it runs on my own vitality instead of aer. That means I have ta try not to push it too hard, or I'm a goner.
[Hopefully Rideaux understands his problem, even if he'll never be a blastia expert. If it's not running as efficiently as it should because CERES have tampered with it, he'll be in trouble soon enough.]
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and there's no doubt in rideaux's mind that if it had existed in his world, and he'd met some untimely end before canaan appeared, bisley would have used it to bring him back just so he could kill him again when he needed his bridge.
bosses are the same in every world, he supposes. ]
So it functions in place of your heart to keep your circulation going, then.
[ almost everything raven just said sounds like he could have been talking about spyrix, which is interesting, though the concept of converting air into energy is something new that he doesn't quite understand (he can't hear that difference in spelling, okay), as is raven's description of his own situation. ]
"Runs on vitality," though? Meaning what, exactly? It's like some kind of perpetual motion machine where the pressure and kinetic energy of the flowing blood are what trigger the blastia to keep it pumping in the absence of contracting heart muscles?
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Hmm... That's a scientific and less of a poetic way of puttin' it, but yeah, it's somethin' like that. [He scratches his stubble thoughtfully. He's not even going to get into ideas like apatheia or the spirits for now. Best to just keep the explanation down to the nuts and bolts of it.]
So, d'you think you can help this old man or not? I can pay however much you need for the hassle.
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I do, but we can discuss the financials afterward. Honestly, it sounds fairly similar to the spyrix technology I'm used to working with. Though for something like an organ replacement the device would usually be implanted internally where the original organ was without anything visible outside.
[ that's how his are, and aside from the scarring, you wouldn't even know anything had been done from looking at him. ]
How deeply is it embedded? Does it extend all the way into the chest cavity where your heart was before and push the blood through directly, or is it just sending signals to a simpler device inside?
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[He grimaces. He's never had someone want to know all the gruesome details before, even if it is for a good reason.]
It's easier to show ya than to just explain. [He unbuttons his shirt, enough for Rideaux to take a look.] Blastia have two parts, the body and the core. The metal stuff you can see is the body, which controls the core. The red thing in the middle is the core itself. It's a sphere, so it's bigger than what you can just see on the outside. Then there'll be more of the body inside my chest holdin' it in place.
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All right. So is there some external control mechanism, or does maintenance actually involve going inside to make adjustments?
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[And lost along with Alexei. Good riddance to it.] Real maintenance needs a knowledge of formulas, which I can't give ya. The rest takes care of itself, unless it were to get damaged. Luckily it's seen it's fair share of battles without getting messed up.
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There would have to be some way of inputting those formulas, though, correct?
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[And if Alexei had taught him about how to use formulas or maintain his own blastia in the first place, well, that would involve handing over too much power when he wanted to keep him on a leash. Not that Raven cared -- at least not until recently.]
So, unless CERES are nice enough ta bring along some blastia instruction manual from Terca Lumireis, that's about all I can tell ya.
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How do blastia generally work, then? You said this one was an outlier, but it must share some commonalities with other forms.
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[He rummages through his pockets and pulls out his Cerevice even before Rideaux answers. They're pretty handy, all things considered.]
I guess the commonalities are that they all convert one form of energy into magic, even if the energy sources are different. And regardless of its original function, a lotta blastia can even be adapted ta use that magical energy as a weapon -- includin' mine.
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I know a couple of kids who might be willing ta loan me one of theirs, if ya like.
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If they actually have them with them, then yes, that would be ideal. If I can get a look at its inner workings to better understand the concepts behind the technology I should be able to apply that knowledge to yours as well.
[ maybe that sounds overly sure of himself, but this is the kind of thing he's famous for in his world, after all. ]
With that said, I don't think you have too much to worry about in the meantime as long as nothing feels off to you. There's no inflammation or anything that would indicate that they actually detached it from your skin and got inside to make any adjustments.
[ of course there hadn't been any outward sign that they'd gotten inside to switch rideaux's out either, but that replacement had been carried out before he even remembered waking up here, so those were likely special circumstances. ]
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[They'd been committed to giving up blastia back home, and so anything happening to their blastia here wouldn't exactly be much different... Handy as they are to have around. To Rideaux's assessment, he nods.]
Yeah. Nothing feels off, and if it wasn't working right I'd probably know about it long before now. But better safe than sorry. [He buttons up his shirt again. The less Raven has to worry about his dumb heart, the better.] Oh -- and I mentioned I had two favours to ask ya, right?
[He produces a vial, and holds it up for Rideaux to see.] This is the second. It's something me and my group swiped on our little misadventure, but it ain't labelled aside from some code number. Ya think you could identify it for us?
i'm glad i'm the kind of tales garbage that immediately knows whose doujin that icon is from
i'm a filthy tales novice and actually have no idea, I didn't make the icon pfft
lmfao WELL it's by amarans who does some good stuff if you're into yaoi...
ahh gotcha! I haven't found many good resources for translated doujins yet, tbh
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