isleofavalon | LATE AF SEPT CATCHALL

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LATE AF SEPT CATCHALL

🧙 WHO: Kadoc and a bunch of people, including perhaps your character?!
⚔️️ WHAT: There sure is a lot of dumb shit happening in the month of September. Both OPEN and CLOSED prompts, the latter in the comments!
🕒 WHEN: IT'S—the month of September. (More specifically, the span from the beginning of the month to the first part of the event, ending before any dragon problems!)
🗺️ WHERE: Here there and everywhere, including Celliwig, ~the club~, straight up prison, and other assorted places around Camelot.
⚠️ WARNINGS: Eventual branding/tattoo/pain stuff, the subsequent servitude that comes along with that prompt, language, sexual themes in ~the club~, likely violence/actiony antics in the jailbreak, animal capture and implied slaughter for food in the event prompt, and I'll add anything else!

1. Kadoc the Stubborn Husky (early Sept., OPEN, thanks a lot Claude)

[Kadoc needs a second opinion. Maybe even a third, fourth, and further opinions. Claude is a lovable scamp and all, but Kadoc is a paranoid bastard, and he can't quite convince himself that he's not being had with the whole—howling thing. He sounds fine to his own ears! He's probably not an Animal Mage, although boy would this be a typically embarrassing way for that to make itself known if he were!

He needs confirmation, but after how that went with Claude, he can't quite bring himself to walk up to anyone and just start talking. What if he really is making dog noises?! So, instead, he's gathering his courage to approach people he recognizes as offworlders and . . . hold up his tablet, on which he has a Notes file open, with this typed in a large, visible font:]

I NEED YOUR HELP. NOTHING DANGEROUS.

[ . . . This could have been ~~an email~~ a network post, but he's not exactly on his game right now. Who can blame him?]

2. Jailhouse Rock (early Sept., CLOSED to Kate, Jailbreak quest)
Here!

3. Amanita Bigger Basket (early Sept., CLOSED to Ritsuka, Celliwig's month of magical mushes)
Here!

4. Super Smash Bros Part 2: The Revenge of the Smash (mid Sept., CLOSED to Itaru, The Pain-Tolerant Badass)
Here!

5. Your Obedient Servant (mid Sept., CLOSED to Rinea, The Caring Badass)
Here!

6. Lukewarm Knights (mid Sept., CLOSED to Gareth and Ritsuka, Hot Knights quest)
Here!

7. Jailbreak Part 2: The Great Goosening (late Sept., OPEN, the cute part of the event)

[Kadoc has had, to say the least, an unlucky month—but here finally there's a break, or at least a small pleasure. He's already spent plenty of time out in the wilderness gathering mushrooms this month and was debating whether to bother going on an end-of-month hunt, only for the hunt to come to him for once. A chance to grab a pre-fattened goose for their table to go with all those mushrooms? Don't mind if he does!

The geese have other ideas, of course. By now, Kadoc's managed to humanely return several of them to the farm; his Light magic helps there. It's no big deal to snap them up in cages of hard light and then carry those back to where they belong. But geese are smart. Geese are watching him. And when he finally snaps up the fattest of the geese he can find to take home for himself, shutting it up in another light cage and hefting it under his arm, that's when they make their move.

Catch Kadoc racing down the streets of Camelot, vaguely in the direction of his home, but mostly just in any direction that's away from the ten furious honking geese in hot pursuit of him. He's only barely watching where he's going. Watch out, or you could get swept up in this disaster and end up a feather pillow yourself!

Or save him. Someone, please save him from this entire month.]

(( Check out my plotting meme post here if you're interested in setting anything else up with Kadoc this month outside of the upcoming event; I'm happy to oblige! Also if I forgot to get one up hmu. It was a lot lol ))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Mushroom names aren't really known for their creativity.

[Sometimes you name a mushroom and then someone else finds a mushroom that looks kind of the same, and it just ends up being called "false" [name of other mushroom]. That kind of thing.

That aside, it's not like Kadoc didn't notice how conspicuously she just left that topic behind there, and he gives her a flat look even as he answers her question. She's not going to get out of this with mushroom talk!]

You didn't even pretend to finish that sentence.

Yeah, and you're not supposed to point that kinda thing out.

[ SIGH. There are rules, Kadoc!!

But she pokes at a red SATAN MUSHROOM a couple of of times with a finger, listlessly, then sighs. ]

I dunno how much you know about the other Lostbelts... but there were a bunch of giants in Scandinavia. The Director kind of lost his mind a little the first time we ran into any. Given the circumstances, I'm gonna assume they were as close to the kinds that you might've once found in Proper Human History, too.

We never got great at dodging them, but we got better at it as time went on.

So it was like that. Jötnar, huh? Or that's what I'm guessing. We can't actually just travel between Lostbelts or anything like that any more easily than you can, so I've never seen any of the others. Not yet, anyway.

[He knows he's headed to Wodime's, though. He'll presumably wake up there, when the strange dream that is Camelot has ended, if it ever does. That's an impossible sequence of events to conceptualize in his head. Now isn't the time to dwell on it; Kadoc has already, time and time again, and he never gets anywhere with it.

Kadoc goes to slice that mushroom off at the base, giving her a side-eye as he does. Cut the mushrooms, Fujimaru!]

. . . It's not like I blame you for being reluctant to tell me. I'm not gonna push it.

It's just weird.

[ Wow she'll cut them in a moment, jeeze. Some things aren't really suited for multitasking. ]

They were your friends--or, fine, at least your teammates, right? It feels like I'm giving you bad news, but you've probably guessed some of what's happened.

[ He knows that she's denied three Lostbelts by now, including his own. He knows which two they were. And he's a pessimistic sort of guy; the fact that he still expected her to be hostile to him after they'd spared his life in Russia says a lot. Surely Kadoc has no illusions about what happened to Ophelia and Hinako.

...Even if Hinako's circumstances are a little more complicated. ]

The way the Scandinavian Lostbelt was run--it was just a different kind of desperate than Russia. The balance might have been even more delicate. The giants were part of that.

[For him, multitasking mushrooms with this is a fabulous distraction. He focuses on that, at first, instead of on answering: clipping them near the base one by one, with his too-big knife, making neat and precise little cuts and then dropping each one into a basket according to type. It's soothing in its repetition. It gives him something to look at that isn't Fujimaru while she's discussing the fate of his . . .

Not friends. They hadn't really been. It'd been complicated. They probably wouldn't have mourned him, if he'd been killed in Russia the way he should've been.

But—

Anyway. Kadoc watches his hands, snipping stems.]

. . . The Lostbelts are all Lostbelts for a reason. They're all desperate. They're all dead ends. Just like this world we're in now. . . . Don't get me wrong, I didn't really care about the Yaga. Nothing I did had anything to do with them at all. But I did believe they stood a chance if they could get one. They felt like . . . a people who had what it'd take to succeed, if they hadn't had to use it all up just on surviving another day instead. It was a whole Maslow situation. You know Maslow, right?

[None of this has anything to do with Ophelia or Akuta. But what would he say that did, that felt right, needed, appropriate?]

...Not personally, but who knows? Ask me again in a few months.

[ It's a joke, a joke. Though it's quieter than usual, something that is halfhearted and she knows it. She's still idly prodding at the first of the poisonous mushrooms, trying to gather her thoughts. Maslow, Maslow, where has she heard that before... ah. ]

That's the guy with the hierarchy pyramid, right? The things that you need, as a living thing. I don't have it memorized or anything, but yeah, I know about it.

And I wouldn't even argue with you. Between the Yaga and the people in Scandinavia... I think the Yaga would have been better-equipped to survive.

[ In Scandinavia and in China both. The Yaga might have feared the thing that Ivan had become, but the existence of the rebellion at all had been a spark of independence, a desire for things outside of the secure, safe regimes that both of the other Lostbelts had existed under. ]

[Okay, the joke is funny, though, and Kadoc snorts at it openly—though he's glad he's not a more effusive person right now, because he can also easily recognize the heavy quiet that comes along with the topic. Well. They'd come out here partially for this, hadn't they? Exactly this kind of talk.]

Yeah, the pyramid guy. The point is that it's impossible to even think about, much less fulfill, the higher objectives on the pyramid when the base of the pyramid goes unfulfilled. Literally all of the Yagas' energy went to the most basic human needs, to survive just one more day. No one who lives like that has enough left in them to begin thinking about "living" beyond pure survival. But I believed that if something changed—if society there changed enough that those people had a pyramid base to build up on—their strength could've been turned to great things instead.

. . . Not that I was fighting for their sake. But I think you know that. Don't let me make myself sound like some benevolent freedom fighter when I'm not that type at all.

I know you're not. Neither am I.

[ She says it without rancor or accusation. He's not that sort of guy--she does believe what Mash and Da Vinci have said about him, that he's kinder than he might initially appear, but Ritsuka knows very well that kindness doesn't necessarily mean that kind of selflessness. Neither of them come anywhere close to qualifying as saints, no matter how well they treat the others around them.

He's not a savior. Neither is she. ]

Scandinavia and China were almost the opposite of that. China especially. Everything the people could need or want was just given to them, almost immediately. No one was sick, no one went hungry... and in Scandinavia people were protected and cared for, as long as they stayed in their villages.

But that's the thing. It was like... their needs were being met, and it was like all the life had just been sucked out of them. There wasn't any fight in them at all. They believed everything that the Lostbelt Kings told them.

[Kadoc looks up at her at that, lowering his knife: Neither am I. Part of him wants, reflexively, to protest it. She's the hero of the story, isn't she? The protagonist. The woman who saved the world, and is working on a second round of the same. But that's stupid—he'd used the exact same revelation against her in Russia himself, exposing to her that, no, what she's doing isn't an act of pure and victimless good. The hope back then had been that it would break her. It hadn't. But now, if nothing else, there's no question that they both know exactly what they both are.

Still, hearing her put herself on a level with him is something else.]

. . . I never got any more than secondhand reports of them. Honestly? I never put a lot of thought into them. The writing's always been on the wall that Wodime will come out of this on top. So the only Lostbelts I ever bothered to imagine becoming the new reality were his and my own. Most of them aren't actually well suited to it. There're worse waiting for you, too. I've been taking it for granted for a long time now that if something insane were to happen, like Beryl's Lostbelt winning? I'll be dead for it anyway, so why bother thinking about it?

[He stares down at a poison mushroom, then clips it off at the base. Last one in this patch; he tosses it into the basket and moves to stand, brushing off his hands.]

. . . Listen up, Fujimaru. Don't even think about taking Wodime down before you take down Beryl or Daybit, if you manage by some miracle to get that far.

Too late.

[ She says it with some good humor, as wry as it is. Don't think about taking down Kirschtaria Wodime first, huh? Too late for sure. When he stands, she does too. ]

We were actually going to go there third. Da Vinci and Holmes were making plans from the beginning--it was just that we had to take a detour because of what happened to me. And I guess there's something that needs to be done in the Indian Lostbelt, too? I don't really know the details.

But we weren't planning on leaving the hardest one for last. Why run away from it, when you know where the enemy is?

[He heads slightly deeper into the woods, nodding her along wordlessly, keeping an eye out for another good patch. But the mushroom hunt is really just something physical to do while his attention is largely on the conversation, which is an important one now, not just small talk.]

This isn't about the tactical strategy involved in taking us down.

[Still "us." Selectively "us." Kadoc wouldn't include himself in any positive sense of feeling like a team at this point, but he absolutely will if it means reminding her he's still associated with the enemy, still at fault for the part he'd played in their plans.]

And it's not about honor, or bravery. It's about the big picture. What I'm telling you is that if you somehow, miraculously, take down Wodime, and then Beryl takes you down? You're dooming the world on a totally different level than if it happens the other way around.

[ She hesitates just a beat on that "us." She heard it, and she understands it--he's not wrong, in some ways. Even though he'd agreed to help Chaldea, it had been under duress; he's only a tenuous, uneasy ally at best.

But that's never stopped her, either. It's mostly just... sad, she thinks, that he's so prickly about it. Just because she understands why he might feel that way doesn't make it feel any better. And it can't be that great for him, either, right? ]

We'll see. Don't worry, we know better than to think that if we manage to take out the last boss early, the other midbosses aren't dangerous.

[ Like Kirschtaria--like all the Crypters have been, until she'd gone to their Lostbelts--she doesn't know much about Beryl. He's just a staff photo and a brief blurb from Da Vinci... though, thinking about it, she knows even less about him than the others, but there'd been something very telling in that lack of knowledge, too. The less said, the better. Move on. He's clearly not a safe guy. ]

But if my team thinks it's better to focus on the Grecian Lostbelt first, I'll trust their judgment.

[Even though Kadoc rolls his eyes, visibly, at the comparison to a final boss versus midbosses . . . she's not exactly wrong. Mostly. (He'd call himself something like a tutorial mode boss, and Daybit could probably qualify as a last boss himself. But close enough.)]

I'm just telling you, as someone closer to the situation than any of they are. Not that I blame you for not trusting me in comparison to Da Vinci.

[Because . . . she'd definitely implied earlier that Da Vinci is still alive, right? She said Da Vinci and Holmes had been making plans from the beginning, but "the beginning" can't possibly have been as early as when Da Vinci had supposedly been killed.]

. . . Were you gonna tell me what happened to her?

...It's complicated.

[ Ah. There it is. She'd half-expected him to call her out again, and now that he has, she has to take a breath and just do it. Whatever he might say about his time with Chaldea, she already knows he has his regrets. And considering how kindly Da Vinci thought of him, he surely got along well enough with her...

Knowing that only makes it harder to say aloud, though. ]

She knew, you know? Or at least she guessed, that something would go wrong when the Mage's Association showed up. I don't think she anticipated as far as, you know... what really happened, but I don't think she expected to survive, but she thought that she'd still need to be around.

...It was the priest. We'd all made it down to the hangar to get away, and he just...

[ She wavers for a second, then takes a deep breath. ]

He just, his hand went right through her, but she wouldn't let go. I'm pretty sure it was because of that that we managed to get away at all.

[He comes to the base of a tree, trudging through fallen leaves, and just looks down at another little patch of mushrooms growing here without really looking at them.

. . . What does he say? What does he even feel? Kadoc had had mixed feelings on Da Vinci: she falls into that Genius Mage category he feels complicated about and always will. But, at the same time, she'd always been simpler to deal with than most, by virtue of existing entirely outside of modern mage society's politics. She was no Wodime, deeply entrenched in the Clock Tower. She was a spirit, already long dead, simply borrowing this world for her work the same way it was borrowing her for her genius. Mourning a Servant is always a different feeling.

Not that he hasn't. Boy, has he ever.

But she had always been honest in her superiority, and that had been refreshing. She looked down on Kadoc like all mages do, but openly, and equally along with everyone else. She never singled him out as especially pathetic. From her perspective, he wasn't, and he'd known and appreciated the cold comfort that was.

She knew . . . yeah. Of course she did. She must despise Kadoc now, but that's fine. It's not like he can blame her for it. He'd chosen that path.

And Fujimaru . . . he doesn't exactly have the right to comfort her, either. What is he supposed to say? "Sorry about that time our invasion, which I was in on, brutally murdered your Acting Director, a woman I'd known and trusted for years?" And leaving that context out isn't fair. . . . It's pointless to make any overture here, anyway.]

. . . He's brutal. I know that's rich coming from me. I'm not trying to pin this on him when it's on me too. I'm just saying, as a statement of truth, that priest is on some unimaginable level of inhumanity. His whole situation was a mess that not even I figured out until he took pity on me and told me.

I'm not surprised he went that far. That was the mission. I'm more surprised you got away at all.

Edited 2021-10-28 04:44 (UTC)

I could tell.

[ Ritsuka still has a lot of unprocessed feelings about what happened to Da Vinci--her death had been messier and more permanent than what had happened to Kadoc, but at the same time... that priest had still been the uniting factor. He'd killed Da Vinci mere seconds before she could reach the Shadow Border, and he'd killed--"killed"--Kadoc rather than let Chaldea keep him. And he'd laughed both times, that deep, mocking, genuinely pleased at the horror he'd caused.

But even before that--before any of the actual trouble had started--when he'd just been masquerading as a normal priest and part of Goredolf's little contingent--he'd given her bad vibes. Something about the flatness in his eyes, the insincere sharp edges of his smile, and the deliberate weight in his words had all been uncomfortable from the beginning. ]

I could tell that guy was a creeper from the get-go. He was one of the people who questioned me, you know? He was just acting like he was a normal priest, but I got the chills every time he talked to me.

[ She can't quite look at Kadoc as she says this. This feels weird and big between the both of them, coming from completely opposite sides to agree on one thing: Father Kotomine is bad news. ]

...Anyway, he did kill her, but--she'd prepared like... I don't know. Maybe she's technically a homunculus? But she had a back-up created. She is and she isn't the Da Vinci we knew. She remembers everything, but it's just--memories. Like the way you'd know the stuff that happened in a movie, but you never actually lived through it, so they're not really your memories.

. . . That sounds like her, yeah.

[Kadoc, in turn, isn't aware Ritsuka isn't looking at him, because he's also not looking at her. This sure is turning out to be a productive mushroom hunt, for all the focusing on harvesting those that he's doing because it's something else to focus on. At least to focus his eyes on. His attention is still entirely on her; in fact, he has to stop when he accidentally tosses a poisonous mushroom into the wrong basket, letting out a breath of relief that he caught it and then sitting down to go through that basket more carefully and make sure that's the only time he made that mistake.]

A homunculus wouldn't be beyond her capabilities. She'd have an advantage over modern-day mages, even if her time was centuries after the Age of Gods. She still comes from a time when Mystery was abundant in the world.

[Then he stops, staring into the basket blankly for a moment, before hazarding an awkward,]

. . . I'm . . .

. . . I shouldn't've doubted she'd find a way. I'm . . . glad I was wrong.

[ She's still not as good at identifying mushrooms as he is, but when he stops to start sorting things, she remains standing to hover awkwardly for a second, then finally crouches down herself to watch, and to help where she can. ]

It's been... kind of weird. Like, she definitely does act a lot like the old Da Vinci, but she's always the first one to remind people that they're not the same. You can't even say it's like someone who has amnesia in a story. She knows everything that's happened.

[ She picks up one of the non-poisonous mushrooms, twirling it a little in her fingers. ]

But... yeah. For what it's worth, there's a part of her that's still around.

[Thankfully, that one mushroom mistake was the only one they've made so far. But he's still going to take his time going through them, mostly as an excuse to be doing something more mindless for this part of this particular conversation. Mushrooms are pleasantly squishy and earthy, filling his nose with soothing nature scents.]

. . . I'm not gonna apologize. Or say something trite and comforting, like, that must be hard, or whatever. I'm not the right person for that. And apologies are cheap as hell.

But thanks. For telling me. You didn't have to. You're under no obligation to offer me any information about Chaldea on any level.

That sort of thing can go both ways.

[ She rocks back on her heels; it seems like he's got a handle on the mushroom sorting, so she can just take the moment to take a breath and let it out. It is hard, he's not wrong, even if it comes as part of his defense--but it does feel good to say it. There's some relief in telling him, however he might feel about or take that information. ]

It's not because of Chaldea or anything like that. It's because you were someone who also knew her, and who she thought kindly of. Whether or not you think you deserve it, she only said good things about you.

[ Not that she thinks this will change anything major for him. But maybe someday, in the future, he can take some proper comfort in knowing he wasn't as dismissed as he clearly still thinks he is. ]

. . . You know why I can't take that too seriously, right?

[He doesn't actually want this to be a fight, so he's delicate in saying it. It's not an accusation; it's a genuine question, and the beginning of an explanation. Maybe she really doesn't know. She should, if she doesn't, and he'll just have to tell her. By now he's just sitting on the ground, cross-legged, relaxing with his shrooms for the moment.]

The situation's changed. Whatever she told you about me, I bet it was before I turned my back on Chaldea. Or at least before she knew I had. The same goes for Kyrielight and everyone else. They had a certain impression of me, but there's no way that hasn't changed. . . . I played a hand no one expected me to be holding, and they're not dumb enough to not take that into their account of me now.

I know. But I also think you aren't giving either of them enough credit.

[ Ritsuka isn't the sort of person who tends towards paranoia or worry, but she's at least had experience with people who do. And Kadoc isn't even the most heavily skewed in that direction of all the many types she's met in her career as Chaldea's Master. ]

You don't have to get it, and you don't have to believe me, but I'd bet you actual money that you'll be surprised at how she treats you.

[He goes to argue, and can't, so it initially just comes out as a low grumble instead. And with that he pushes to his feet again to grab the basket. Onward they go. Finally:]

I'm not dumb enough to take that bet. I've already been surprised enough by you to know it might shake out that way . . . if I ever see any of them again. But I'll never take that for granted, either. I'll never let myself believe it unless it actually happens.

That's okay. I can believe enough for the both of us.

[ Enough for the both of them, and for an entire world that may or may not be beyond help. Ritsuka would personally say that her greatest strength is her inability to give up--but she is aware that she has a certain capacity for belief that might verge on madness, to some. That's fine. She's comfortable with this part of herself.

She falls into step next to him, occasionally looking around for any other patches of mushrooms, but mostly keeping an eye on his face. ]

Why would you want to? . . . It sounds like it makes you happy that someone might forgive me for everything I've pulled. I can get you thinking that's the way things are. You know them all better than I do at this point, however many years I lived with them. But it's one thing to know, and one thing to be all chipper and shit about it!

[He grimaces at her. Seriously, what is her deal? Why is she like this, and for him in particular? Was she that emotionally scarred by his death? . . . He would have expected her to feel nothing but disappointment for the loss of his valuable information.]

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