isleofavalon | June Catch-all

Entry tags:

June Catch-all

🧙 WHO: Shiro, Shinryu, and you~
⚔️️ WHAT: A quest, a party, and a rescue mission
🕒 WHEN: June. Yep.
🗺️ WHERE: Camelot, the beach, underground
⚠️ WARNINGS: Potential violence and ptsd in the rescue - please, please, please opt out if that would be problematic for you!

Wetdding!
Sewing is an interesting proposition with one hand, but it does make it a lot easier when your familiar is willing to help. Shinryu is a quiet dragon at the moment, his scales shimmering the muted grey of a cloudy sky as he holds the little doll up for Shiro to work the needle through. They're currently at a cafe, large iced drinks next to them in the muggy heat and doll materials spread out neatly across the table.

Beach Party - pick your fun
A full-body wetsuit is a swimsuit, right? Apparently! Black suit, silver racing stripes, a sealed area over the missing right arm, and Shiro's in the water, swimming with his legs tight together sometimes, like a mermaid or a dolphin. He grins and shifts to treading water as someone approaches. "Hey! How's it going?"

He's a part of the ritual, and afterward he picks up the firework spell, but mostly he's helping to clear out the interior of the ship and poking curiously into different little piles of stuff. "Bermuda, huh? I'm not familiar with boats so much - what do you think it was carrying?"

Fight Ring - Rescuing (cw: potential violence, ptsd symptoms)
No. This will. Not. Stand. He won't let it happen again, new planet, new perpetrators, it doesn't matter. Shiro will not allow someone to kidnap and enslave others to force them to fight.

He sets his bag of pinecones down silently and works the lock till it clicks open. Carefully turning his HUD to full brightness so that the prisoner will be able to see his face clearly through the force screen, he eases the door open. "Don't speak - I'm here to get you out. Are you hurt?"

Fight Ring - Breaking up the Fight (cw: violence, ptsd)
The fight is just beginning when small projectiles suddenly are lobbed into the air from somewhere near the edge of the fight pit. Small and brown, they're not super easy to spot - that is until they burst simultaneously into flame and pop into hundreds of tiny embers to rain down into the surprised crowd. As shouts and screams and panic erupt, a black and white clad figure vaults over the wall and into the pit. "HOLD!" he roars at the fighters. "Stop the fight!"

Wildcard
Whether he's bartending at the karaoke bar, out for an early morning run before the day gets overwhelmingly gross, hanging out somewhere air-conditioned studying or practicing creating water marbles, Shiro is around town, and his inbox is always open.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Shiro doesn't have too much to be ashamed of, really. Not far away, Allura's working on the same project. And yet, even with both hands...

"Well? Is it starting to look any better?" She holds up her new Teru Teru Bozu, the second or third one she's attempted to assemble. While there's improvements over the first, it's still a mess with a lopsided face and a mouth that seems to be falling off the face.

In her defense, as Altean royalty, she never learned how to sew. She had more important tasks to learn, like how to fight or negotiate with the leaders of other worlds.

Shiro looks over and blinks. Well... she is getting better! He smiles.

"It's definitely better than the first one! At least you've got a smile on yours. I'm really not sure how we're supposed to do eyes." He sighs and straightens, stretching and raking back his forelock, which has been falling in his eyes for the past hour no matter what he does.

His stitching is pretty good, but it took him a few false starts to get the idea that you start a doll inside out. He hasn't even gotten to anything as complicated as a face yet. Shinryu sets the doll down and goes to bury his nose in Shiro's bubble tea with a deep sigh of contentment.

"I know how to repair small tears and put on patches, but I've never done anything this complex," he says. "Repairing clothes isn't exactly the same thing. And embroidery is way outside my wheelhouse." He gives her a warm, if slightly crooked smile. "Thanks for coming, Princess. It's nice to be able to do something relaxing together. We could both use the practice, huh?"

"Is it complex? It seems so small and simple, compared to the garments that I saw others make when the traders came."

And yet it's obvious she's struggling with it. She sets her new one with her first attempts — one extremely bad one with more of a scribble than an actual face, and one... attempt... which didn't really become a doll before she decided the mistakes were too grievous and abandoned it halfway through.

She should probably throw it away, but it's a useful marker for her progress.

"It is a nice change of pace from the constant battling. But I'm having some trouble relaxing." As if taking the cue, she picks up her own bubble tea and takes a small sip of it. Tea is supposed to help with things like that, right? "I can't help but picture how the storm sprites might react when they see these."

Chuckling, he shakes his head. "Yeah, somehow I'm not sure the sprites will be excited by these. Maybe we'll just... keep these ones out of sight. I've never really sewn around a form like this, and it shows."

He leans back in his chair and coaxes Shinryu out of the drink and into his lap where he can pet the little dragon. Usually Shinryu is an active part of conversation, or at least inserted his own tart comments. But today he's quiet, laying still and allowing himself to be pet. "Relaxing isn't really something I'm programmed to do anymore. There's always something to be doing. If I'm deliberately not doing something, it feels wrong, almost." He half shrugs, brushing it off. "I know it'll be fine the longer we're here. Just got to reset things a little. Though it would help if the weather were more cooperative. Heat I can handle, but I am really not used to humidity like this."

"Really? I thought Earth's atmosphere was saturated with water like this all the time." Then again, he's been away a long time, hasn't he? Maybe it's silly to expect he would still find it normal.

She starts laying out some fabric for the next attempt at a doll. "But I think I understand what you mean, in a way. I'm not sure if I would ever try something like this if I wasn't curious about the reward. And I'm already thinking ahead to other quests I might want to try..."

"Mm, it depends on where you are. There are places that are high in humidity, but where we were stationed, the Garrison area is pretty arid country. If it gets this humid there, there is some kind of dangerous storm in the area, and there will probably be flash flooding."

"What sorts of quests were you thinking about? I've been keeping an ear out for various things, but no luck so far." Setting his drink back down, he settles into gently scritching along the fluffy ridges of Shinryu's body. A very soft chime-like hum hangs in the air about them.

"Naturally, I've been considering all the quests that pop up requiring defending others from threats, but..."

She sets the fabric aside (some of which is quite colorful — maybe a touch of rainbows will make the dolls more appealing, where skill alone has failed?) and pulls out her phone to check the application.

"My bruises haven't yet faded from the last fight. So... perhaps I should be spending more time on tasks like these, before I push myself too far." Her tone is a little reluctant, though. Is that any surprise, though? She didn't rest willingly after she nearly killed herself saving the Balmera, either.

His brows crinkle with concern. "Princess, resting is just as important as the fight. Pushing yourself too hard too fast makes a person more likely to make mistakes and get themselves or someone else hurt. We can't lose you." It feels somehow unfinished, like there's some sort of resolution left unsaid, but he doesn't fix that chord.

"We really could use someone with healing magics," he sighs, "if only to help us all stay on our feet after rough fights. I don't know about you, but it feels like we all tend to attract those. The spiders, Keith and I had an adventure with giant bees, the defense against the minotaur..." He shakes his head with a wry smile. "I take it back - things aren't that different from outer space. Just lower stakes, mostly."

He coaxes Shinryu to roll over onto his back and hold the doll while Shiro gets back to the remaining stitches on his project.

"I know." Shiro wouldn't know it, but that's the same intonation she would reply to her father with, whenever he gave her his guidance. "That's exactly why I'm trying to work on some less strenuous quests, in the meantime. At least that way, it wouldn't feel as though I'm staying too idle..."

"Well, at any rate, we may not have any healers as part of Team Voltron yet, but they are not in short supply otherwise." She starts pulling the next doll together, making it with one white sheet on the outside and the colored fabrics spilling out from underneath, like a layered skirt on a poofy ballgown. "Maybe... we should start consolidating our contacts. Start building a new coalition, of sorts."

Shiro hums interestedly, frowning as he works out how to get a knot as close to the fabric as possible. "That could be interesting. It feels like there aren't a lot of... Mm. Allied groups? People have friends across groups, and some groups are larger than others, but I haven't met a lot of people yet who have been real allies, exactly. But we're all working toward the same goal. Historically speaking, more gets accomplished with a hierarchical leadership rather than a bunch of loosely aligned groups."

There! Shiro hands over the needle to Shinryu, whose colors become a little more saturated, a little more blue, and the familiar begins to deftly embroider a face on the doll. It leaves Shiro free to lean on his elbow and watch Allura work.

"What were you thinking of doing?"

"There is the leadership of King Arthur to consider as well. For the most part, he seems to be hands-off in his governance, but as far as nominating a coalition leader... it might be best to gain his approval on the matter first." You know, just so there's no chance of him feeling undermined.

She frowns, setting the doll in progress aside again and checking her phone. "Specifically? I'm not sure yet. It seems like QuestBoard is particularly violent this month..." Her eyes stray down to the one about the 'scarlet butcher', the best example of her point. "But at least I can keep refreshing, to see if more turn up, like this dollmaking task."

"Mm." Shiro hums noncommittally. He's uneasy about their as-yet-unseen host. The most he's seen of the government are the town guard and Merlin. Who seems pretty unpredictable, and not much interested in their guests unless he can get something from them. It feels too much like the Arcana of liminal space for him to be comfortable. Shinryu helpfully cuts the thread and sets the doll down, laying as close to the junction as possible to keep the head still while Shiro... gives up on the idea of embroidery and grabs a permanent marker instead.

"It has me a little worried," he admits, "all the violence. Some help keeping the peace is one thing, but a serial killer is another. I'm gathering as much data as I can, but even so, I'm tempted to wear the armor undersuit beneath my clothes just in case. At least it would take the brunt of an attack, for the most part. But without a clearer pattern established, it's going to be difficult to narrow down the operating range."

As he brings up wearing some armor under her clothes, a thoughtful look crosses Allura's mind, and her eyes focus on her half-finished doll. She had already been thinking about the traders because of this task, since a few months prior they had been teaching ways to create magic clothing. Maybe...

"Maybe we ought to ask the Elphame Traders, in case they have something that could help protect us and others. Something protective that everyone could wear under their clothes. Or... something that would allow us to don our armor instantaneously." She leans her chin on her hand. "After all, protecting their customers is in their best interest, isn't it?"

Shiho's familiar, dressed in a grey-blue kimono, is dutifully sewing away at an equally tiny doll. Shiho has a doll in her hand as well as a needle, but as she ties her last stitch she can't help but put the doll aside and flop over, reaching for her drink.

"My head hurts and my fingers are cramping..."

This is only her first one though. And it definitely needs improvement.

Shiro sighs and sits back, sticking his needle in a bit of cloth as Shinryu sets it down for him. He stretches, and there's at least one pop in his back somewhere. "Mmph. I know the feeling. This is a lot of tiny work, and tiny does not make it easy." He relaxes and steals his taro boba tea from under his familiar's nose... who doesn't even protest, just sighs and slinks into Shiro's lap. (Shiro gives him one of the pearls, don't worry.)

"I wonder if the waitress would be willing to bring us a few towels soaked in cold water. Then at least we could have something on the back of our necks," he muses. There are hints of sleepless bruising beginning beneath his eyes, his usual easy-going energy muted by heat and humidity at the very least.

"How are you holding up?"

Shiho winces a little as he stretches and she hears the pop. Even if that wince quickly becomes a smile when he takes the boba from his poor familiar. Should dragons even be eating boba? Tama turns to look at Shiho, a twitch of the tip of its tail, definitely interested in a drink of its own.

"You're kind of like a granny, aren't you?"

Or like a Minamoto. But there's only fondness in her voice as she stretches too.

"...I'll be fine. I'm young, after all. You though..."

His dark circles get a raise of her eyebrow, "How are you holding up? I could just go get us the towels. Probably."

A peculiar expression - like he's trying to decide if that was a compliment or an insult - crosses Shiro's face. It becomes a bit dismayed at the implication that He Is Old.

"I'm all right," he protests. "I'm not going to collapse on you or anything - I'm not that old..." He probably shouldn't pout at his age, and yet. Just for a moment.

Then he sighs and fishes out an ice cube for Shinryu to lick and cronch. "I guess making sure everyone is okay got stuck in the on position pretty permanently for me. I'm sorry if it others you - I'll try to be less obvious about it." He gives her a wink.

Shiho tries her best not to laugh and fails spectacularly as he pouts.

"I never said it bothered me."

Is what she manages to say between giggles. Sorry, Shiro, as far as she's concerned everyone older than her is immediately considered old.

"Watch Tama for me? I'm going to get her something to drink too."

Recognizing what is making her laugh, he lets his pout deepen. But he can't hold it and shakes his head with a wry smile. "One day you, too, will be this old. But yeah, go ahead. Maybe Tama can give me some sewing pointers." He tips a little wink at the cat.

The fact he can't hold the pout only makes her laugh again though it peters off eventually into a smile back at him.

"One day I will but then what will you be, hm?"

There's nothing mean about it though, her expression bright and cheerful especially now that she's actually standing up and going to get treats instead of hunched over sewing. Tama's tail curls pleased at the idea of being able to help, giving one quick nod before scooting over to be a little closer and see how it could be of service.

Meanwhile Shiho will be ordering not just a small drink to share with Tama but some cookies for them all to share. After all, nothing helps one's mood better than something sweet, right?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

June Catch-all

Wetdding!

Re: Wetdding!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Wetdding!

Re: Wetdding!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject