ximilialog | MINGLE | The "Everyone's Tired and Hungry" Post-Mission Pizza Party

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MINGLE | The "Everyone's Tired and Hungry" Post-Mission Pizza Party

CHARACTERS: Everyone! A free-for-all general chill-out time, thrown haphazardly together by a mad scientist.
LOCATION: The Mess Hall
DATE: Sometime after the mission. Y'all know.
CONTENT: The Orb Crew tries to relax for a hot goddamn minute.
WARNINGS: Likely drinking or drunkenness, the usual party antics. Very mildly image heavy, NSFW for naughty threads, properly marked.

It seems the party has been properly set up for you all! But of course, there's an exuberant amount of 'Newton*' flair added to it, and people can find all sorts of random things — markers for drawing on the pizza boxes (which he distinctly requested, super important) cover the tables, and it's clear by the one designed like a Pikachu and a dinosaur that he's already began scribbling on them. He's also made... board games literally comprised of pizza boxes as well, including Chess and Connect Four, which is lovingly set up side-by-side on a table and done with intent to annoy.

They've got one deck of cards for games, no chips; you'll have to just make some of your own out of pizza box cardboard. The most grand of all creation appears to be a normal-sized Skeeball table, made of flimsy material, with oranges for balls. It may or may not last the night, but it sure works for now!

There's a very strong bottle of liquor from their last mission open for everyone, and, well, it will get you drunk quite fast if you're not careful. But it's also a Bring Your Own Beer situation; hope you guys asked Viv for some to plan for the party!

Lastly, there's classic bar rock playing from an iPhone rigged to a speaker that looks very very cobbled together, from loose bits and bobs from the lab's many boxes. If you go fiddle with that phone's playlist, you may be able to find a small collection of songs that aren't rock, but are likely from the 90's or early 2000's.

And yes, there is a couch with a sign on it, designated specifically for people who wish to nap. If they'd like. Don't be rude, let people lay down when they're sleepy. (Maybe Newton just put that there for him, honestly.) There are 50 pizzas total, which is practically a whole-ass pizza per person, so enjoy! (And thanks, Viv!)

Feel free to bring your own flair to the party, if you'd like.

These are just a few things for a m b i e n c e.

(*If you mention him, he will appear like a terrible omen.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Syrlya chews thoughtfully, pausing to consider. "I... suppose some of them look like that. But the Elder Dragons are more elemental. They're great, primordial forces that regulate the magical energy that sustains Tyria. However, the... previous generation did so through cycles of consuming and releasing it that destroyed life in Tyria each time. We have been fighting to prevent the same fate this cycle."

"Sounds hard," he comments, knowing that there's no way that can be anything but an understatement. "It's still amazing to me that you and others here come from worlds powered by magic. Hard to figure out what that's like. We sure don't have dragons, for starters."

After a sip of whiskey, though, he has an idea. "Here's a two-person game. You say something you've done, or make something up. I tell you whether I think it's true or a lie. If I guess wrong, I drink. If I guess right, you drink. Then we switch. Want to give it a shot?"

It's a party, right? Might as well try to keep the conversation lighthearted. And the sips will stay small too, since he knows his own tendency to get serious, sad, and awfully quiet if he has too much.

It is an understatement, but Syrlya knows it's hard to put into words how harrowing racing against the end of the world is. So he let's that go, raising a brow as Rosinante offers a game instead.

"Sounds a little like those tram building exercises." He smiles wryly. "But all right. Will you start?"

"The ones on the network? Yeah, a bit like that. Never joined in, though." For his own reasons, which publicly were mostly a lack of understanding on how to use the network at the time but in truth he kept out of it on account of general paranoia.

One person at a time, with things spoken rather than recorded for all to see later, that's far more his style.

He nods as he thinks on it a moment and tops off his glass, then slouches comfortably in his seat. "All right. I once had to sail by myself through a North Blue storm at night in nothing more than a lifeboat."

Syrlya props his chin on his hand, looking at Rosi with careful consideration.

"I am going to assume that's true. What is North Blue?"

"Close. Drink up and I'll tell you."

Look, he almost started with a truth, and the game isn't a game if you play fair, the point is to get a good few drinks in you, or that's what he figures. That and find out more about Syrlya, but he'll give his own answers too when called for.

"North Blue's the sea I'm from. Cold, dangerous, full of bad weather and worse sailing. That lifeboat was nothing more than a dinghy with a sail, I could've stretched out and taken up the whole thing, but there were two of us who had to fit in there. Tight quarters. Glad neither of us fell overboard."

Syrlya raises a brow before leaning back to grab his glass and take a sip--and his nose scrunches as soon as the whiskey hits his mouth, but he swallows it.

"Oh, so half-truths are valid but only count as lies." He smirks wryly. "How did you get lost at sea?"

"When did I say I was lost?" he counters with a smile so confident it might count as cocky. As he starts to talk, though, it fades, and his voice turns more serious.

"We'd picked up a kid some time back who had nowhere else to go, so we took him in, figured he could help out around the ship. But he got sick. I took him from island to island, looking for a doctor who could figure out how to help him. Couldn't wait for bad weather, he was getting worse every day."

And that kid is now out there alone somewhere. Well, or maybe not, maybe someone else took him in by now. That's all Rosinante can hope. Law's smart and resourceful and maybe now he even has the means to get better, but that doesn't mean he's all right on his own.

"Should be all right now though," he says, then nods toward Syrlya. "And that means it's your turn."

Oh. Syrlya's expression slips a little with surprise. That sounds, honestly, even more dire than getting stuck in a storm.

"Oh--right." The game. He lowers his glass. "Hm, I have flown in the air before."

Was that a good one? Maybe he shouldn't overthink it.

"Let's see. Your world has magic," he considers aloud as he toys with his glass. Can magic make people fly? Probably, if it can turn people into monsters and heal injuries and whatever else he's heard of so far.

"Gonna say that's true."

"Are you going to think everything is true because of magic?" He raises a brow, but does take a sip. Because Rosinante isn't wrong, although 'magitech ship' and 'a griffon' are probably some of the least magical explanations.

"For the record, I don't fly. It's always been as a passenger."

The first question sounds rhetorical enough where Rosinante replies with a shrug and a half-smile. Who's to say what the boundaries of magic are? He knows a handful of people back home with devil fruit powers they've warped into making some sort of flight possible, so it seemed reasonable enough. More reasonable than big elemental dragons, anyway.

"Still must've been cool, being a passenger. I've never flown. Was it for long? How high?" he asks, trying to picture the view of his own world from above. What would that be like?

"Not quite into the clouds, but close. It's ranged from a few minutes to a few hours, usually. Only once did I have to stay on a ship for a few days."

Which, honestly, is more comfortable than sleeping on the ground at least. He can't find a lot to complain about there.

The last part feels like a non-sequitur. What does having to stay on a ship have to do with flying?

Oh.

"A flying ship? Here I was thinking someone carried you. What does a flying ship look like?" he asks, already completely thrilled just trying to picture it.

Sure, okay, they're maybe on some kind of flying ship right now but it hardly feels like it, and it can't be seen from the outside in any way he can figure out. There aren't even any doors to the outside anywhere, or hatches, or whatever a vehicle like this ought to have.

"They're--actually, it would be easier if I showed you."

He pushes his plate and glass to the side to make room as he reaches his hands to the center of the table, cradled around some invisible sphere. His brow furrows, and it takes a minute for the magic to pull together--he doesn't normally make illusions that aren't to scale, let along shrinking down something so big.

But he puts together a stable image of a ship bobbing in suspension, with fins almost like something that would swim instead of fly. "This is an airship."

"Wow," he utters as his eyes widen. A magical picture? How he would love the ability to just show people what he means sometimes rather than having to settle for a description.

And the craft itself? "It's beautiful. Like someone combined a sailing ship with ... I'm not sure. A little bit seahorse, a little bit paper nautilus." Stunning, certainly. If only he could see one in person!

The illusion holds for a minute, before it pops and Syrlya draws his hands away.

"It is a marvel, isn't it?" He smiles. "We devised them for our fight against the dragons, but I'm sure they can be repurposed for civilian life when it's over."

"Fighting from the air, huh? Creative, but sounds risky," he says with a frown. They are marvels for certain, but his mind slips quickly into tactical mode as he considers the potentials for such a situation.

"How do you avoid certain death if the flying ship's sails are punctured? I see the potential for a flying craft to maneuver in all directions but to a powerful creature wouldn't the crew of a ship like that be sitting ducks if it can be seen easily and hit from all angles?"

Syrlya's back straightens, tense as he looks aside uncomfortable.

"You can't." He props his elbows on the table to rest his chin on the back of his hands. "They were equipped with canons and shielding, of course. The sails are very thick. But if they were knocked out of the air... you could only hope to survive the crash."

He doesn't think he needs to clarify how uncommon that was. They lost a lot of people in the final battles.

That's exactly what he was afraid of, but he'd hoped that a society with magic that could build such incredible ships would still have some kind of safety net.

"I don't envy the sort of things you and your people have gone through," he says with a sigh. Almost sips at his alcohol since the glass is in his hand, but they're still playing a game, right? No point drinking when it's not his turn to drink.

"Suppose it's my turn again, though. Let's see... When I was a kid, playing hide and seek with a bunch of others, I once hid so well and stayed so quiet I wasn't found until the next day."

"Oh--" Syrlya snaps out of his thoughts. Right, the game, he's gone and lost track of it in the conversation again. He narrows, his eyes, considering Rosinante carefully. And whether this is another trick. He's never said when he came into those silencing abilities of him, but even without them he's hardly boisterous. Do children usually go missing for a day? Maybe two? Taimi was often off on her own.

"... True."

"You're getting unlucky," he says with a chuckle. "Drink again. I know I'm good at being quiet, but I don't think I could've sat that long. I was a hungry kid."

And he didn't have friends to play with, most of the time. He could have, there were plenty around at Marineford, but he spent most of those years being too scared to approach them.

But explaining it away by his bottomless stomach also works, given he ended up more than doubling his height by the time he was eighteen.

Syrlya purses his lips before he takes a sip. "I suppose I don't know how quickly you mastered your silencing abilities to sneak around. How young were you?"

You're supposed to stay in one place for hide and seek. Syrlya doesn't know that.

"Eight."

There's a brief pause as he eyes his glass, as if debating whether to drink anyway since it's been a little while. It covers, he hopes, the moment of needing to decide how much more to say.

"Just happened to find the fruit in the woods one day, and being a dumb kid, first thing I did was try to eat it. I'm lucky it wasn't something poisonous."

Syrlya... attempts to mentally picture and 8 year old human. He knows that's the age they're very small, but big enough to walk and talk on their own. Before they start suddenly looking like adults. Yeah, somewhere around there.

He coughs against his hand, choosing not to comment on eating random things off the ground. Sometimes you're out in the field with limited rations and you make do with what you find for sustenance. "Is that how people usually come into abilities? Can it not be passed down?"

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