gameofmana | [log] Sword of the Skeleton

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[log] Sword of the Skeleton

Who: Skyfire and Tsukishima Kei
What: Sword of the Skeleton quest
Where: First Home, and then Mekiv Caverns
When: In the morning
Other: Beating skeleton ass

As a general rule, Tsukishima doesn't really interact with too many people around Domina. It's not even that it's because he's in a strange place and, honestly, still hasn't entirely adjusted. He's just always been this way, doing his own business and staying in his lane. Go to the town, get any supplies the tree needs, be done with it.

But... Today had been different. It's left the teenager thoughtful as he returns, and he ends up going to the billboard that's right besides the study. As usual, there's plenty of paper left waiting, and he starts to write. Using a fountain pen is still a bit tricky, but he finds he can manage.

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"Well, you might be right on that... though sometimes you'd be surprised what some creatures will try to eat..." Skyfire chuckled softly, though the look on his face suggested that story was maybe something to not ask about.

"Don't feel the need to rush, I'm willing to try and answer whatever questions you have..." The question about not being organic doesn't seem to bother him in the least, and it's reflected in his voice. "No, actually I'm not... but trying to explain what I am when in most cases the words do not exist in a language makes things... difficult. The closest translations your language has is either mechanical or robotic, but neither is correct either."

On some level, he thinks there’s a ridiculous part of him that’s actually a little disappointed that he’s not riding a real dragon, but Tsukishima is more than willing to acknowledge that part is from when he was six and watched Jurassic Park multiple times in a row until his older brother had to gently pry him from the television.

The rest of him knows how amazing all of this is, and he glances over the entirety of Skyfire again in quiet amazement. By no means is he a robotics expert, but he keeps up with the news well enough. He knows the level of advancement the human race has, at least on the Earth he’s familiar with, and it’s nothing like this. There’s always that little thing that’s a bit off, that’s strange in appearance or doesn’t move entirely right, all that. But Skyfire, from a distance, had looked like, well, an actual organic creature like anything else, besides the fact that he was a distinctly mythical one. Robot or whatever he is, it’s…. Unbelievable.

“What’s the difference, then?” he asks, remembering to glance around so that they’re not surprised again

Skyfire sniffs the ground a bit, trying to figure out the best way to explain with what he finds is a rather limited language at times, while also trying to track the scent of rust.

"Well, a spark for one, sentience, sapience, and as a 'species' we weren't 'built' in the same sense as you associate it with those terms..." He pauses and shakes his head, obviously struggling to find proper words. "It's like you trying to explain how you're different from trees or rodents, when the only words that translate are 'organic' and 'biological'. It fits in a broad definition or is close, but doesn't help much when trying to explain the details."

After pausing a moment to leave another mark on a wall he adds. "Technically the root term of biology applies to me as well, at least when it comes to the origin of the word, as the root 'bios' means 'life'... The translation trouble begins with, and is compounded by, how 'life' is defined in your language." He's not trying to be insulting, just that the way 'life' and related terms are defined, as well as implied to refer to only organic beings, it's a bit frustrating to him.

If it’s any consolation, Tsukishima isn’t insulted. Instead, he’s listening patiently, fascinated by the chance to have a conversation with this. These kind of things are meant for scientists who’ve studied their lives on the differences between humans and everything else, engineers who dream of perfecting artificial intelligence. Yet her he is, just a high school student who got dragged into a weird situation.

“I think I get what you mean… It’s actually pretty common even among all the different languages for humans back on Earth where I come from. There are just some words that don’t translate between all the different languages humans have developed. Like, with Japanese and English… Ukiyo, ikigai, or irusu- those kinds of things.” And they don’t translate to whatever it is they speak here, either, he’s noticed. Some interesting food for thought, to be sure.

Before he can keep going, however, Skyfire will notice that the scent of rust is getting stronger. It only takes a few more minutes of movement before the source is found: what appears to be a pile of bones and armor in the middle of the path.

Chuckling softly Skyfire nods. "They may not translate well, but at least the concepts behind them can be explained. I run into issues when even the concepts of such things have not yet been considered. Trying to..." He 'sneezed' a bit when the rust scent spiked suddenly, and paused when he noticed the pile of bones.

"Is that what we're looking for?" He's cautious, knowing that there are 'undead' in the cave, and after the past encounter with the pumpkin, Skyfire knows things aren't always what they seem here. Granted, being a mechanical being stuck in an 'organic' disguise... well...

"I want you to stay up on my back..." Not knowing if it's just a pile of bones or not, Skyfire isn't going to take unnecessary risks when it came to Tsukishima's safety.

Straightening up as much as he can, Tsukishima squints at the pile of bones and metal. While it’s hard to tell with the gloom and distance, he thinks… maybe… “If we went through the bones, there’s a chance there might be the kind of sword I’m looking for. I can’t tell from here.” Settling back down, he frowns a little bit. “Either way, trust me, I’ll stay right here until we’re out of this place… so it’s up to you how you want to approach it.”

Skyfire peered towards the bones again and nodded. "Alright, I'm going to go poke at those bones... Even if it's not what we're looking for, at least we can give them a proper burial..." Because the idea of bones walking about creeped him out, and burials seemed to be what humans did from what he'd known of them.

He paused "Get ready to hide under my wings if this goes wrong..." Because better safe than sorry, right?

“Don’t worry, I think I’ve learned my lesson after the bats.” Once again, he lowers himself against Skyfire’s body, taking a breath. Whatever happens, they have it covered. The big guy got a chunk tore out of him and he’s fine, after all.

Once Skyfire makes the choice to approach, nothing seems to happen…. At first. Once he’s close enough, however, there’s a sudden rattling from within the pile, and a skeletal arm forms to immediately yank a rusted blade out from its innards with the intent to slice straight right at Skyfire. In short order, the rest of the body begins to form, bones locking into place to make a tall intimidating figure with broad shoulders and spiked armor in place.

Skyfire let out a rather undignified yelp (that he'd deny making later) and took a few fast steps backwards, not taking any chances hurriedly covering Tsukshma with his wings fully. He hissed and swatted at the skeleton with a paw, claws fully extended and aiming for the exposed bones... Just what was he supposed to be hitting anyways? It was already dead, all he could think of was trying to destroy the bones themselves.

It's okay, Skyfire- Tsukishima is making the same sound that he'll also deny later. Pressing close to the mane, he has no chance to see how the skeleton moves, and can only trust his traveling companion to take care of him.

That means he has no way to see how the skeleton blocks the blow with its blade, rolling along with the force of Skyfire's strike. Getting back up to its feet, it starts to circle him, blade held out in a trained stance. It's considerably different than dealing with the bats.

Edited 2017-02-03 23:46 (UTC)

This was creepy, he didn't like it one bit either as he made sure to keep himself facing the skeleton and hopefully drawing it's attention. Tsukishima would likely be able to feel the vibrations of the growl Skyfire lets out in frustration as he's trying to take the thing out without destroying the blade.

Once he's fairly sure the skeleton is focused on his claws as he tries to attack it, he whips his tail around fast and hard. It was an attempt to try and smash the end of his tail into it, aiming to send the thing flying into a cave wall... With the metal substructure underneath the false flesh in his tail, if it connected, it would be much like getting hit with a steel beam at high speed...

Instead of a block, the skeleton this time tries for a roll, but it’s not successful. Skyfire’s tail still smashes into a part of it, completely taking out a leg and part of the creature’s hipbone. Left with a crumbling lower half that seems barely connected to its remaining leg, it tries to struggle up with the blade digging into the stone ground.

While skeletons can really emote, nonetheless, something about this one seems almost offended.

Whether or not the skeleton is 'offended' means nothing to Skyfire as he tried to put it down fast, taking another swipe at it with his claws since it was down. He didn't like this thing one bit... Except in some very, very rare cases, he thought the dead should stay dead.
"Urg. Once we're done in here, I'm going to bury any remains we find..." He hoped that would at least settle things down a bit, if not, it would at least make him feel better.

"Are you doing okay up there?" Skyfire was doing the best he could not to jostle Tsukishima too badly, but even with his wings acting as both shielding and safety harness for him, it's not the smoothest of rides while Skyfire is fighting with the skeleton.

Rude. Responsible, but rude.

“I’m fine,” Tsukishima says, tentatively pushing himself up after getting over the sound of crunching bone. Carefully, he uses one hand to press up at Skyfire’s wings in an attempt if he can see just what’s gone on. The outcome is obvious: clearly the skeleton has ben torn and scattered apart, bones not a match for metal. Still, he can’t exactly see that. “Is the coast clear, then?”

Skyfire looks over the bones, checking them over to make sure they suddenly wouldn't get back up and also observing the area carefully. Tsukishima would be able to push Skyfire's wings aside far enough to sit back up and look around, though Skyfire is in no real hurry to let him down just yet.

"It seems to be, but give things a moment just to be sure. I would rather not have any surprises..." While he's willing to let Tsukishima climb down and check things out if things seem calm enough, he's not willing to let him near the 'remains' of the skeleton. He pulls any armor, weapons and other items from the scattered bones, setting them aside before gathering up the remains in another pile.

"... Do you know what is considered the 'proper' way to dispose of remains here? I'm debating burning these and scattering the ashes, but..." Humans disposed of their dead in several ways back 'home', but he wasn't sure what was in use here and he didn't want to be disrespectful... Well, more so that he'd already been.

For a few minutes, Tsukishima is in no rush to hop off either. Instead, after making sure that he’s carefully moved the wings out of the way, he looks around to make sure that nothing else is going to come running. You never know in a place, especially with something that seemed a bit trickier than just those Bloodsuckers. However, beyond the sound of Skyfire sorting out armor and weapons from bones, it doesn’t seem like anything else is coming, and he looks back to the dragonbot’s head.

“Well, I’m not sure about here… but back where I’m from, turning things to ashes was basically how it was done. I think scattering is usually more up to the person before they die, but… I doubt it would be too bad considering things. I mean, if there was a skeleton down here at all, it was probably an important place to it… or something.”

Skyfire nods at Tsukishima's words and uses his claws to gouge out a large chunk of stone, then sweeps the remains of the bones into the hole, covering them with the rock, thinking better safe than sorry at the moment. "In that case I'll deal with the remains when I return. Burning them in here is not practical, and I don't have a way to move them at the moment." He'd make sure that he'd at least be a bit more respectful to the remains when destroying them than he had been so far.

Looking around he slopes a wing so Tsukishima can slide down from his back and inspect the weapon and armor now that it was at least somewhat safe. "It looks fairly clear now... Do you think this is what we're looking for?"

Carefully getting off- can he still “feel” if his feathers are disturbed despite being made of metal? Best not risk it- he goes to approach the pile warily. Hey, this place has walking skeletons- you never know. But when it becomes apparent that nothing else is going to suddenly gather up into an angry undead thing, he crouches down and starts to carefully sort through what’s been left.

The chestpiece is sturdy and heavy in his hands for all the rust which has started to cover it, and he grunts as he rolls it to the side, and the same can mostly be said for whatever else has been left, including the helmet. That doesn’t mean the sword is necessarily light by comparison, of course, but not as much so. He handles it with even more care than anything, not wanting to test what counts as a tetanus shot in some weird fantasy world.

“I think this is it,” he says after a moment, sure that it won’t break too easily. “Do you want the armor? There’s some leather in it, as padding, but it looks like it’s mostly metal… or is the rust a dealbreaker?”

Still 'on guard' but relaxing a little as nothing else jumps out at them, Skyfire observes the armor and nods a little. It would be interesting hauling the armor back, but he could use it. Still, a thought occurs to him.

"I've worked with worse, I've eaten worse. The rust isn't so bad as to make it useless... but... I can dig raw metals if I need to, so, do you want to see if anyone wants to buy it in town first? It might be worth more as armor than as scrap, and we can spit what it sells for if it's worth anything?"

Well, if it weren't for Tsukishima, he wouldn't have known about it in the first place, plus Skyfire was still a little unsure about dealing with the townsfolk, so having him along made things, if not easier, a bit less worrying.

“Really?” Tsukishima looks up at him, raising his eyebrows. He’s not opposed to the plan, by any means, but he had wanted to make this fair. And since it was clear that Skyfire needed this to eat…. Still, splitting the pay from selling it is just as fine. “If you really think you’ll be fine finding raw metal…”

"I'm sure. Then again, that's only if it's worth something decent." He chuckles a little bit. "Who knows if it's worth anything at all, but if it is, selling it might be better. I mean, there isn't that much here metal wise..."

In Skyfire's mind selling it might yield a better result, since if anyone wants it for more than scrap he could likely use the money from it's sale to buy more metals than what's actually in the armor itself.

“Alright. Well, it’s not like I’ll argue with you.” He’s disinclined to it to start with considering Skyfire is a giant dragon, and also apparently a robot, and Tsukishima knows well enough when he’s outnumbered. Setting the sword carefully to the side, he looks over what they have. There’s an obvious problem here, one he hadn’t really thought about before just now.

“We’ll have to figure out a way to get it back, then…. And I didn’t exactly come here with a travel bag.” At least, nothing besides what he could put the sword in, since he figured his sports bag would hopefully do well enough. “I guess I can see if it fits me and wear it, unless you have any other ideas.”

Skyfire resisted the urge to sigh, because he's tired of people just agreeing with him because of his size, species or whatever. He really didn't like it when people agreed with him despite perhaps having a differing opinion.

Considering the problem of transporting the armor for a few moment, he grimaces when Tsukishima mentions wearing it out. "Is that a good idea? I mean considering what was wearing it..." Having brought a bit of rope, it wasn't much but he had an idea that might work.

"I do have a length of rope wrapped around the base of one of my wings, we could tie it to my back?" There would still be room for Tsukishima to fit on his back still, but tying the armor would be awkward. Skyfire couldn't do it himself even if he had managed to wrap the rope around his wing so that the feathers hid it from view on the way over.

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[log] Sword of the Skeleton

Sorry about being horrendously slow on this. >.<;

hey no problem

<3 Thanks. Also, Tossing in some G1 Transformers headcanon here so... jsyk.

cool with it, know that headcanon life lmao

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Sorry on the very slow >.<

no worries

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