Arcanum, Rough 1-8

“There, that should help.” Shèn sighed as she scratched the chin of a little green autism creature, the foxcat purring happily. Wind walls were good at dampening sound and since she’d gotten them tested and had some troopers around there was pretty much no legal issues plopping one down around this little private booth. She’d had to wait for their orders to be delivered of course, but hey. 

Across from her, Miho smiled, “Thank you. Being able to hear every individual conversation going on around me was… not ideal.” Pausing, the fox took a bite of her food; a plate of cajun pasta. Sighing in contentment as she savored the pleasant burn of the spice, the fox turned her attention back to her friend, “Either way, I’ll have to see if I can figure out an electric variant so I don’t have to rely on you.”

“Doubt it’ll work with lighting, you’d want to just use Aegis as a base at that point.” The dragon replied with a shrug, going to town on her neapolitan milanese. Honestly, Miho had been debating asking her fellow Arcanist if she was willing to share; trade half of her pasta for half of Shèn’s heap of fried meat and cheese. She just wasn’t sure though. Social niceties were never something she’d fully comprehended, and she definitely wasn’t in a position to potentially drive away her one friend.

“Wasn’t going to be a wall. Mostly just replicating noise canceling earplugs with electricity. Though ice might work better for that. I’ll have to workshop it.” The vixen explained, taking a sip of water.

“You’d need to tap into the more esoteric bits of the element, but I can see it working. Stilling.” The dragon hummed, tracing a small circle with her fork before grabbing another bite.

“Good idea, Shen.” Miho acknowledged idly, picking up her phone and making a quick note to herself,  “Umbral Ice should work fairly well for that. Good suggestion.”

“Ice is the most Light aligned element, so it will help with making the vibrations stop, was my meaning.” Shèn clarified, waving her dyed hand dismissively.

“Point.” Miho conceded, turning to look towards the increasingly confused off-duty PRT staff with a raised eyebrow, “I assume you want a lecture, then?”

She wouldn’t be surprised. A cynical part of her was fairly sure there were standing orders for all PRT staff to treat Shèn and her with velvet gloves. After all, they were valuable resources. A pair of resources that were aware of how valuable they were to some extent. Couldn’t have anyone but the PRT, and by extension Cauldron, getting their hands on the Arcanists. Miho really hated politics sometimes. Shades of gray were just… not something she was particularly good at. At least not in the heat of the moment, adrift from all that had anchored her.

“If you wouldn’t mind?” William requested, adjusting his glasses with a finger.

“I don’t believe we ever explained the elements during power testing, so I suppose I should.” Miho sighed, shoving another mouthful of her pasta into her mouth. Chewing slowly, both to buy time to put her thoughts in order and enjoy the food she’d ordered, the she-fox finally nodded, “Right, so Shèn and I have both mentioned some of the six elements that we operate off of. Along with one of the two poles. There are six elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Lightning, and Ice.” Pausing, Miho took a sip of water, swirling the glass around in her hand idly after she had done so, “The two poles are Umbral, or Light, and Astral, or Dark. Umbral is stasis. Astral is activity. Each element is naturally aligned with one of the two poles, each forming a trinity. Fire, Wind, and Lightning are Astral. Water, Earth, and Ice are Umbral.” She paused, noting the absolutely lost expressions on everyone but William, “Shèn, if you would like to continue?”

“It is also something of a scale. From most to least Astral, it goes: Lightning, Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, Ice.” The dragon added, before poking her in the forehead with the tuft of her tail, “But you are assuming they got read in on the whole body of data we gave Marigold and co. Explain from the start, nerd.”

“But I don’t want to.” Miho whined, pouting as she took another bite of her pasta. Munching on the deliciously spicy meal that was pretty much the only thing keeping her going at this point aside from her expresso, she briefly glared towards Shèn, “I haven’t slept in over twenty four hours now. Cut me some slack, Shèn!”

“That’s on you and your head full of fluff, fopsi. We do have spells for putting someone under.” The dragon chuffed before popping another chunk of fried meat pizza in her mouth.

“You still owe them an explanation then, derg.” Miho shook her head, because she wasn’t going to be doing a fucking lecture while half asleep. “Or you can just blueball them. That’s fine too.”

“I’d much rather not go into a magistral lesson and have the food go cold.” Shèn said after a moment, shaking her head. Then, to the troopers, “Besides, it isn’t like you lot are going to stop living next door overnight. We can talk about it over poker night or whatever it is you have.”

“Shèn!” Miho interjected immediately, “It isn’t polite to just invite yourself over!”

Seriously though, you couldn’t just do that. To say even less of the fact the fox woman still felt a bit uncomfortable around those in positions of power. She… still wasn’t sure why, but she was pretty sure once she sorted her thoughts out and had the chance to search through her memories and assorted traumas she’d find it.

“It isn’t a big deal.” William answered immediately, “Though we don’t do poker night, Dungeons and Dragons is better. Three-point-five E, with me as the DM.”

“Huh, I will have to see how the ruleset shook out in here. D’you have any digital copies you can send over?” Shèn hummed as she popped a mozzarella stick into her mouth, completely unruffled. “Also, I may not have your and Blazkowicz’s measures yet, but I somehow doubt Lucia would have been shy about telling me if it’s private.”

“Nah, we’ve been looking for a few other players for a while,” The woman in question interjected with an easy smile, “The nerd over there wants to run a campaign that takes more than two heroes.”

“A campaign?” Miho asked, ears twitching as she looked towards Will and Lucia with barely concealed hunger in her eyes, “The pitch?”

“A group of lost heroes banding together to fight an ancient darkness.” Will recited, pushing his glasses up his nose as he prepared to hook someone potentially interested, before he deflated, “It’s still in the planning stages, so I don’t really have more than that as a pitch.”

“Huh, well I wouldn’t mind a classic like that. What do you two run PC-wise?” Shèn asked with a tilt of her head, a Carbuncle tail dragging her hand back to giving ear scratches.

Tuning out of the conversation for now, Miho smiled as she simply watched the troopers and her friend converse, slowly but surely working away at her food as she discreetly summoned her own Carbuncle to simply pet. It was… nice, seeing that they were just normal people, outside of their job. While she still wasn’t sure she could fully trust them, she could acknowledge in her heart of hearts that she was a paranoid, wounded woman who’d been burned too many times to trust freely and easily. For now… for now, she’d give them the benefit of the doubt.

Putting those thoughts to the side, she eventually found an opening to join the conversation, and cheerfully chatted the afternoon away with her friend and possible new friends…

______________________________________________________________________________

“Thank you again for all your help, guys.” Miho smiled politely, her hands laden with bags full of groceries and various other things that a household required. The five of them had just finished with their shopping, and began making their way towards the vehicles they had arrived in,, “We couldn’t have finished it today if it weren’t for you two. Simply not enough time in the day to make the requisite trips.”

“Aren’t you glad I helped make room for new groceries?” Shèn teased, dinosaur teeth shining in the sun as she gave her friend a deluxe shit eating grin. Will a roll of her eyes, Miho stuck her tongue out towards the Dragoness.

“No, not really, damn thief.” The she-fox grumped back dramatically, an obviously forced pout plastered on her face as she withdrew her tongue, “How could you possibly have stolen all my food. Woe is me.”

“Easily and happily.” Shèn replied without missing a beat, only knowing shame by reputation. “I’ll fuckin’ do it again, too.” 

Miho believed her. She was… going to have to beat sense into her friend’s head, apparently. She wasn’t even upset about the stuff that wasn’t the onigiri. But those were hers, damnit. Eh, things for the Miho of the future to deal with. Either way–

Her ears twitched as the sound of a distant scream reached them. Without a single moment of hesitation, she gently set her groceries on the floor, turned to the troopers, and barked out a command, “Watch my shit. I’ll be right back.” Then immediately burst into a sprint towards the source of the scream. Ignoring her friend’s grumbling from behind her along with the sound of four sets of footsteps following her, the fox continued to hone in on the source of the noise. A simple thought raced through her mind. She’d been given power. She had a duty to her ideals and her own suffering to not ignore it when someone needed help. She refused to be a bystander.

Hallways and stores and people blurred around her as she ran, ducking and weaving through the crowds running away from the source of the scream. Thank god for her new body, otherwise she’d have crashed at least three times already.

Miho rounded the final corner standing between her and the source of the scream and immediately flattened herself on to wall as her ears finally proved they were more than fucking curses and hyperfixated on the exchange that she needed to hear.

Not that she could make anything coherent out of the slurred mess that was pouring out of the store. Other than aggression, anyways. Miho distantly noted that her friend and new acquaintances had arrived by her side, and held out an arm to stop them both. All four of them were present, which meant that they’d ignored her request to watch her shit. Irritating. Not relevant at the moment though.

“Give me a few minutes, ma’am. It’ll take some time to get all the cash from the register into a bag for you.” The poor man from within sounded terrified, yet calmly resigned. Like this was a regular occurrence, or at least, regular enough for the training they’d had to properly kick in. Miho scowled. Brockton truly was a shithole, apparently. Either way, she put their conversation to the side for now, and turned towards Shen.

“Talk normally. My plan is thus. Use Esuna to purge the drugs from the drug-addled fool’s systems, and hit them with a Sleep at the same time. I’d like to request that one of you three,” She glanced towards the off duty PRT folk, “Rush in right afterwards to make sure that the moron robbing a store in broad daylight isn’t hurt by falling asleep. We’ll provide treatment right afterward. There aren’t any hostages, it seems. Only the cashier is at risk.”

“How the fuck are we managing that? Neither of us can twincast that and if we try to coordinate either the Sleep cancels out immediately or there’s a window where the druggie can shoot.” Shèn frowned, shaking her head. “Just smack her with Sleep and have a trooper catch her before she loses even more brain cells, we can clean her out once she’s handcuffed.”

“None of us can get to her before she falls.” Joseph interjected professionally, “However, both of you are healers, so as long as you treat it quickly, there should be minimal risk to the perp. If you can nonlethally take her down from here, please do so.”

“Even if she’s knocked out immediately, the gun is liable to discharge when she falls. I trust that thing as much as a Nambu.” Will added immediately, Lucia nodding in agreement.

“Trying to make sure that Sleep doesn’t interact poorly with the drugs in her system, Shèn.” Miho explained patiently, filing away the comments from her acquaintances to address later, “I’m also concerned how the chemical variant of Sleep–” The fox grimaced, took a deep breath, and sighed, facing her friend and acquaintances, “Right. Sorry. Rationality has kicked back in. Shèn, aetheric Sleep on the druggie. I’ll cover for you and cast a Radiant Aegis on the cashier in case she manages to squeeze the trigger before going down.” With that command stated, Miho pulled out the etched hunk of quartz from her pockets, nodding towards Shen, “On your mark.”

“Esuna will fix any concussion that she gets, so sure.” Shèn muttered even as she spooled up the purple-pink schema, before nodding sharply, “Alright, let’s roll. Mark.”

A noxious cloud in the same blotchy colors as the schema shot out like an arrow, wrapping around the junkie’s head. In the same instant a gem was hurled through the air, a Carbuncle manifesting partway through its arc. With mechanical precision, a burst of aether came forth from the construct, bathing the clerk in a well constructed shield. Moments later the worst came to pass as the gun discharged as the druggie toppled, leaving the barrier to do its job.

The “fight” took all of three seconds, with the only real damage being a goose egg on the robber’s temple from how she’d fallen. “Shèn, triage the perp. I’ll make sure the cashier is alright.” Miho barked, moving into the store with all the calmness of someone who had done this exact thing several times before.

“Aye aye.” The dragon said with a sloppy salute, the troopers already moving to do their part while she walked over, Libra in one hand and Esuna in the other. Meanwhile, the she-fox moved over to do what she had said she would do, walking towards the near-hyperventilating employee, her hands raised placatingly.

“I know you’re not okay, but you’re going to be okay. We have her on the ground, and she’s going to get the treatment she needs. She’s not going to hurt you anymore.” Miho began, picking up her Carbuncle and gently offering it to the poor lad, “Can I offer you a fluffy animal to pet or squeeze in these trying times? Carbie over here won’t mind it at all.”

Thankfully, the employee seemed receptive to her efforts and accepted the Carbuncle from her, petting the emotional support summon as they took deep, calming breaths. Several moments later, they shuddered, anxiety attack moved to the past tense.

“There we go.” Miho nodded, smiling gently towards the young adult, “Feeling better now?”

“Yes. Thank you, Miss.” He responded with a smile of his own, before it fell, “Ah, dammit. Now I have to call my boss, and then call the police, and do so much goddamn paperwork.”