fandomtownies | Syndulla Scrap, Thursday

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vette

Syndulla Scrap, Thursday

See, Vette was supposed to be going through the scrap now that it was more or less back to normal and cataloging bits for future reference.

Supposed to be.

But the bitey bits were talking! Talking! And one in particular was a little more rusted than the others, and it came right up to Vette, babbling in broken Basic about what pieces of scrap it wanted to chew on the most, and really, if it was going to ask, she was hardly going to deny it.

"Okay, Rusty, so what's your faaavourite kind?"

"Copper! Copper!" There was a long pause, and then it added, "please."

"Awwww, someone's been teaching you manners! You can have extra copper just for that!"

Positive reinforcement! That was good, right?

[OOC: Open!]

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"I come bearing lunch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Nina sang, meandering into the scrapyard at lunchtime. "Tacos, today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Tacos!" Vette chirped!

"Tacos!" Rusty echoed. And then there was a pause. "Tacos am lunch?"

Vette laughed and threw another length of copper pipe to Rusty to gnaw on.

"Only for squishy meatbag people," she replied. "You wouldn't like tacos."

Rusty was already eating the heck out of that pipe.

"I don't know that I like being called a meatbag person," Nina said, laughing as she watched Rusty eat that pipe. "But then, like, I can't disagree with it either…………. honestly, Vette!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Can't argue with the truth," Vette replied lightly. "Just so long as we don't get chewed on, it's fiiiine."

"I think, like, we're both too scrawny to really make good meals anyway," Nina said, slanting a considering gaze at Vette. "Totally not filling!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Depends who's hungry," Vette decided, shrugging like it was no big. "I've seen scrawnier get snapped up by bigger, before. Like finger food, you know?"

Cheerful, Vette.

"… No," Nina said, because she didn't even care about if that was a thing in other worlds, that was not happening to her, she was no one's finger food. "We're eating tacos and we're going to forget about being eaten!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Vette just gave a little laugh, gave Rusty a fond pat on the... head? And left it (him?) to all the om-nom-nomming while she made her way over to Nina.

"So, what's the occasion?"

"I need an occasion now??????????" Nina asked, looking faux-affronted. "Rude!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm just, like, looking out for you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

A beat.

"So, like, do you think Grumpy Bus Driver is a Jedi??????????????????"

"Ha! You did have a reason," Vette said, pointing an accusing finger at her and then reaching for those tacos with a grin. "You don't even know what a Jedi is, do you?"

Nina handed them over willingly.

And stuck her tongue out. Maturely.

"I could have, like, waited, lying in wait, but it's a nice day out too???????????????" She'd enjoyed the walk. "And, like, I know that Jedi are supposed to be good, I think?????????????? And that there's also Sithy people, like Lana, that come up a lot when Jedi are brought up????????????????"

"Ooooh boy," Vette laughed, shaking her head and nodding toward a slightly cleaner pile of scrap than most of the others. They could sit there. "I mean, most of what I know about both come from rumors, but I do know they're all pretty scary."

... That was Vette, staying this.

Yeaaaaah, that was getting a bit of a pause.

"Are we, like, talking legit scary or scary-if-you-live-in-that-world???????????" Because Prompto was horrifically terrified of daemons and nothing Nina had found so far had indicated they were any scarier than random monsters in her world, even if they were tougher.

Nina was making for that cleanish pile of scrap as she pondered that, not sure if Vette would get the comparison.

Vette turned a glance Nina's way at that.

"I mean, they're supposed to, like, have command over the powers of the universe itself or whatever," she noted. "How does that compare to other worlds?"

She got the comparison, but was kind of sitting over here on her little island of 'everything is relative anyway.'

Nina frowned a little at that.

"So they're, like, mages?????????????"

That was… still not sounding super scary. Like, pretentious, sure, but not super scary.

"I... guess so," Vette hedged. "I mean, like, bearing in mind I have no idea what that means."

She wasn't from your reality, Nina. She didn't even do the powers thing.

"Well, exactly what it means depends hugely on the universe," Nina said, moving to perch on some scrap. "But it's a pretty generic term for people with powers that are considered mystical. There's more specific terms for branches of magic, but mage is one that a lot of worlds use just in general. What magic can do also depends on the person and the world. Like, remember how Keyleth's magic needed to be prepared first, with ingredients? While I can just hold out my hand and summon a fireball or healing water. Or if I want to summon demons, I need to draw circles. Those are all things that fall under 'magic' and 'mage'. Some worlds say magic comes from within, some say it comes from without. I…" she looked a bit sheepish, "…could go on.?????????????????????"

Nina was a nerd, Vette, and you'd asked her about a passion of hers.

"You could," Vette said, breathing out a soft laugh as she flopped onto a larger piece of scrap metal. "Okay, so, you could probably get way more useful answers out of Lana, you know? But when you asked if the Dean could read our minds, you probably weren't far off. I hear stories all the time about Jedi and Sith reading minds, or controlling people, making stuff fly around, doing crazy acrobatics, even seeing the future. So... how do those things rate?"

Because those first two sat firmly in 'Vette prefers to not piss them off for these reasons' territory, right there.

Nina thought about that.

"Making things fly or seeing the future are things, like, I could do given the right books and the right materials," she mused, tilting her head back. "Levitation or telekinesis or clairvoyance can be, like, in-born skills that people are born with??????? Like, some people are going to have a naturally easier way of seeing the future. Some just, like, are born to see it????????? Same with moving things around with their minds??????????? With the right spell, I could do about the same thing…………"

Though she was, like, actually super not keen on looking into the future.

"Crazy acrobatics means, like, things outside of what's usually physically possible within their race???????????" Nina checked. "Magic can also augment physical abilities—but, again, I'd have to look up how to do that and work the spells and most of those sorts of spells have time limits on them……….. though, of course, permanence isn't impossible………….."

But a lot of that sort of thing tended to involve sacrifices of various sorts…

"Possession—controlling people—is also a fairly simple thing to do in theory, since while the spells are complicated, they all come down to will power and the strength of mind to overpower the person whose will you want to subdue……. but most of those also don't, like, last long because you'd have to keep fighting for control…………. "

Nina was also not super keen on that power, though, despite the odds being high that she'd be good at it. She was bad at being told 'no'.

"There's also ways to give people an order or a task and, like, until they either accomplish that or die, they'll keep trying to do what you've told them to…………….. and telepathy, reading minds, is sort of the same………….. with the right sort of spell, almost anyone with magic abilities and the right aptitude could do it, though spells are usually finite and I'm sure there's people out there with the ability to just, like, always be telepathic, like that guy on fire here is…………………."

Vette was doing the slow blink and headtilt of someone who had absolutely just stepped in something she hadn't quite bargained for.

"... Okay. So, all of those things. And Lana's got her lightning fingers too. And there's probably some other stuff that I don't even know about, but they don't need spells for any of it. It's just something they do. Like... effortlessly."

Well. It sure looked effortless when you were an innocent bystander watching a Jedi and a Sith taking pieces out of one another in a dark corner of Nar Shaddaa where they figured nobody would notice them violating the treaty. As if nobody noticed. More like, on Nar Shaddaa, nobody could be bothered to care.

Nina was such a magic nerd, Vette. Such a magic nerd.

………………..

"…………… effortlessly??????????????????????"

That… that was… what.

"Well, yeah," Vette replied, shrugging. "Some kind of mystical connection with the whole life energy of the galaxy thing? I didn't pay that much attention."

Vette. Vette.

Please hold as Nina got up to mutter to herself, in a few separate languages, waving her hands as she worked her way through that.

"But hooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwww?????????????????" she wailed, finally, coming to a stop in front of Vette. "That doesn't even make sense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"I told you," Vette replied, shrugging, "you'd have to ask one of them. The one I know best is Lana. But you saw how easy it was for the Dean to pick us up, back there. Like nothing."

Anakin was kind of a special case, Vette.

"I mean, realistically, from a weight perspective, none of us weigh that much," Nina mused. "And, like, Bus Dean is fit. He could probably physically pick all three of us up at least briefly with a similar lack of effort."

Nina hadn't yet hit a hundred pounds and Vette was tinier than she was and Prompto wasn't exactly a big, bulky sort of guy……….

"Magically, we wouldn't be that hard to pick up, I shouldn't think…………. though the lack of effort and instantaneous ability to do so is a little more troubling……………"

"And Bus Driver," Vette pointed out. "All the way from Caritas."

So... really, he was no slouch, there.

"Apparently while yelling at him telepathically?"

Nina was doing so much frowning. If she hadn't been such a lady she'd be swearing.

(She was doing so much swearing internally.)

"Vette… Vette, we agreed to help get revenge on him. As part of the terms for our club house."

"Yeeeeup," Vette agreed, drawling out that 'e' and popping that 'p.' "But hey, at least he's not allowed to kill us."

There were just, you know, so many other things he could do instead.

………………

That was less of a comfort than it had been.

"We need to, like, look at what the teachers are allowed to do to students. Office break in, definitely, going to have to do that???????????? I bet the moose knows where the records are……………….."

Vette shrugged dismissively.

"Hey, if the worst he did after the bus is make us clean it, I'm not too worried. Did you know he took me to the mainland for paintball after the time we stole bus driver's ship? He seems like he's not a bad guy. Just... also cranky."

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Syndulla Scrap, Thursday

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