The Park, Monday Afternoon

[notarockharpist]

Yasha had gotten what was probably the best sleep of her life last night; Beau had not been kidding about the beds at the hotel. She might have been tempted to just stay there, except that she didn't want to risk getting too comfortable around here.

She'd taken a long walk around the island this morning, just to take in all the new sights and breathe in the unfamiliar but pleasantly bracing ocean air, and accidentally scared the cashier at JGoB when she'd stopped in to get something to eat. But now she had made her way to the park and was meandering around, looking at all the different plants, the birds in the pond, the trees, everything with a quiet sort of awe.

She probably made an unusual sight, this towering, extremely pale buff woman with a massive sword on her back, walking leisurely through the park, picking flowers here and there and pressing them between the pages of a book in her hand. That was all right, though; Yasha was used to that.

[OOC: Just gonna make grandpoobah yell at me right off the bat. :D Open though!]

Comments

[notarockharpist]

Location was important!

"Wait," Yasha said. "You're not necessarily talking about hitting people with sticks in a battle, are you?"

That had just occurred to her. Look, they ended up in battle on a pretty regular basis, so she just assumed.

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae narrowed her eyes and looked askance. "Define 'battle'."

Did internal battles for her sanity count?

[notarockharpist]

Maybe?

"You know," Yasha said, shrugging, "sometimes you're just trying to sleep for the night and bandits decide to attack you, or there’s a troll in the swamp, or..."

Not very helpful, Yasha.

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae started nodding extremely hard. "Right! Yeah! I've been in those!"

In video games. Which were definitely not unconnected to her bouts of doubting her own sanity, though it'd been a dating game, not a fighting one, that had been her downfall before the Incident.

"Do they happen a lot where you're from?"

[notarockharpist]

"All the time." Like it was part of the fundamental appeal of the game system or something. Who knew? "Why? Is that weird?"

Well, yes, but.

[thishouseishaunted]

"Well. Yes. Kind of." Mae shrugged. "We only get into big fights around here maybe every other month or so."

[notarockharpist]

"Oh." Did Yasha somehow manage to look simultaneously disappointed and relieved? Yes. Yes, she did. "What about little ones?"

[thishouseishaunted]

"That probably depends on the person," Mae said. "I mean, you can kind of get into a little fight pretty much whenever, right?"

Mae should not be allowed to be anyone's introduction to Fandom.

[notarockharpist]

Beau had given her a bit of a rundown already!

Okay, admittedly, that might not be much better.

"I have had it happen a few times before," Yasha allowed. "Okay, maybe a lot."

[thishouseishaunted]

"You seem like the fighty sort. You know, with the giant honkin' sword and all."

[notarockharpist]

"Well, yes," Yasha replied. "I guess the sword does give it away."

It was six feet long, Yasha. It was practically a neon sign.

[thishouseishaunted]

"I mean. You could just be reeeeeeeally pretentious."

[notarockharpist]

... it was a totally valid take that her entire aesthetic might be an attempt to be edgy, even if that wasn't the case.

"I'm not sure why anyone would think looking like this is something to be pretentious about."

And that might be how you knew she wasn't.

[thishouseishaunted]

"Um," Mae said. "You look like you could fucking kill someone. Plenty of people would be pretentious about that."

[notarockharpist]

"I could fucking kill someone," Yasha said, still in that confused tone. "I have killed people. I'm not trying to make a show out of it or anything."

She wasn't especially proud of it, either, but some things didn't need to be mentioned to short cat-headed girls she didn't actually know yet.

[thishouseishaunted]

". . . I mean. Yeah? That's why you're not pretentious."

Mae blinked at her for a beat.

"Also, that is terrifying. I'm kind of freaking out right now."

[notarockharpist]

"Only when I have a reason." Where sometimes that reason was being mind controlled, but. "And I don't think this is the kind of place where that's likely to happen often."

She hadn't had many of those places at all in her life before. Maybe that was why she was here?

[thishouseishaunted]

"Oh. Well I guess that's a little reassuring." Mae was not coming down out of this tree either way. "It'll probably only really happen a few times a year."

[notarockharpist]

"I think I'm just fine with that," Yasha tried (probably not terribly well) to reassure her. Hey, she still had that chunk of time missing from her memory, so it wasn't like she had the guilt of that, or turning on her friends, or murdering a bunch of Cobalt Soul monks and nearly killing Beau, on her conscience. Yet. Wanting to kill things as a coping mechanism wasn't really a priority.

Yet.

Staying in that tree was a totally valid choice anyway, Mae.