tampered | ongoing; closed

ongoing; closed

When; 30 Apr, afternoon
Rating; G most likely
Characters;

pharles_at_life
Summary; Yukari has the materials, so Presea is putting her Pharle training to work once again.
Log; As Presea trudged down to the beach, sun bright in the sky, she began to ponder the necessity of finding her own workspace in an actual building. She needed a real forge; without one she had to do all of her work by magic, and while she could do that, it wasn't something she wanted to do for any particular length of time.

But work was steady, as this recent order from Yukari showed. Even if she didn't make any money from this, it was good advertising, and a chance to stretch her working muscles. So she is smiling brightly when she arrives at her destination, crossing her arms and rocking back and forth in anticipation of Yukari's arrival.

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A little distance away, a black slit unzipped itself open in midair, a foot or two above the sand, opening vertically. Gradually, and with a strange warping, grunting noise it lengthened to four or five feet long, and pulled itself open into an eye shape, as if it were teasing apart a wound. A voice could be heard groping about inside, muttering to itself.

Then, a screeching, grinding noise that would put a pit in your stomach sounded from the gap, followed by a little bit of... of rebar? poking out of the hole! Gradually, and accompanied by more horrible noises of course, more metal jammed itself through the hole, until a great big pile of it cascaded out onto the sand with a deafening clatter.

The gap zipped itself up almost immediately, followed by the opening of another, similarly sized, facing down. Yukari spilled out of it, tumbling over and landing on her feet, looking exhausted. "Aah, I'm too old for this kind of work..."

Spotting Presea, she waved her over nonchalantly, certain that she'd heard the clamour anyway.

Presea jumped when the noises began. She watched in astonishment as the metal appeared, followed by the woman. It wasn't that she'd never seen magic before; after all, her best friend was quite a powerful mage. But she'd never seen someone teleport before, or walk between worlds, or whatever this was. Clef traveled by spirit beast, and most Cephirans walked when they had to go somewhere.

Yukari looked tired, and that distracted Presea from her wonder. She approached swiftly but with a certain amount of cautious.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

Straightening up, Yukari smiled, nodding. "I'm absolutely fine. Did I keep you waiting long?" she asked, then without waiting for an answer, continued, "I picked up some more bits of metal on the way, but again I'm not sure of the quality. Some of this came from the market..." She toed a couple of pipes, one made of copper, the rest of some kind of darker metal. Some of them were bent, but relative to the rest of her scrap metal pile the pipes stood out in lustre and quality.

"If you see any extra materials here that you'd like to keep, then by all means. I'm not dragging this back to my house, anyway."

As an afterthought, she added, "thanks for the help, by the way."

Presea leaned down to run her hands across the scrap metal without hesitation, looking a little bemused. She'd certainly never crafted a sword out of building materials before, but she supposed there was a first time for everything.

"I'm sure I can find some use for it!" she said cheerfully, picking through and pulling out the stuff she thought to be the best quality. Just enough for a sword. though it might end up looking a little strange.

"And don't worry about it," she said to Yukari's thanks. She smiled up at her. "It's my job after all."

Putting her hands on her hips, Yukari leaned over the pile as Presea inspected it. "Everything is okay, then? You can make a good weapon out of this? Having your sword break on you when you're in the middle of a fight, the smith ought to be killed for that, you know~?" She grinned thinly, not quite purposing her utterance as a threat as much as a 'hostile suggestion'. Something to motivate her.

She straightened up, plucking a bent copper pipe from the pile that Presea hadn't taken, and rolled it around between her fingers absent-mindedly. "This is extremely generous, you know, not taking any payment." A black gap ripped itself open in front of Yukari, facing up, and she set her elbows on it, leaning over and resting her head on her hands. "Hmm... here's the deal: if ever you need my help on something, I'll owe you a favour, okay? I won't do just anything for you, of course; only idiots let people make ridiculous requests of them. My power can be pretty useful if you're ever in a pinch."

It wasn't like her to make free offers like this, but on the off chance that Presea would get herself into serious trouble, and needed an escape strategy... such a situation would be advantageous. Knowing who were the troublemakers. Who she could get away with headhunting~

Presea looked up at Yukari's not-quite-a-threat and glared. "I'm a master smith! Of course my weapons won't break in a fight. I've crafted some of the most powerful swords even made in my world." She mumbled something threatening under her own breath; it was hard for her to fight her hairtrigger temper sometimes.

She was distracted by the witch's next words, though, shaking her head. "It's not generous, it's only right. With all of these creatures running around here... Taking advantage of fear isn't something I want to do."

She smiled at the offer. "I'll remember that."

She stepped back with her materials in her arms and began to arrange them in the sand in no apparent pattern. It was obvious to her, of course, the way the magic would fit things together.

Noting the mutter, though unable to determine what was said, Yukari simply huffed, crossing her arms and shifting around on the sand. She turned to face the water, sighing, and said, "don't think too much about what is right and just, here. This place is too lawless for that." She snorted, "especially with those police officers. One of them, he thought I was a vampire, even! A vampire! All because I made some offcolor comment about humans. Can you imagine..."

Glancing over her shoulder, she turned back, and squatted beside the arranged metal. "... well, that explains why you have no need for a workshop. You make weapons by magic." She thought for a moment, and continued, "you must be talented, then. I want to see this~" She stepped back a bit, putting a finger to her lips thoughtfully.

Presea blinked, but didn't ask about Yukari not considering herself human. She'd met enough people here to realize how many different ways of existence there were.

"Even if it's lawless," she said quietly, "that does not mean I have to be."

She nodded to Yukari's other statement. "I prefer doing them with a forge, really, but magic works just as well."

She stepped back as well, shutting her eyes and lifting her arms above her head. There was a bright golden flash that showed even against the afternoon sun, and the acquired metal flashed and disappeared. There was wind, and smoke, and then between Presea's hands there appeared a sword, shiny and bright. She opened her eyes, then, and smiled in satisfaction before grabbing the sword by the hilt. When she did, the magic faded away.

She ran a hand down the blade thoughtfully, as if checking for flaws, before she held it out to Yukari, hilt first.

"Aha~!" Yukari clapped her hands delightedly. "See, that's real magic. Subtlety is one thing, but for stuff like this, you gotta have that showmanship. The flash and bang." Of course, in her world, this would hardly be considered flashy... but her world was a truly lawless land of ridiculous, extravagant displays of firepower. Not quite comparable.

She reached out, looking confused. "Oh~ You hold it by this end?"

... a moment passed.

She cracked a wry grin, and took the sword gently. "Kidding, of course." Holding it straight upright, she inspected it in the sun, checking over the reflection for nicks or imperfections. "Ah~ This is nice. A little heavier than I would have liked, but that won't be an issue..." She looked to Presea sincerely, and said, "thank you for your hard work. Don't forget, I'll owe you a small favour for this. It's a pretty big deal, having an elder youkai to call upon, so you should feel fortunate."

"I'll just leave the rest of the metal here, then. Unless you want it..."

Presea smiled at the compliment. She liked the flash-and-bang, on one level, but it took a little more out of her than general metalworking did. She stood for a moment, letting her heartrate return to normal, though she laughed at Yukari's joke.

"You're welcome," she said, nodding and then cocking her head to the side and grinning. "I hope it serves you well."

She looked down at the scrap metal contemplatively. She hated to abandon it for someone else to clear up... Perhaps she'd come back later for it. Really, she thought Yukari should clean it up, but the woman had seemed tired by bringing it all down here, so she was unsurprised. She waved a hand in dismissal.

"I'll figure something out, don't worry about it."

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ongoing; closed

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Sorry for the wait, I was afk all day yesterday

no prob, I'll probably be slow for a while myself.

AAAA I'M SORRY D:

don't worry I've been terribly busy myself.

Re: don't worry I've been terribly busy myself.

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