Event || Custom Fit

[eternitymods]

Who: All
When: September 10th to September 30th
Where: Curti Center and mines around the world
What: Characters assist Ganeshan in developing Custom Jobs.
Warnings/Notes: OOC Post

A. The Lab

As much as Ganeshan requires supplies to create Custom Jobs, he need help at home base. With the large number of potential applicants, outworlders and Curti Center employees are invited to help out in the lab, not only with testing transfer of Jobs to crystals, but in developing the abilities and running safety tests.

Easier said than done when all of these cats aren't roaming throughout the center and claiming everything to be their sitting spot. The interns are trying their best to catherd to little avail.

B. Job Development

The break room contains formal submission papers and pamphlets describing the steps required to develop a Custom Job. Senior employees are available to help characters workshop the abilities, but they mostly want to remain in the break rooms to avoid Ganeshan's constant Job mania. His booming voice is muffled through the doors, interspersed with allergic sneezing.

A room has been prepared for those to practice using their basic job abilities, primarily in making sure they're stable yet not too weak. There is a chance that an improper ability extraction can go wrong and hurt the user, so Ganeshan has group of White Mages are on standby in case things go south.

For those that would rather have all the fun without the work, there is the Ability Simulation and Modeling Room, where characters can design their abilities on the computer and see them play out on the screen before them. There's no limit here, and since Jessie is too busy to keep an eye on everyone, the outfits and visual effects have the potential to get...very, very silly.

C. Heigh-Ho

It's off to work you go. Those crystals won't mine themselves, and anyone strong enough must enter the mine in search of the necessary material. It's tedious, difficult work, and some of these are embedded so deeply in the rock that they might be more trouble than they're worth. Not to mention those gross bugs might not like their homes to be disturbed.

There's also the fact that monsters have a tendency to wander inside and attack, so they'll need some reliable body guards.

There should be more crystals deeper inside, but someone else will have to scout the area...

D. Explore the Dungeon

Which is where this team comes in. All the good stuff is deep in this mine, and reliable navigators are necessary to map out the tunnels without getting lost. There's also the fact that the previous owners of a time long ago didn't want opportunists to take their precious resources and outfitted the rooms with puzzles.

Door Locks are puzzles. Pressure plates activate traps. It's the ultimate test of critical thinking. Some of these don't make sense if you think for too long. Why did they go through all the trouble to program time-based puzzles with falling blocks and symbols? The Pupu are strange. At least the bats here are easy to fight, and the mine cart rides are fun.

Comments

[garyoutensei]

Between the two of them, the fight didn't last long, Baiken shaking clean her blade before sheathing it once more, letting out another puff of smoke.

"I gotta admit, kid... You're really starting to impress me."

[sassafrisk]

Frisk snorts, flicking rotting black gore off their blade and towards the wall. "Yeah, well, I still have a long way to go. I still have a hard time fighting people. And skeletons, for that matter."

[garyoutensei]

"Here's hoping you never have to," Baiken hummed.

[sassafrisk]

"Cheers to that." Frisk fishes out a Hi-Potion from their pocket and chugs it down, then hands another one to Baiken if she needs it. "I just don't understand how badasses like you do it. Fighting actual people for real, I mean." They pause. "...although that's probably a good thing and a sign of good mental health. No offense."

[garyoutensei]

"None taken," Baiken let out another trail of smoke.

"I don't think of myself as a 'badass' and you shouldn't either. Mine's a path you should never walk, and if you do, you need to be prepared to lose everything for it..."

[sassafrisk]

"Yeah, fair." Frisk gives Baiken a Look, something unreadable in their eyes. "You know, you remind me of someone back home a little bit." Granted, Undyne had tried to kill them several times, but... Baiken was different, somehow. She was putting that intensity to good use.

[garyoutensei]

Baiken took the offered hi-potion, shifting her pipe to the edge of her lips to pull a drink from it, before tossing the empty vial away casually.

"And you aren't like anyone I've met before."

[sassafrisk]

Frisk snorts, looking at Baiken dubiously. "Really? I would've thought shithead punk kids like me would be a dime a dozen." They take a sip from a very small ether vial, brewed by Papyrus specifically for a ninja's mana pool. "They were back on my world, at any rate."

[garyoutensei]

"Maybe they are. Maybe they're in mine, too. But I don't exactly meet a lot of people worth being around in my walk of life." To say the least.

[sassafrisk]

Frisk looks at Baiken, eyebrows raised in genuine surprise. They open their mouth to snark, then think better of it. Having a Moment with Baiken was probably a pretty rare thing, after all, and they didn't want to ruin it. So Frisk forces their eyebrows down and, for once in their life, is content to just stand with Baiken in silence, a smile tugging at their lips.

[garyoutensei]

The silence persisted for some time, the only real sounds being the background noise of the mine workers and the occasional exhale of smoke from Baiken, until the whistle for the shift change sounded.

Baiken made no motion to move.

[sassafrisk]

Frisk gets up and stretches, looking back towards Baiken. "I'm tired out for the day, but if you're staying for the next shift, I can grab some dinner for you."

[garyoutensei]

"Just whatever meat is being served up there. I don't need anything else," Baiken hummed. She was glad Frisk knew better than to insist she head back up.

[sassafrisk]

Frisk comes back a little under twenty minutes later, one plate piled high with several high-quality meats, the other more twelve year-old sized with a balanced nutritional value. After handing the meat-plate to Baiken, they surreptitiously glance around, making sure nobody's paying particularly close attention, and pull out their iMog slate. After fiddling with it for a few seconds, they change their active Job to Dragoon... except instead of a spear on their back, there's a bottle of sake on their hip. An expensive-looking one, too. They hand it off to Baiken, then change back to Ninja before anybody else can notice. "No, I didn't just steal that, no, I don't drink, and yes, equipping stuff to your least-used Job slot is a good way to smuggle things," they say by way of explanation.

[garyoutensei]

She was honestly a little surprise to see Frisk bring their own food down with them, too. But she supposed they'd never implied they weren't.

More surprising, though, as that little trick. She'd have to remember that one...

"Well shit. Never would have thought of that trick...," she happily took the offered food, setting the plate down in front of her and reaching into her kimono to pull out some lacquered chopsticks.

[sassafrisk]

Frisk sits down beside Baiken and begins digging into their own food, scarfing it down like, well, a child who had just gone through several rounds of intense combat that's also on the cusp of puberty. "It's kinda weird, actually. My world has a bunch of games that have rules that are super similar to how things work here. So I kinda have a knack with messing some of the systems related to Jobs."

They snort, then almost choke on a fry. "I definitely screwed me over in some other ways, though. I expected enemies to wait for me to walk up and hit them before trying to hit back when I was still getting used to this whole 'fighting' thing. 'Specially since monsters back home were a lot more polite and actually did that."

[garyoutensei]

"I'd say thinking in terms of it being a game is a surefire way to get you killed, but you seem to be doing alright," Baiken shrugged, taking her meal a piece at a time, a small sip of sake following each piece.

[sassafrisk]

"Oh, yeah, it totally did almost kill me plenty of times," Frisk says, nodding vigorously as they munch into a burger. "Had to train myself out of that mindset. Helped having Chara know how things worked back on a version of my world and use those expectations to kick my ass while we were sparring."

[garyoutensei]

"Who the hell is Chara?" Baiken spoke between bites, her mouth full.

[sassafrisk]

"One of my friends here, and sort of a sibling if you count weird alternate universe stuff," Frisk says, shrugging. "They're really good with knives and stuff, and offered to help me out in learning how to properly fight against human-ish things instead of just monsters."

[garyoutensei]

Baiken gave a sort of... flat look.

"You said this kid is around your age?" Because by the sound of it...

[sassafrisk]

"Yeah. They somehow had even more of a shitty life than me back home," Frisk says, raising an eyebrow at Baiken's dubious look. "Hence the knives." And lots of other stuff, too.

[garyoutensei]

"Aren't any of the kids around here just normal kids?" Baiken groaned. "Then again, I was younger than you when..."

Actually. Probably best to not talk about that. She stopped herself, sort of... staring at her empty sleeve for a moment before filling her mouth with another slab of meat.

[sassafrisk]

"You know, I have a theory about that," Frisk says, gesturing vaguely with their fork at themself and Baiken. "So. The reason why all of us came here at once is because the world's about to end, right? This place needs heroes, or at least people who are willing to try to save the world. If absolutely normal people were showed up, they'd just sorta... blend in with the rest of Vaikuntha. Adjust to new lives. They wouldn't do weird adventuring bullshit. If I was an absolutely normal kid with no trauma, do you think I'd be down here fighting monsters for the better part of the month? There's a reason why we, specifically, were all brought here, as screwed up and weird as it may be."

[garyoutensei]

"If that's at all true, and it sounds a little farfetched, I have a few words to share with whatever entity decided all this. Unkind ones," Baiken groaned. Because the last thing she wanted to deal with was some kind of cosmic force of destiny.