melodiesofeternity | Event || Custom Fit

Event || Custom Fit

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.

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Wait seriously?

[ That earns a startled - and bemused - look. ]

That's where Ren and Naoto and Kanji were staying before we moved to Ka'pandol. I practically lived over there half the time.

[ And so when they get there, unless they've been doing a lot of furniture redecordating, she'll walk in like she knows exactly where everything is. Because... she does. She thinks she can maybe even smell a tiny bit of Ren's curry or the teas Kanji liked to make. Though that could just be a suggestion of memory, she knows. ]

Well, now we don't have to worry about anybody listening in.

[ She's... probably pretty thoroughly checked this place for bugs while the others lived here. ]

Yeah- [He's about to ask why when the question's answered for him. He blinks once or twice, then grins.]

Huh, small world.

[She won't have to worry about it; a lot of the things are the same. Didn't exactly have much time to put their own stamp on the place when Shiro disappeared, followed shortly by Hunk. After that they spent most of their time in Arito. Thus, it's nearly all the same. He watches her as she heads in and he closes the door behind them, eyebrow raised.]

Checked it for bugs too, I take it.

[It's not a question, though it could be construed as such.]

Yuuuup.

[ She flops onto the couch, making a familiar dent in the couch cushions. ]

Any bugs left here are my own. [ ... ] That's a joke, by the way. I don't even have the material to make any bugs. Yet.

[ It'll happen eventually. Trust her on that. ]

So now we can talk about whatever you didn't want the staff to overhear, and I can talk about the Metaverse and what the Phantom Thieves actually do and stuff like that.

[Keith raises an eyebrow, taking a seat in one of the chairs.]

I tend to check every night and morning. Some old habits die hard.

[So even if there were any left behind, there aren't any now. He leans back in his seat, hands resting on the armrests. Never question a soldier's paranoia, but especially his or Shiro's.]

Usually when someone says they hear voices in their head, people tend to think they're crazy. [Which is why he didn't want to say it in front of the lab techs.] Though the Lions don't actually talk - it's more feelings and thoughts behind growls or snarls. It's how we work together as one and learn their skills when they think we're ready to handle it. You likely experienced some of that in the Dream Width though, right?

[Which is why he doesn't hesitate to mention it. That, and the familiar setting might help more considering the sinking suspicion that she doesn't do well in crowds. Not to mention how that would affect her if that suspicion is correct.]

[ There's a pause as Futaba tenses slightly at that particular memory. Yeah, she knew the one. Hard to forget. She takes a deep breath, sitting upright and planting her elbows on her knees, letting her hands hang between her legs. ]

Yeah, I did. Honestly.... it felt like having Necronomicon back, for a bit. Personas... it's like that little voice in the back of your head, only it's actually somebody now. And they're a lot harder to ignore, but you get used to them pretty fast.

[ Because they're a part of you, ultimately. They aren't saying things you've never heard before, or anything. ]

[Just as he thought; he gives her a sympathetic glance, knowing that it was going to be a little rough anyway. He still stays quiet and listens.]

I know what you mean. [He'd sensed Blue for almost a year before they found her. Even if it wasn't him that was destined to pilot that particular Lion, he couldn't ignore it.] Partially, anyway. Red and Black are kind of hard to ignore. Black especially.

[There's a faint hint of amusement in his otherwise level voice; it's a testament to how far he's come that he's able to joke about his own shortcoming there.]

Heh, I can believe it. Even Green was... overwhelming, there.

[ A lot had been overwhelming. And in ways both good and very, very bad. But she isn't going into that now. Refuses to let herself think about that now.

Another deep breath. Topic change? Unless he has anything to add, at least. ]

So. Any questions you had that you didn't want to ask with Curti Center listening in?

You still did good. [Considering where they were, and how none of them really handled the situation well.] What exactly are the Phantom Thieves?

[Start with the potentially smaller question. Or at least the least brain-breaky one.]

[ Heh.... least brain-breaking, maybe. But still a pretty heavy one. She'd seen this coming, but she still chews on her answer a bit. This is entirely different from telling Hunk. ]

Technically the full title is "The Phantom Thieves of Hearts."

[ But that's a bit of a mouthful. ]

We're a group of teenagers who mostly goes after criminals. The type of people who have too much power, money, influence or whatever, that the law can't or won't punish them. Using the Metaverse, we steal their hearts, and in the end they confess their own crimes and turn themselves in.

[ In a word: vigilantes. ]

[Like much of anything they're going to talk about isn't going to be a heavy subject. Still, choosing the house over the Lion will likely help. So there's that at least. It probably will take a bit of getting used to how he goes silent, hanging on every word despite how still he remains.]

How exactly do you steal hearts?

[He may or may not be hung up on that concept.]

Metaverse.

[ She glances over at him, smiling wryly. She did just say, didn't she? ]

Is cognitive psience a thing in your version of Earth at all? Psience with a 'psi.'

It is, though it's not exactly something I studied.

[Because, hello, pilot-turned-Paladin and Blade. Ask him about velocity and lift of certain crafts, and he could tell you. Cognitive psience or anything to do with psychology? Not so much.]

Huh. Kinda surprised. It's kind of a bit of a fringe branch of science back home.

[ Most of the people who knew about it were people who had some kind of experience in the field, from what she knew. ]

It's sort of a mix of psychology and supernatural, but still in the realm of provable phenomenon. It's something my mom was studying.

[ She only trips over the mention of her mom a bit. Improvements! ]

The Metaverse is a big part of that. Think of it as a second layer of reality on top of our own, strongly affected by human cognition, and where those cognition can take shape.

Again, not exactly something I touched. I tended to stay away from anything to do with the subject. So I'm not really the best to ask about it.

[...Yeah, he's not touching that. Not after growing up in the System. Yet he quiets afterward, frowning.]

And this ties into what you guys do.

[It's not that hard a leap of logic to make, despite not fully understanding it. Yet like Altean magic, he takes it as a fact of her version of Earth and presses on.]

[ Futaba nods ]

For the most part, the Metaverse and the rest of reality are kept separate. But sometimes, there are people who are able to find a way to pass through.

[ As far as she knows at least. A lot of her mother's research is missing, so if there's anything there... Or anything else that the people who've stolen Wakaba's research were doing, she doesn't know. ]

My mom discovered that strong desires could become distorted in the Metaverse and take shape - like a teacher seeing a school as a castle where his students are slaves, a mob boss seeing a city as his own bank. At that point, the person would start behaving differently in reality, and usually not in a good way.

As Phantom Thieves, we could enter the Metaverse, find those places, and find the core of those worlds. When we steal the core, that whole world would fall apart, which in turn would affect them in reality. They'd lose those distorted desires, and the need to act on them, but the memory of what they did would still remain.

We called it a 'change of heart.'

[ Admittedly she's. Cautious here. This was the part of what they did that... had the greatest chance to not sit well with people. ]

[Keith remains silent for a moment, a not-so-tiny flare of outrage at both of those examples. It doesn't take much for him to imagine what those in power could do back home with that sort of distorted desire. He saw the worst of the school system even at their point in time. And, it's not much of a stretch considering their enemy in their universe.]

...That's messed up. [He says after a moment, leaning back in his seat. He didn't realize he'd started leaning forward as he listened until he feels the back of his seat again. What he says is an understatement, but it needed to be said. If only to, well, break the awkward silence he knows he accidentally perpetuated.

How much easier would it be if that existed in space? He didn't want to think about it.]

And if you're expecting me to judge you guys for that, I won't. [If anything, he's a little sheepish.] I... may have stolen Shiro's car the day we met.

[ Futaba huffs a brief laugh, giving him a sidelong glance. Not something she expected. But it makes her relax a little, tension unknotting from her shoulders. ]

Not everyone likes what we do. Some are scared of what we do. What we could do. Others....

The exact kind of people we'd go after. We made some enemies of some pretty powerful people. Right before I got here... they'd started going after us.

[ And yet everyone looks at her weird when she doesn't trust the Curti Center. Doesn't trust a lot, really, save the friends she's made. ]

[Keith shrugs. Hey, he figured it would get a laugh out of her. That's what he was aiming for. As for being the source of fear for others, he reaches out with his mind and a pair of large yellow eyes peeks in through the kitchen window behind him; a low rumble of a growl shakes the house. He opens his eyes and when he does, it's not the usual navy hue she's come to know, but bright violet and yellow whites similar to what she likely glimpsed of Lotor's (former) generals.]

I understand, and I know the need for secrecy. [He closes his eyes and they're back to normal when he opens them again.] I won't say a word, because in a way... I sympathize.

[He lets that sink in for a brief moment before he speaks, though it's more he's debating just how much to explain. Because, like with the Phantom Thieves, there's a lot he hasn't told anyone who wasn't there to witness it. He likes to keep it that way.]

Like Shiro and I said over the network, I'm not fully human. The Galra are a spacefaring race who conquered most of the universe by the time we found the Blue Lion, and while I suspected a few weeks or months after we became Paladins...

[He didn't know, and even when he demanded to know what the knife he held since he could remember meant, the knowledge was denied him. At least, until he awakened the blade.]

I'm not just a Paladin or the leader of Voltron. I am an agent of the Blade of Marmora.

[ There's... a decent bit to unpack there. First of all the fact that while Keith didn't say it outright, he didn't know until Voltron had... happened to them all.

Living in a society where conformity and not being Obviously Different can be a bit of a watchword means she already can see all too well how this would be uncomfortable. The fact that his Galra side probably wouldn't be too welcome among a lot of the people he was helping to protect... yowch.

Given all her own troubles fitting in, willingly and otherwise, there's definitely a feeling of kinship there. And sympathy. ]

Somebody else who works from the shadows, I'm guessing.

[ Given that nobody had mentioned it all to her until Keith himself had done so. ]

[Keith nods.] A far cry from our mission as Paladins, but my joining their ranks secured us allies.

[And absolved him of the charges of stealing his mother's blade, but shh. Details. They weren't asked for.]

Judging by your reaction, I take it Shiro never mentioned us. [That's fine. Better to keep some secrets.] Which is probably for the best, because the last I remember we... well, ended that alliance with Lotor. Almost every Blade is likely compromised, too.

[Including Kolivan, his mother, and himself. Whoops.]

[ the level of same hat here is... impressive. She smiles wryly. ]

Us too. Had to let a traitor on our team, or else lose our only chance of outmaneuvering him and the people he worked for.

[ Which still posed a very big risk. The only reason it wasn't bigger is that they'd been able to ascertain what Akechi's and Shido's plans had been beforehand. Thanks in no small part to her own efforts. ]

He didn't. Probably figured it was your thing to tell.

[ Back when they'd made their little three-way alliance, Shiro'd only really been able to offer his own support. Not all of Voltron's. And certainly not the Blades, not if they were having their own troubles at home. ]

[Yeah, that is definitely a Thing he's noticed as well. It's strange.]

A big risk. I know quite a few who wouldn't have taken that chance and regretted it.

[He and his mother were two peas in a pod there; taking risks like that while Kolivan tried to scold it out of him.]

Probably. Not to mention the last thing Shiro remembered before we arrived was not long after I joined. A few Earth days tops. I'm not surprised.

[A few days that had been hell for him. Allura had started to give him the same look and attitude that he'd gotten from so many adults back on Earth. She all but ignored his presence unless there was danger, but that was fine. He was used to it.

That, and there was much they didn't know about the Blades back then, and now, he's been a member for over two years. Several months directly under Kolivan's wing, and two years in the Quantum Abyss being trained by Krolia.]

If any of the other Blades show up, I can't guarantee what they'll do other than to likely assist in the effort to stop the summoning like any sane person would. I'm not a senior member like Kolivan and my mom.

[Most still call me "Earthling" instead of my name, he almost adds but clamps that down deep inside. They aren't wrong, so he never argued. He won't bring it up here.]

But you guys need anything, Shiro and I will come. The other Paladins will likely follow because we know what tends to happen when we split up.

[ The way he says that, 'I know a few who wouldn't have taken that chance and regretted it.' It makes her wry smile turn a bit more into a smug smirk. Quite possibly a hint that their gambit had paid off. ]

Hopefully we'll all get to a point of an actual alliance. I mean... we kind of did one? Shiro and Takeshi and I. But we were all really only able to speak on our own behalf. Can't speak for the others but... the Phantom Thieves all make decisions like that unanimously. It's a way we've kept ourselves in check.

[ There was a bit more than a grain of truth behind peoples' fears of the powers they wielded, after all. ]

I've been meaning to talk to the others for a while now but like... time has been a pretty hot commodity around here. Until then, common sense'll be enough.

[ Hopefully at least. She's not putting it past a few people to let pride override it. ]

[Keith notices that smugness and while he doesn't grin at it, the smug smirk is matched in full; it even shows in his blue-violet eyes. It paid off. Good.]

We'll see. Friendships tend to help with that, as does a common enemy. [And they all have one; a faceless and nameless one, but the threat does exist. Hopefully that will be enough, if she can talk to them.] So does my team, aside from personal missions. Still need to talk to Lance and Pidge about it, and when she arrives, Allura, too.

[She's the politician of the group, after all; Give him a battlefield or a war room and he's fine. Diplomats? Well, his team knows how well the first one went.]

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Event || Custom Fit

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P5 spoils.....

I should have marked for Season 6 spoilers last tag whoops

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