driftfleet | Libuscha IV System Mingle (no. 1)

[Her hand goes still as she takes his, her fingers tense under his palm. She wrestles with it for a moment, her gaze shifting down and away from him, focusing on the little bottle of polish. He had to ask, didn't he... well, she hadn't exactly been subtle about her feelings. There was also the whole umbrella explosion on that first planet, so she's made her opinion of it pretty damned clear. She doesn't want to ruin the Umbra Staff for him with the whole truth though, since it is an excellent focus for him. Just. Not for her, anymore.

She chooses her words carefully as she responds.]

...You said it yourself- it has a mind of its own. Or had one, anyway. I didn't know it was a problem back then, and I paid for that. It... misfired. Pretty badly.

[She glances over her shoulder at it, briefly, and when she turns back her brow is furrowed, expression conflicted. Not hate, exactly; cautious, yet thoughtful.]

I fixed it, so you're fine, but- y'know. You get it, right?

[Something happened to him to make him stop cooking for other people for a long time. She might not know all the details, but she can read between the lines. Knowing what happened and what you did wrong doesn't make those bad memories go away.]

[So she got burned by her own focus? Well that's dumb, but also understandable. The Umbra Staff could do some pretty amazing, sometimes frightening things all on its own. It nearly obliterated Kravitz that night on the moon base, and Angus was lucky to still have a head on him. It's good that it can't just up and murder him on a whim anymore, but it's also kinda sad. It's almost like it's going to be missing something now.

Hopefully it still keeps him alive.

He watches Lup's expression carefully, then shrugs.]

Yeah, sure. I guess so. I get it.

[It was a useful feature, but something had to have gone wrong for the staff to end up in a cave with a skeleton. He focuses again on the finished hand, blowing on the polish gently.]

Just wanna know if I should keep it locked up so you don't go all explodey on it like you did all the other ones.

Hah.

[Lup shakes off her momentary unease, getting back to the polish and working on his other hand.]

If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have bothered giving it back to you. I know I didn't give you the greatest impression the other day, but I'm not a complete asshole.

I mean, I woulda been pissed if you had.

[He jerks his thumb up at the staff, a deadpan look on his face.]

You had to have seen all the decor I put on there. That's like...twenty minutes of my life I spent on that, Lup. Twenty whole minutes.

[He's being dramatic, but it's obvious he's not really all that upset by it. Getting your own shit turned on you is one thing he understands well, and even if he isn't ready or even willing to tell that to anyone here, it's never far from his mind. It was only recently that he knew the truth of what happened. It's hard to just walk away from years of guilt.]

Twenty of them. Can you believe that?

I'm amazed it was only twenty minutes.

[She's seen him spend hours on accessorizing in the past- twenty minutes is probably below estimate, considering the level of decor on the umbrella. Her own decor had only taken about as long because she'd gotten him to help her with it back at the Arcanum, though all of that had wasted or faded away years before he found it in Wave Echo Cave.]

I like what you did with it, though. Never seen it look quite like that before.

[Kinda hard to see decoration when you're inside the damn thing, after all.]

Well, I hope so. If I was bumming someone's look, I'd have to kill 'em. Taako's all original.

[He stops for a moment, then shrugs.]

Mostly.

[She shared his face after all. He isn't the only one of himself anymore, which irked him at first, but after awhile he saw the benefit in it.]

It was pretty plain when I picked it up.

Mmm... not surprised. What else did you see around when you found it?

[She has a vague idea of what was there, but again, she couldn't see anything outside of the umbrella, and her sense of time had been all out of whack- she only knew it was about a decade through clues over time and seeing Magnus's aged appearance. She'd had barely a glimpse of her own body as Taako withdrew carrying her with him, but she'd been too distracted just by seeing him again to focus on anything else.

It's a morbid curiosity, but she can't help feeling it, anyway.]

[He blows air out with a low hum, trying to think back. It was awhile ago after all and most things he tries to forget after they've passed. The likelihood of things having to come up again in his life is so slim, that he's learned to compartmentalize pretty well.]

Uh... fuck, I mean... skeletons? A lot of skeletons. And I magic missled Magic Brian off a cliff with his stupid spider. [He snorts, remembering Brian's death.] What a nerd.

[Then a skeleton in a red robe, the umbrella tucked under its arm. He frowns slightly as he wonders...But she's been pretty up to date with the rest of their lives, so the likelihood of her being dead? Can't be, right?

And if it was her? She probably doesn't want to hear that she turned into a grinning skull.]

That's pretty much all I noticed. We were kinda distracted by Merle's dumbass cousin picking up the gauntlet and turning into an angry fire dwarf after that.

Hah... if there were skeletons, any decorations I gave it would've disintegrated long before you got there. I made it as a blank slate so I could change it up whenever I wanted.

[He danced around the actual scene, but she can't really blame him. Whether it's for his benefit or hers- it's hard to tell, but she doesn't mind that much. It's not like it's that important, in the grand scheme of things.

He's probably right. She doesn't need to hear about her own dead body, even if she's seen plenty of all of them die in various ways over the years. Plus dating a necromancer kinda makes to shrug that shit off sooner or later.]

Who the heck is Magic Brian, anyway?

Oh. My. Gods. How do you know so much about me and not know about that loser? He was the first guy I absolutely baked after meetin' up with Mags and Merle.

[Glossing over the fact that Brian pretty much mcmurdered his ass first, but whatever! He got what was coming to him in the end - even if he came back as a robot later. He got it twice then! Twice the death. Bye, Brian.

Taako laughs despite his earlier annoyance at Lup. It's hard not to laugh remembering that giant dumbass.]

Drow with a big ol' spider theme - all over his clothes, even his familiar. Big ass spider who was also called Bryan, but with a Y. Nerd.

[She has to lift the polish brush away from his hand to avoid wrecking his nail as she starts giggling.]

What kind of a name is Bryan for a giant spider? It's not menacing at all!

Right? He wanted to go by "The Black Spider" but the second he said his name? Yeah, nope, all mystique gone.

[He tries to affect Brian's accent.]

"Hello, my name is Brian. Magic Brian. And this is my giant pet spider. Also Bryan, but with a Y so you can tell us apart. I know it's so hard."

[Yeah she's not even trying to paint his nails anymore- she falls backwards against a couple of his pillows, the giggles dissolving into full laughter.]

No, no! He did not sound like that! Are you for real!?

I am not shitting you. Elf Scout's Honor. [He makes the Elf Scout sign (or an approximation, he was never a Scout) with one hand.]

Wanted to invite me to his wedding and everyone, said he [And he drops back into the accent] "loved the cadence of my voice." [He snorts with laughter again, dropping it.] But, yanno, things happened and Magnus ended up straight up kicking him into a pit. Farewell, Magic Brian!

...After like five minutes. It took him forever to die.

[Eh, not like Lup would know better, they'd both had better things to do than tromp around in the woods with a bunch of other kids learning to survive. Like tromp around in the woods by themselves...

The accent gets her rolling again, wiping at her eyes. Ahhh, it hurts, she laughed too much.]

Wonder if he was actually getting married. Or maybe he was just marrying the spider.

Oh gods, I hope not because we fucked his spider up pretty bad, too.

[He's pretty sure that thing was dead as dead could be.

Then again, he'd thought Brian was dead as dead could be up until the fucker showed up again in Lucas' lab. That had been kind of a funny surprise up until Brian and the other two stooges tried to smash him, Magnus, and Merle into a pulp. Not so fun then.]

He was pretty put out that we murdered him, but to be fair, he was trying to murder us first. Even after he was dead, he kept saying how he was going to invite me to the wedding. Kinda kiboshed that one when we killed him a second time.

[Wait.

Waaaaaaaait.]

That was- that nerdlord's lab, right? With the robots? I remember- hearing about that! So that was Magic Brian...

[And here she thought he was just one of the robot souls from the world where they'd found the crystal who must have recognized him. This is way more fun.]

So you heard of that somehow too, huh? [He's not even going to ask how because it's weird enough that she knows so much about his life, but doesn't know the first adventure he ever went on. He nearly died on that one, if it hadn't been for a healing potion and some quick thinking, he's pretty sure that would have been his first and last. After that, his luck seemed to have held out pretty damn well.]

Yuuuup, that's him-- was him. The loser extraordinaire.

It can't be too surprising. Our gloomy Red Robe friend came to visit you there, too.

[That night had been especially hard; Barry had been trying his damndest to tell them about the Hunger without actually telling them and ending up with static, and then it had all derailed when he'd noticed the Umbra Staff. Watching him fall apart and vanish, distressed about her absence, when she was right there the whole time... yeah, that'd been awful. She'd been worried sick that he'd lost control of his lich form until he appeared again in Wonderland.

Better to focus on the magic idiots Taako kept fighting.]

You sure end up meeting a lot of people who come back from the dead one way or another. No wonder you caught the eye of a reaper.

Yeah, that nerd is almost as good at finding us as you.

[He always seemed to show up at the end things though and they always forgot they weren't supposed to talk to him. What else were they to do? Stare dumbly at someone talking to them?]

But ha! Yeah I mean, we kill a lot of people, so it's bound happen eventually. Law of necromantic probability or some shit. I'm surprised we haven't been dragged to spooky prison yet honestly.

Pretty sure you have to willingly do actual spooky crimes to get arrested for spooky jail time. Do you even know any necromancy spells?

[Even during the lost century of memories, Taako was never that into it. Necromancy was usually too creepy and gruesome for either of them- she didn't mind but didn't prefer them, either, and Taako liked the fun, flashy stuff. Lup herself likely wouldn't know any if not for Barry's influence.]

Ugh.

[His face and that one word should tell her all she needs to know. He isn't into death even tangentially except where Death is a hot guy with a great ass.]

Taako's not about that undead life. No thanks.

[She laughs.]

Yeah, didn't think so. Those spells don't suit you, anyway. All corpse-this and zombie-that - it can get a little smelly. Stick with Garyl and the tentacles.

[She finishes glazing polish over the last nail, and leans back, satisfied.]

Finito! The base coat, that is.

I could be one hell of a bangin' necromancer if I wanted to be, buuuuut I don't wanna so? Yeah, no thanks.

[He inspects the nails and clicks his tongue in quiet approval. Alright, they're back at an unsteady equilibrium for now. It's more unsteady on his end than hers, but that's how it usually is with them. It's easy to just fall back into an easy routine of careless banter with her, which is, honestly, the most dangerous thing about her. It's so easy to forget that they're technically enemies (according to the Director) when all the things she does and says are usually in service to him.]

Nice job on 'em. Do I get to have you do my topcoat too, or is that for me to do on my lonesome?

[She just smirks at the idea of Taako the Necromancer- mostly because he'd look absurd in the stereotypical bland black robes. They would definitely need some modifications before he'd even touch 'em. Plus that would make things awkward with Kravitz.]

I'd planned on doing it- may as well finish the job and not leave it half-assed. That isn't my style.

[As if that's her only motivation.]

We ought to give it time to dry or it'll just smear, though, so let's do mine while we wait.

[She reaches for the colour he'd picked out for her, intending to start on her own nails.]

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