etrayalogs | FEBRUARY MINGLE

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FEBRUARY MINGLE

WHO: Everyone!
WHEN: February 14th - March
WHERE: Etraya
WHAT: The arrival of newcomers, a mini mission, and some new city features!
NOTES\WARNINGS:

⏵ arrival ⏴
Welcome to Etraya!

Arrival goes as expected - characters awaken on hospital beds and are offered an explanation of their situation: that they have arrived in the city of Etraya, and they are their world's only hope. They are welcome to wander the hospital if they would like to - the upper floors are mostly empty, full of pristine hallways and numerous rooms filled with supplies, cots, and things one would expect from a relatively average 21st-century hospital.

In the hospital's lobby are several party tables set out with miscellaneous baked goods: croissants, cookies, breads, cake slices, as well as tea and coffee to accompany them - or hot chocolate, for those who are opposed to the other offerings.

Outside the hospital, the last remnants of snow are melting in the sunlight as the weather begins to warm up. It's still chilly enough one might want to put on a coat, but not so cold a jacket is necessary for wandering around without freezing off one's fingers.

We hope you enjoy your stay.

⏵ heroes return ⏴

As the Quantum Rail train glides to a halt, returning passengers step out onto familiar ground - the train station, right where they had initially begun their mission. When exiting the station, their earpieces vibrate, indicating the automatic download of a detailed map which highlights key locations, transit paths, and notable landmarks. As Aurora promised, she had been working on a few renovations around Etraya! A sleek trolley system now winds through Etraya, following clearly marked pathways through the city bubble to make travel across the city smoother. However, the trolley only moves one way, eternally following the loop Aurora has set it on. And because of this, it takes six hours to complete it's loop all the way around. Don't miss your stop!

Pets and animals have been returned to their usual preferred areas, some awaiting the arrival of their owners, and others keeping to themselves in the forested areas throughout Etraya.

Beyond the small upgrades, things seem relatively unchanged - until one familiar sign catches the eye. One marked by four vertical lines, methodically crossed out one by one: the final slash has now been drawn through. The tally is complete. What it indicates has yet to be made clear, but it has to mean something, right? No one would go through the effort of making an ominous-sounding sign without following through.

⏵ love in the air ⏴

This Valentines Day, Aurora and the companion bots have opted to try something a little different: they have scattered mystery valentines across the city. Hidden within mailboxes, tucked into cafe menus, slipped under doors, on the outside of high windows for those wall-crawlers to spot. There are countless of these little slips of papers, strewn throughout the city. And within each valentine, is a challenge or gesture to complete. Please feel free to make these up yourselves as long as they fit in with the theme!

Some examples include:

Deliver a flower to a stranger.
Write a heartfelt poem for someone.
Share a box of chocolates!
Confess your feelings for another.
Play matchmaker for two people - this can be platonic, or romantic!
Gift a friend with a stuffed animal.
Give five different people a genuine compliment.

While not mandatory, completing five tasks will earn an individual an additional ten points to use towards anything they would like!

Each little Valentine is signed "Your Secret Admirer. ♡", and some of them may even be addressed to specific individuals. Don't be surprised, Eddie, if you see one or two that are specifically addressed to you lurking around your collection of chicken friends!

And while most of these are harmless, some of the valentines cards come with effects for those who come into contact with the paper. Perhaps they thought it was a piece of garbage, or were just kicking it out of the way rather than intending on taking part. It doesn't matter! They get to join in on the fun, too.

Heart Eyes - your pupils literally turn into hearts for a few hours, making it hard to focus on anything other than things (or people) you find attractive.
Love-Struck Stammer - You can only speak in poetic compliments or romantic declarations, regardless of whom you're speaking to.
Chocolate Bliss - Everything feels good. Simple. Easy. As if there's nothing in the world to concern yourself with. You feel happy, without any concerns or worry.
Rose-Tinted Vision - everything looks soft and romantic, as if you're in a romance novel. You know the ones.
Magnetic Attraction - regardless of what you had been doing, you suddenly find yourself unable to leave the side of the person closest to you. Had you been eating chocolates while walking down the street? Well, have fun getting stuck to the guy who'd been out for a jog!
Serenade Syndrome - you find it impossible to resist the urge to sing your words, turning all conversations into love ballads.
Heartstrings - A thread appears, connecting you to someone close by who you share many similarities too. Perhaps you had never met this person before, but the threads tied around your pinky fingers that refuse to let go until you allow yourself to open up to them clearly means you should be a little more familiar with them.

Love is in the air—or maybe just a bit of well-intended chaos! 💕

⏵ NOTES ⏴

Welcome back from the mission, and welcome to Etraya for our newcomers! We've tried to keep this log simple for an easy introduction, as well as some downtime for our mission-goers who worked hard to solve the Quantum Rail mystery.

There is something else going on, but. . . well, no one seems to know what! The computer that had been on the lower floor of the hospital is now missing, and Aurora may seem a little flustered as she flits around Etraya, in search of something.

For all questions relating to this log, please refer to the mod queries comment. All other questions can be directed to the FAQ.

⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

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If he sees someone who looks exactly like someone he knows, Popp's going to assume that this is that person. One disappointment isn't enough to break this assumption, unless she does something incredibly unexpected. ~~Shrieking~~ Speaking loudly in a higher pitched voice than normal is unprecedented but not that shocking.

He does not entertain the possibility of a concussion or hallucination; he gets hit harder than this all the time and his head is perfectly normal. He's scuffed up a bit, but ~the power of friendship~ has cured him or at least hit him with enough surprise that he has forgotten about any bruises.

"Gaia?!" Popp is also speaking loudly in a higher pitched voice than normal and the narration can call it what it likes. "You're here too?!"

As far as he knows, he saw her this very week. While he doesn't miss her, he's glad enough to see someone he knows and likes that he dashes over and grabs her hands. He's just... like this. If he doesn't touch people he will wither away like an unwatered plant.

It was not a shriek! ...So clearly Popp didn't either.

"I just got here!" She's honestly so surprised that she won't protest having her hands grabbed at all.

Well, the teen did grow on her, even if their beginnings were a bit rocky. And look how much he's grown since then! They've sparred! She's hit him with a hammer! He's tossed weird sounding fire magic spells at her! ~~Not even a hesitation to grab her hands despite her being all girl germs and stuff.~~

"What is going on? Is this place just pulling everyone from Kamurkia? Have you seen anyone else?" Gaia hasn't let go of his hands just yet, but suddenly she's reminded of an extremely important fact. Something Popp will be dying to hear.

"Sephiroth is here Popp! He didn't go back home. He's been here a while!" About as long as he was gone from Kamurkia in fact, nearly two months since his fateful disappearance at the beginning of December.

This fact is the most vital, most important one and he'll hear it in her tone; the gladness and relief.

Most of Popp's close friends came with a rocky start; Gaia being snooty at him and then siccing him on a scary dark sorcerer is mild enough to be a fond memory at this point.

Violence is a great medium for forging close relationships. Not the only one, but it's up there! You learn a lot about people once you have thrown a Frizzle at them, such as their coping mechanisms for being set on fire and sometimes interesting new swears. ~~Being hit by a hammer is a general purpose remedy for being weird about girls, the key is to not do it so often that he builds up an immunity.~~

"For real?! That's great!"

His voice cracks a little while he's shouting, let's go ahead and ignore that one too as long as we're ignoring various types of voice quality!

"I haven't seen anyone else I know; maybe... we worried so much the gods overheard and shoved us over here?"

So far, so good. Coupling that with Sephiroth's loss and a bit of time working on project hot spring presumably? A little thing like siccing a dark sorcerer can surely be forgiven. Why she even said she'd save him from Maam!

"Yes!" Then, Gaia realizes she said that a little louder than is really necessary. "I mean yes, and it's really him, the one we knew on Kamurkia."

...Totally makes sense there? "I mean... ugh, things are confusing. Though I doubt it was anything like the divine." A little fond exasperation for that one, Popp.

"But... how long have you been here? Did you just arrive? Wake up in that hospital building?"

Oh right. Hands. She's going to try to extract hers now, thanks. Gaia is starting to recover some of her dignity.

They'll commit other personal crimes against each other in time; this is also friendship.

"Oh right, I forgot you could get different versions of people... Yeah, I woke up in there, I had some coffee and managed to not set anything on fire."

Gaia gets her hands back easily; Popp might be clingy but not that clingy. Even if he is worried. The moment she lets go he starts pacing back and forth.

"Did you also get a speech about having to save the world and something about your strength of character being tested..?"

"Yes, even if Sephiroth, myself and you remember Kamurkia, there's someone I remember from there that seems to be a different person here. I suppose it's sort of like what Byleth went through."

Experiencing all those people who remembered a 'him' from another place. ...And then the Fae dumped all those memories on him anyway. Gaia shudders a bit at the thought. Fortunately! There's plenty of distraction, namely in The Speech.

"Something like that, yes. I suppose I should be happy not to be turning into a dragon anymore, but..."

Gaia is turning more serious right now. It's not irritation, though that had certainly flavored some of her earlier first reactions. It's concern.

"We'd barely been drawn to Kamurkia for five months and now we're tugged here? Honestly, I don't know what to think."

Byleth is a fine role model in many respects but Popp maybe does not want to emulate most of his personal weird troubles.

"I was just getting used to the dragon thing, and now I can't do any of it! I feel off balance without the tail now that I'm not tripping over it! I could do all sorts of cool flight stunts with the wings! I even miss the poison breath!"

Popp is still in the irritation phase - he's rarely far from it, to be fair. The absence of Senrik's chill presence in the back of his mind has him on edge but he doesn't want to own up to that.

"And I had something important I was dealing with at home, too! I can work under pressure, but I need to know what I'm working on first!"

Gaia doesn't miss her poison breath. But overall she agrees with Popp.

"You're not the only one. I suspect half of us there could make that claim." She looks about them. "And perhaps more than half here."

Kamurkia had a lot of people pulled back from the dead even. Which is arguably worse? But she really can't give an opinion on how other people feel about it.

Crossing her arms, Gaia lets out a sigh. "I find it annoying to have gone through all that transformation only to have it erased. But... I feel confident that even if Charlie couldn't find out for sure before we were grabbed, those dragons are probably safe enough. And I suppose there's a high chance that if we survive this place, we'll just be sent back to Kamurkia rather than actually home."

No such luck of getting put back where they belong. Which, given Sephiroth is here too, wouldn't be great for everyone come to think.

"Did you get one of those apartments yet? Or have you been wandering around?"

...She says as if she hadn't been doing exactly the same. But at least someone (Cloud) picked out a place for her! And took her first leg of shopping home.

Being dead is sort of like being in another world, in that it's still avoiding your responsibilities even if it's a very reasonable excuse to be doing so. Death is over with a lot faster, it has that in its favor.

"Well, if we have to go back to Kamurkia first, turning into a dragon's probably easier the more you do it... And it'll give us some time to look into all of this world transfer stuff ourselves. I can put up with being tossed around a bit more if it means getting more of a say in where we end up."

Double sigh. He's mostly thinking about Sephiroth and that whole set of circumstances, but also, he doesn't want to make a bunch of friends under intense circumstances and then not see them again?

"No, I didn't exactly come in with a bunch of luggage to unpack."

Popp does a spin to demonstrate the lack of extraneous items on him. He's actually carrying more than he normally would, on the grounds that being stranded in the snow with monsters crawling about has been a very real possibility up until this morning, but it still all fits in his pockets and in a small pack under his cloak.

"They're all pretty much the same thing, right, like rooms at an inn?"

Who says that they can't still be stranded in the snow with a bunch of prowling monsters? The day's not ended yet. Or on one of those missions they've been told to expect.

So look forward to that.

"At the rate things are going, we'll just be pulled to another world," Gaia counters. But it's not a gripe that's directed at Popp specifically, just at their particular fate. "I think we'd better start figuring a way to get ourselves home and not expect anyone to actually return us there."

...Though here it might be worth staying around at least long enough to find out whether this whole 'prove yourself worthy to save your reality' thing is actually true. With the demonstrative spin, Gaia muses thoughtfully.

"I suppose that's to our advantage. If you want to stick close to Sephiroth and I, I suppose we could arrange to be near each other in the apartments. It's a little more than an inn room. You'll have your own kitchen and indoor bath."

Gaia actually sounds pleased. The whole discovery of the bathroom was a positive experience. What she doesn't realize is this offer is going to lead to the suggestion of living in the same apartment together.

But that is for future Gaia to worry about.

"Right? It can't be easy, or everyone would be doing it, but it can't be impossible, or nobody would be able to do it in the first place."

Popp does a lot of things that he is not supposed to. Some of those things are wearing his wayfaring gloves at the dinner table and some of those things are using obscure priest spells he saw once in a moment of desperation.

"But first things first, I'd better grab one of those fancy apartments next to yours!"

Amenities that can impress Gaia of all people have to be pretty good, he's pretty sure that this indoor bath is going to be more than a tin tub and a bucket.

"If they come with kitchens, though, that means we're supposed to cook on our own, doesn't it... I know you're good with candy, but how are you at actual meals?"

Just because she's a fancy rich girl doesn't necessarily mean she can't, but... he's kind of dubious, and he's not hiding it with his face one bit.

...Her candy wasn't that good and she knows it. The result was slightly mint flavored sugar discs in the end. There's a hrmph noise but it's without force. She appreciates Popp's... ah, effort.

"I'm perfectly capable of cooking basic meals you know. It's not like I starved or lived on sweets."

Is her repertoire strong? Not at all. But she can sear meat and make a basic stew. She also learned how to make a decent sugar cookie. She could also trap, skin and butcher the meat for the stews and roasts!

But she definitely got her bread at Angeal's bakery, if not one of the locals.

Then she gets a really good look at Popp's face. And scowls a bit.

"You don't believe me in the slightest, do you?"

His expectations were low after the first draft so he was pleasantly surprised when she turned out perfectly edible sugar discs.

"I'll believe it when I see it~"

He's grinning; he's being annoying on purpose. This is, sadly, his love language. Arguably it is also his neutral language and he's just inherently annoying...?

Popp's repertoire isn't really any better. Worse, maybe, since he's squeamish about butchering mammals. Fish he can do, you don't have to do anything with the legs. He can boil an egg like a real pro, too!

"It'd get pretty boring eating the same few things all the time, so we might as well risk each other's cooking."

Gaia narrows her eyes. She's long learned of Popp's language but that doesn't mean it won't get a reaction. It's just that... he's earned certain allowances. And unlike her reaction to Avan- honestly mostly fueled by her defense of a friend- Popp generally doesn't double down when Gaia is truly annoyed and not just frustrated with 'idiot boys'.

"You're doing very much the opposite of what will get you free meals from me by saying that you know," she counters tartly, but there's definitely a different vibe of tartness. Probably reserved for friends.

With all that being said, there is a fair point in all of this. She has definitely increased her cooking skills and Popp picked up a few things that's she's not as good at. There's a clear change about her manner as she settles into thinking over the hinted at proposition.

In the end it is a good idea, though she's not going to give Popp the benefit of a lot of enthusiasm here no matter how much she welcomes the idea. So with a sigh, Gaia answers.

"Well, if we're going to go that far, I suppose we should ask Sephiroth. He probably picked up some skills at baking from being around Angeal. I'm not so sure I'd trust you with the patience to make bread and we might as well have something decent to go with everything else."

Popp would be willing to shamelessly grovel and apologize if he crossed a line, but this is just friendly needling. Mutual needling, at that.

"Hey! I've made bread before! Well... I've handled the baking part!" He holds his hands up and radiates a bit of heat out of them, enough to warm up the cold air around them both. "It doesn't take that long, less than an hour. Sephiroth is... probably better at the kneading and so on, though."

It feels kind of embarrassing that the very sheltered super soldier is better at one of the definitive normal person skills than Popp is, and furthermore being embarrassed by this is also embarrassing in and of itself. Popp has a lot of feelings, okay? The indignation trails off into mild sulkiness, and he lets go of the Sizz spell. The heat remains until it dissipates as per normal physics. Siiiiigh.

"Don't ask him until he knows I'm here, all right? I want to surprise him and see how happy he is to see me in person!"

We're back to idiot grinning already. Popp has a lot of feelings, after all.

Sephiroth is just very attentive and baking is one of those skills that a methodical mind can really tackle well! But Gaia's own words were pretty much the same; friendly banter that borders on mild bickering about each others' skills and is really hiding the relief at finding someone else she knows and trusts here.

Well, not all is good about that but... still, it's good to have friends. Her expression eases and she does offer one of her smiles which might not ever look idiotic or as a big wide grin but is just as genuine.

"You should make sure to tell him quickly then. I don't want to hold information back from him like this." While she does sound a bit amused there is a trace of seriousness to her manner. Not that she thinks Popp won't rush off to find Sephiroth, but she also doesn't want to hold back good news just for the sake of a surprise.

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether that would be good or bad for Sephiroth. And she's inclined to lean toward the side of caution when it comes to being sure it's good.

"Oh! Did your scales braclet make it here with you? I need it."

...Wait what? Of course it's obvious what she means, but the tone almost sounds like she expects Popp to comply immediately. Fortunately she doesn't hold out on why.

"Between mine and yours, we should have enough to split them three ways."

Ah. Though perhaps it is a little presumptive to think it made it on the journey to this new place; still, everything she had on her person arrived more or less. There should be no reason to think Popp would have taken off the bracelet at just the wrong moment.

Even if the transit took away whatever potency something like dragon scales might have had... well, the point of them was never about their power, was it?

Popp tips his head back and scoffs.

"Yeah, yeah, I guess if you see him in person before I do you can make fun of me for being bad at tracking together."

If Sephiroth is still the same curious but methodical person Popp knows then he has a pretty good idea of how to find him...

But sass aside, when Gaia asks for his bracelet, he rolls up his sleeve and hands it over right away.

"You remember which green scales are which, right?"

"There are the communicators. I can give you his or you can just publicly reach out."

Gaia shakes her head afterward though. She's going to let Popp handle it; one thing she is certain of is that the boy will try to do his best on that front. She had just put in the caveat to imply a 'what if' scenario that could happen by happenstance, given how new they all are to this world. The comment about the scales is met with a delicate snort while she takes the bracelet.

"Please, how could I ever forget? There's only three types here. And only two are green."

Dark green that's almost black, her blue-grey and Popp's lighter green hue. Her fingers play over the scales and there's a trace of a smile. Well... it's okay to have these memories now, right? Or rather it's to say she came to care about the dragon souls within them a little more than her put upon attitude and fears would have let her admit.

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FEBRUARY MINGLE

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