Closed Making Friends.

[Archailist]

60th Day of Winter, 513.

Seemed silly, to spend so much time trying to explore the city of Nyka. But it was a big city, and he was a small squirrel. It had to be done or he was never going to find his way anywhere in this place. He didn't even know the general plan - he didn't know where the shops were, or where any of the other things were either. And he supposed that in some way he shouldn't have known, since the entire city was just another massive and oversize temple to be worshiped at. Even the districts were their own, and not many really liked the fact that there was a squirrel wandering around. He put up with their glares, and snuck by where possible. Some didn't pay attention at all. Some gave absent looks, although they didn't seem very concerned; others took it to the other extreme entirely and it was only due to his quick feet that they didn't shout at him. The roofs were good places to relax as well, since he could pretty much completely conceal himself in the small guttering by twisting the rest of his shape to match it. He was just another silent ghost wandering through the city walls.

The Aperture and the Celestial though, that was the one place he didn't dare go near. He kept to the edges of the city, trying to worm his way deeper into each district as much as he could - which wasn't far. He may have been a small creature but he was still a Pycon rather than a squirrel, and he was still at least recognized as a non-monk. He barely caught more than a glimpse, in truth, of what lay beneath the different sectors before he was forced to abandon his search on penalty of invading some unknown contract. He wasn't actually working yet, so he didn't have his little scroll that allowed him to wander aimlessly around under semi-official business. And there wasn't much to do in this place anyway. There was the Hostel, but that was just a warm bed and that was about it. There was the possibility of searching to find food, or working himself in the out lands of Nyka - or even the Warfields again, training up his acrobatics and whatnot. But he wasn't sure. For now, he remained in the city rooftops and watched all the monks and the sparse travelers.

Most were travelers as one would expect. And the many monks seemed all very busy, but not just busy - confident. As if they knew exactly what must be done, and they followed it without any qualm, or regret, or anything. Even if they weren't being told, they just carried out their duties as if it was entirely what was expected of them and they knew it. Something about the complete competence in their duty made him wander absently back to the Syliran Knights.. if they were so coherent as the monks here. Or were they the opposite - only working under their higher rank, slacking and lazy? Surely not.. but could they really compare to the unity that religion had created for these highly-trained, and disciplined monks of the great Nyka?

[Sekai]

OOCSorry for long delay!

Now a daily routine, Sekai found herself traveling thought all the Districts of Nyka once again, looking for garbage to void. She wandered from the Safehaven Hostel, looked for the nearest discarded litter, and worked her way from there by site. It could be similar to those little connect the dots a child might do.

Sighing, as she bent down for the umpteenth time, to take another minute or so to create a small void portal, before throwing the trash in. Though it seemed like a eager simple job, but she was always completely worn out by the end of the day. 'Normal' days within Nyka, were much different than what was counted as the norm back in Zeltiva.

"Even if I do get an eventless day...I feel bored without anyone to talk to sometimes.", Sekai muttered, accompanying her words with yet another sigh. She's been in this city for almost half a year now, but she hasn't had many acquaintances currently.

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts | OOCNo problem. I was beginning to worry you just weren't going to reply.

Excitement was limited in supply, to say the least. The squirrel had found that out long by now, after hardly a season spent in the city - it actually just made the squirrel want to leave and return to Syliras.. it was a shame that he hadn't learned as much as he'd wanted to from the place but everyone made the occasional mistakes. Everyone just seemed hard at work, never having time for anyone else but their gods - but what could a squirrel do about that? Well, he could always play a few games of mischief to spark up a bit more activity. That'd be the easiest thing to do, and it'd most likely spark off the best responses. But first, he needed a target.. a worthy opponent in this new game of wits. And barely a few chimes after glancing over the place and searching from the rooftop of the SafeHaven Hostel, he found the perfect, unsuspecting monk.

He looked like he was heading for the Hall of Robes. A small man, measly in one sense but unbelievably muscled along his upper arms and even his chest - pectorals bulging past the thin fabric of his monks robe. And in his arms, bundled in huge amounts, plenty of robes and other things - needles and threads balled up. The stuff nearly towered over his own head by the looks of things, and many other monks pushing around him gave the smaller man a much wider berth. However.. it looked like the perfect thing to play a little innocent prank, since he could see a Voider off to one side, creating little portals to whisk away rubbish. Oh, it'd certainly be a horrible little prank to play, but he desperately wanted some excitement.. who knew, he might find it this way.

Archailist grinned to himsef as he turned off and began sprinting along the ledges of the red-brick buildings, jumping down from the edge and onto the bannister of the lower balcony of the neighboring structure and from there, to the floor between the two buildings. The monk hobbled past slowly and cautiously, not too far off from the Voider. That's it.. not too far now.."

[Sekai]

OOCFinally! Backlog just about cleared! Posting speed should be faster now, if nothing happens.

Sekar continued to create the Void portals, whisking away useless garbage that littered the surroundings, before taking a half a chime breather. "I really need to practice Voiding more often...", she muttered to herself in a tired tone, mixed with annoyance directed at herself. Quickly, she stood back up, and started creating void portals again, tossing garbage into the Void whenever she saw any.

As she continued to clean up the alleyway, she was oblivious to the monk who happened to be coming closer, utterly ladened with robes and sewing materials and tools, heading off to do his own branch of work. Whereas that monk was carefully moving, watching his step, Sekai was less of, more so just wandering randomly until she found garbage, where she would make a beeline for, before making a portal to the Void, and throwing the garbage away. All the while making sure to keep her head down, and avoiding the attention of the citizens of Nyka. Being the subject of fists about fifty-five days ago had taught her a lesson in attracting the wrong attention.

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts | oocNo worries.

A short swing down from the lip of the roof onto the edge of the windowsill, and he was poised perfectly. Hopefully he wouldn't push too hard when he did land on the mans shoulder - he didn't want to end up going through one of those void portals himself. Not that he knew what was on the other side... although from what he could see, a heap of rubbish wasn't something to look forward to, either. But even when he tried to be careful, he wasn't exactly skilled in aerial manipulation.. far from it really, since it was such a delicate affair. Not to mention that he often.. well, underestimated the density of clay. So, when he did attempt to gracefully leap down with the intention of landing on the mans shoulder... the squirrel found out very soon that he hadn't quite calculated correctly. The man carried on walking, and where he had been, the squirrel splattered, mostly. Thankfully he stayed mostly composed, because his torso and legs spread out and took most of the force. But the man was still walking away.. and he had to reform himself, quickly. His window of opportunity was slipping away quickly. Not enough time.

There was one thing that he could try, although it was a complete shot in the dark and he'd never even tried to do it before. Manipulation of the body was something the Pycon could still use plenty of work on, but he'd give it a go. So, he reached out with one paw.. and concentrated, as much as he possibly could, on trying to push all of his mass into it. Slowly.. steadily.. it grew out longer and longer, but the man was much faster. There went his chance for mischief.. his perfect opportunity. But then something just as good tripped over the half-squirrel sitting in the middle of the street. A heavyset monk, head lowered but his attention never on where he walked.. because all at once, the monk was tumbling straight for Sekai.

Beneath the monks feet, though, the squirrel slowly returned the extra clay back to his body and couldn't help with the heavy laughs as the monk seemed to take absolutely forever to fall. It was like those trees that just hovered on the edge of collapse for bells and bells.. and then suddenly, they fell and took out three others on its way. The same for the heavyset monk, teetering on the edge, waving his comparatively tiny arms furiously, his garbs flattering like some comical flightless bird.

[Sekai]

Sekai was continuing to mindlessly create portals to the Void. That is, until she heard an odd sound, one that she has never heard before. The sound of something unusual, almost like mud hitting the ground, from a height. Sighing, as she close the portal, before looking around to view the source of the odd noise.

Just in time apparently, as her eyes immediately noticed several strange things happening. One, there was an elongated, clay like formation that was moving. And two, the more important occurrence, was a rather large, heavy looking monk, that seemed to be in mid-fall...right at her!

Panicking, Sekai immediately attempted to side-step the danger, but unfortunately, tripped herself with her footwork. "Gah!", she gasped, as she hit the ground, before making a soundless gasp, as she felt the monk land on her legs. This city hates foreigners, it seems., she bemoaned to herself, as she managed to extract herself from under the heavy weight.

Once freed from her predicament, she turned around, and lent a hand to assist in pulling the monk up to a standing position, where she immediately apologized profusely for happening to be in the way, repeating "I'm sorry!", while keeping her head bowed. Most of it was due to her being careful, and not wanting yet another person to start throwing their fists at her, but also due to the embarrassment of being nigh on flattened.

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

The commotion was the perfect opportunity for the squirrel to slip away again - quickly, and quietly as possible, back up the nearest building and back to the relative safety of the rooftops. Hopefully no-one would notice him on the way up too. But once he got to the top, out of sight.. boy, how he howled in laughter. Sure, it wasn't something that he'd intended entirely, but it was still damn hilarious. The way he fell.. the way the little Voider couldn't get away fast enough..! Oh, if only that portal had remained open a little longer, they might have fallen straight through!

So what if he did, though? The Voider could just open another portal and drag the monk back out again. Not like the squirrel had any.. erm.. standard understanding of magic. It would be logical, right?

He could even hear the Voider person apologizing and it just made him laugh even more. What if the monks blamed her? Hah, well, they'd never put it down to a squirrel, surely! A little innocent squirrel.. made of clay.. how much trouble could he really cause, anyway? Well, that was yet to be seen. Maybe he could make more people fall over the Voider too, like a game. See which ones would fall down the little hole. Like a really strange game of catch, only with swirly black portals to unknown emptiness being the targets, and people being the arrows.

Oh, he was already dropping down the opposite side of the building, back to the streets - to see if he could find another Voider, and another monk to push down on them. One ledge to another, around the windows and straight onto a male monks shoulder - from there to the floor and off at a full sprint. There was a bit of shouting from behind, for sure, from a sultry monk who didn't like being used as a landing spot. But oh well - it wasn't long before they were out of earshot and he was merrily bounding through the streets again, around the corner and around it again until he was at the bottom of the street. And then... an idea hit him.

Pushed against the bottom edge of the red-brick building, he wondered why he couldn't just stalk the same Voider. That would be much easier than running around the whole of Nyka, trying to find another. He didn't even know if there would be any others, or if they would be working. He certainly hadn't seen any so far, in his journeys around the red city. But he couldn't be a squirrel. He'd have to change into something else.. something they wouldn't suspect. After all, squirrels? In a city? Madness.

It wouldn't be easy, though. He'd have to manipulate all of the clay in his body. Reshape it, push it and pull it into new shapes. He could do it, but.. it wouldn't feel comfortable, really. And he wasn't entirely sure that it would look realistic enough, either. With a squirrel, well, he could just look at a squirrel. With a rat, however, there was nothing to work from. Not a peep. He'd just have to recite from memory what one looked like.. the beady little eyes, the short legs, the long tail, the bulgy odd-looking body that seemed a little too big for its own good.

Slowly, it begun to shape. His squirrely-arms became shorter, as well as his legs, with the excess clay instead pulling back into his torso to help bulk it up. His tail thinned out, and the mass from there was used as well. A longer snout.. a bit more rounded.. larger haunches. He couldn't see himself, but he could estimate. But by the end of it all, he just looked like a really strange-looking squirrel. Not really a rat. But it'd have to do, the basic outline was there. Now he could crawl off into the city again, keeping on his stubby feet to make sure he at least looked like a rat then as well. He'd need the illusion to work, otherwise this plan would never work.

[Sekai]

After all the apologizing, and the weird looks she had received from the monk, who had left to go on his way, Sekai turned around, and looked back at the place where she saw that abnormality that was a moving mass of clay. And noticed it wasn't at the same place she spotted it previously. "I wonder who the animator was?", she quietly asked herself, before she began her search for the animated blob of clay.

Looking around in the are where she had spotted it proved to give her fruitless results, so perhaps she needed to proven her search. Wandering around the buildings, taking peeks around corners, glancing at any shadows that could hide such a ball of clay from an average passerby. She wanted to know who the animator was, and perhaps give them a good piece of her mind, for causing her problems. That, and she also wanted to ask how they were so capable at making clay formations that became mobile, without some sort of joint piece.

Continuing to wander, Sekai was starting to wonder if she would ever find that animated clay, or even run into anything that would lead her to the animator. Nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing that she could see anyways. But she wasn't planning on going back to work, when she found what seemed to be the best chance for her to improve on her knowledge of animation.

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts | oocSorry this was so late.

Taking a form wasn't easy when you were a 'blob of clay'. Not as easy as many would expect. But what made it really difficult, was actually holding the form - the stubby legs felt unnatural and generally gave an impending sense of wrong about everything that he did. He couldn't really scurry very well because of it.. just wobble about. But at least he could pass unnoticed around the corners of the high stone buildings, with barely a flicker of a glance thrown for the now-rodent making his way through the dents and drains that lined the edges of the streets. Now if only that voider-person would stay still! He was never going to be able to catch her if she kept wandering back and forth, still searching for the squirrel that she would never find!

For a while, he wandered pretty aimlessly. Going back to the same spot as before gave no result - the same could be said when he scurried around the rest of the building and tried peeking over to their neighbors. Which meant that he was going to have to try crossing the streets.. and that meant coming out of the protective shadows and the comforts of the narrow gaps that he could slip between so easily. It also meant running straight into big, stompy feet and relying on a rather crude prayer of luck and faith that he would make it out again alive, never mind in one piece. So, as he sat there on his haunches, he had to ask himself a rather difficult question. Was going through quite-certain death worth the opportunity to tease and fool with a random person that he'd never met before in his life?

Yes. Yes it was. Why not, after all?

And with that, the squirrel-turned-rat rushed out into the oncoming feet, his long but very thin tail coiling up tightly against his lower back to avoid complete flattening. Even then, though, it was pretty near-impossible to try and pay attention to several monks at once as they stepped over him, around him, and nearly on him. A quick jump here or a roll there helped, barely, but he soon found that every time he tried to avoid one foot, he just ended up throwing himself into the line of another. And it wasn't long.. in fact, it was pretty damn inevitable.. that he would make a mistake. In fact, it was nothing short of a miracle that he hadn't been stepped on already.. most likely because the other monks were out doing... whatever it was that they did when they weren't busy stepping on him.

He felt one side of his body suddenly go quite numb. He couldn't move one of his legs.. and there was a bit of sharp pain there, too. But it faded pretty quickly. He glanced over quickly, and found.. a very large foot-sized indentation on his back, with some of the clay mashed up a bit and pressed into the floor. At least nothing had fallen off.. but he couldn't move it very well, and his foot had been completely absorbed by the rest of the clay in his hip, thanks to the 'squish'. And that was hardly the worst of the situation he as now in.

"RAAAAT!" The high-pitched, shrill yell was probably enough to wake half of Nyka, with the female monk standing above him recoiling quickly in horror. Not that she need to.. he was kinda pinned to the floor here, stuck by the clay that was still ground into the cobblestones and the fact that he was down to three legs. Surely, though, she could see that he wasn't a real rat? No blood, no gore.. just clay smothered into place. How could these people not notice such a thing? Perhaps their minds were just running so quickly that they failed to notice quite a lot when confronted with the usual 'fight or flee' instinct.

It wasn't just the female monk that had just stepped on him, though, to pull away. Soon there was a small circle of monks looking down on him. And one.. actually took a step forwards, with something wooden, like a giant stick, raised above his head. "Well, let's get rid of it then!" Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

[Sekai]

OOCIts alright, I can't complain

Sekai sighed, placing her hands on her knees, as she too a minor break from her search. She has had no luck finding that clay squirrel, and all she has succeeded in accomplishing, was waste time. Perhaps the squirrel wasn't around anymore, and the animator has already picked it up. "Such a pity...", she muttered to herself, as she dusted herself off, before standing straight up.

Before she could return back to voiding the garbage that may litter the alleyways, she heard the most oddest of screams, calling out 'rat'. Pivoting on one foot, and rapidly running in the direction of the scream, Sekai was curious. Could it be that squirrel? One might never know, considering quite often, the general populace of humans living don't notice details. Only noticing the appearance, and imagining the rest of the story.

Finally out of the alleyways, and into the more wider, open street, she looked around. Noticing an unusual crowd growing to her left, she ran towards the group. Using her smaller than average frame, she slipped and squeezed herself between the mass of bodies, until she was at the inner edge of the circle. There, she witnessed a monk raise a stick above his head, as to most likely swing it down to crush the animated clay...rodent? Well, a pancake fitted the word better.

Stepping out of the ring of monks, before standing in front of the monk wielding the staff. Giving a friendly smile, while putting both hands behind her back, holding each other, she thought to herself whether or not she should be violating her one rule to herself, which is to avoid attracting attention. "Um...sorry to interrupt, sir, but this is not a rat.", she quickly said. While speaking, she tried to assist the animated clay off the cobblestone, by slowly detaching her hand' astral projection. She didn't know whether she could even help, but it was worth a shot. After all, if she could meet the animator, it was a good trade. "You see, this is...uh...my attempt at animation.", Sekai lied, while now using her projected right hand to poke at the clay, trying to loosen it from the ground.