World Tree MUSH

An ominous castle sits perched atop a craggy windswept mountain range. It looks like something out of a Chuck Jones cartoon, with old crooked wooden signs leading up to it and a narrow zig-zagging uneven path to the door. Far beneath sits a grassy glade which extends a few miles before a forest surrounds it on all sides, the trees likely of oak and fir. In the evening light--there is a flash of something white streaking along the path of the mountain--something with a tail and large ears--and... carrying a sack of loot? Long flat-heeled boots crunch along the sandy, rocky road, the ends looking like Nike Air Trainer IIIs, their owner taking a moment to raise the red-tinted visor over their eyes and steal a glance backwards.

"Hah, the people around here couldn't catch a cold, now lets see what we got--" she overturne dthe bag and began rummaging through it.

    Navi had thought Meridian City was weird. Compared to her home country, the countryside, everywhere she'd been -- the smells, the feel of the air, everything had been different, yet now she realized, vaguely familiar in some way. This place was different. It was wrong. In ways more subtle than a city. The air currents weren't merely tinged by city smells and airship engines; they were entirely different. Alien.

    Having fled Meridian in a wreck of emotions, Navi hadn't been paying much attention to where she'd been going. But it shouldn't have been possible to get this lost. She'd flown up high to get a better view. No familiar landmarks as far as the eye could see; the air currents only underscoring just how alien the sights were. It shouldn't have been possible to get /this/ lost.

    The spellsword wasn't feeling great about the prospect of talking to anyone, but when she sensed the figure on their way out from the castle... well, easier to approach her than whoever lived up there. Seeming to be nothing more than a gentle breeze tugging along, Navi follows Mouse to the glade. The breeze kicks up for just a few seconds like something out of melodramatic theatre and, if Mouse looks up at just the right moment, she'll see Navi materialize.

    Deep, calming breath. "Where is this?" Navi then asks, right to the point.

The figure hadn't come from the castle--though it might have seemed like she had--she had actually come from another road though was in that same general direction. The figure it turned out, was a mouse! Well, an anthropomorphic one--holding a large brown burlap sack of /something/ and was pulling things out of it and inspecting them.

"Lets see here..." at first out came a pale blue-ish white candle, wax anchoring it on a metal holder, which alit with a blue flame when she shook the metal holder. Interesting--she set it down nearby as she continued to go through the bag--only looking up when she heard the voice.

At first, she has to take a double take--stepping back a moment with their eyes wide.

"Ahh! well, hello there to you too, toots!" Mirage blinked a little and looked the girl over, noting the archaic dress and fantasy-like accoutrements.

"Did we escape from a lords and ladies convention, sweetie?"

    Navi just looks at Mirage blankly -- apparently used to startling people and the Mouse's the comment going right over her head. She pushes her fingers under her spectacles for a moment, rubbing her eyes and then nudging the specs back into place. "A what- oh." Her eyes alight on the candle, weariness giving way to curiosity. An almost hungry curiosity.

    She takes a few steps forward, presuming Mirage's answer before the question has even been asked. "Can I see that?"

"Huh? Oh, this?" Mirage looked down at the candle, which was still producing it's will o' the wisp-looking flame, it would gently lift up from it's spot and float over to Navi--the flame flickering in the gust of wind that just picked up. Given that Mouse was making a leading gesture with her hand, it was likely her making it float, somehow. The candle was magical, alright--it would produce and unproduce the flame whenever one shook it--which was probably why Mouse scoffed the damn thing, unbeknownst to Navi--though from where or who is anyone's guess.

"Not gonna tell me your name? don't bother speaking then, I'll just have a peak inside~" Mir's voice became coy and Navi might feel a sudden... intrusion into her mind. Mouse fishing about for her identity, and likely anything else around that was convenient.

    The significance of what Mirage says is lost once more. Navi just isn't paying attention; something about the candle is, despite its simplicity, far too interesting to the girl. If she looks really close, Mouse might have even noticed that Navi was about to do something to it- some kind of spellcraft. But Navi doesn't get far. "Wha-" The candle's flung away by reflex.

    "Navi," says a face that looks like it might belong to a professor, dressed late-1800s-England style. "Navi," says another, this time a middle aged woman in older-styled clothes, but not as over the top as Navi's. And so it goes on. But what's really on Navi's mind is a city. Steampunk, from the looks of it. Guards with steam-powered muskets. Merchants with similarly powered carts. A capital ship flies overhead. Someone dressed as an academic says Navi's name again, but more: "Navi Kirit. You're suspended indefinitely pending review, effective immediately."

    Back in the real world, Navi staggers, hand on her head for a moment as she staggers and looks around. Then focusing. Turning to face Mirage. In one motion her longsword is drawn, runes flaring to life, and Navi slashes towards Mouse. But it's not the blade she seeks to make contact with. There's a distortion in the air and a compression boom - the mage sends a blade of razer sharp air at Mirage instead.

Right now, Mirage is seeing and hearing things from another place, through another's eyes--essentially nosing around in the girl's memories. At the moment the girl staggers and the candle is flung--Mirage breaks contact with her, stopping the candle in mid-air with just a glance in it's direction.

"Need to be a bit more careful there, honey--" suddenly, a rather sharp gust of wind is blown at the Mouse--her eyes dully glowing red for a moment--a large reddish crystal-like sheet appearing before her body as she reacts--the strange dark crystal fracturing in a spiderweb pattern around where the air connected.

"Jeez, I let you handle my things and THIS is the thanks I get?" Mirage makes the crystal formation then explode into dust harmlessly outward--just enough to distract her.

"Ruh roh, someone lost their job, eh? Quit trying to cut me--" her words carried the steel of command.

    Contrary to the command to stand down, Mirage seems to have found just the right thing to needle through Navi's martial discipline and provoke another attack. It's exactly the same one as before, another blade of air lancing out towards Mouse and her shield. But Navi doesn't so much as linger to watch the impact. In the space of a blink she's gone. Winds might tell of her retreat, were they not already so turbulent from the attacks.

"Ahh!" Mouse has to bring har arm down--and a large force of impact SLAMS down in front of her, looking like she was fist-bumping--but in actuality directing a large amount of TK into the blade of air that was sent towards her, trying to disrupt or displace it. All the while, the blue candle hovers in the air, though it and the large sack of loot seem to get blown back a bit by the force of the air.

"Phew... hey, where ya goin'!? Was it something I said?!" Mirage is incensed--the fantasy girl just tried to take a chunk out of her rug. Her visor flips down again and she... disappears?

As Navi retreats, Mirage Mouse would descend from the sky right in front of her, her feet flat, as if she was standing on something.

"Navi, honey--I think we got on the wrong foot here, will you stop trying to cut me?" she began conversationally.

    Navi seems ready to strike again. Even to the point of twitching just enough to hint at the start of the motion. But when it registers Mirage isn't attacking, she does hesitate. And says nothing, only biting her lower lip, sword still firmly held in front of her. Just a bit of a flush to her cheeks hints her anger might be covering far more humiliating emotions underneath. One way or another, she says nothing. But she's not trying to cut Mirage and for the moment she's not running away, so that's progress.

"And people wonder why I don't try to use my abilities more often," Mirage has her arms folded over her front, acting non-plussed. "You wouldn't say hello or give me your name, so I decided to look inside you, I'm a psionic--if you hadn't noticed already," she suddenly grins. "I won't talk about what I saw in there if you'll stop trying to slice me in two, how's that?" she tilts her head at the girl, her tail hanging down around the feet of her boots--lilting about.

"You got a 5-foot tall mouse woman that can move shit with their mind in front of you and you're fascinated with a /candle/, magical or no," she teased.

    From the look of her but without speaking it, Navi seems to reluctantly concede to Mirage's point. She slowly slides the blade back into its sheathe. Adrenaline and all the emotions toning down, but she still looks guarded. Navi opens her mouth just a little, then closes it again. And again a few times. Not the most eloquent of people, is she? But, haltingly, she eventually finds her words: "You didn't say your name either," she points out. After a pause. "I can... um... use the candle.."

"Look, you can have the candle, okay--oh, right. I'm Mirage Mouse! As you can see from what I did back there--speaking of, my stuff!" Mirage zips to the side of Navi as she floats in the air like that--sailing through the air head first--her arms folded at her sides.

"Come on with me--I need to get the bag!" she seems suddenly impatient enough to get back to her stuff--she only just stole it, no way she's going to let someone /else/ make off with it! She's... funny like that.

    Navi gives a small nod in acknowledgement to Mirage's name, but when it comes to following, she hesitates just a moment. Her mind, it seems, never at rest to consider all possibilities and angles in its reluctance to trust others. But, perhaps as a concession to weariness instead of critical approval, she follows after Mouse. She weaves between her solid form as a human and the incorporeal as needed to keep up.

    "Where um..." she starts and pauses, then starts again as they head back. "Do psi... um, do mages of your school come from?" From the question... it might not be that Navi isn't interested in who or what Mouse is... but sometimes, being thrown into an alien world, you have to take it one step at a time.

"We don't, I'm a mutant," Mirage shakes her head, getting to her bag--the ties rope around the end of it begins to tie itself on it's own--aided by her TK--and the bag lifts up--back into her arms and slung over her shoulder. It is just about then that thunder peals out from above--and light droplets of rain begin to drop from the sky. Uh oh.

"Here, you can have this, if you like--we're probably going to need it, anyway, look," she gestures to the far off distance, where fog begins to roll in from the castle perched atop the rocky spire in the distance.

"Guess what is the only shelter around here," she jerked her thumb back toward the place--giving the girl another double take.

"You want me to... carry you there? You seem pretty tired," could Mouse sense that with her ESP alone?

    Mutant. Navi knew of the word in an intellectual sense, but her face shows a lack of any meaningful comprehension. And she apparently decides to let that line of questioning be for now.

    Perhaps it's Navi's turn to show off a little, but probably she'd sooner just not be drenched. Even if Mirage isn't sensitive to the more subtle manipulations of magic, she might notice that the raindrops never quite hit the two of them. The coming storm's winds don't pull as hard at them as it does the grasses and trees.

    Navi's mouth presses together at the suggestion, but it's the kind of flicker of anger that passes quickly on realizing no slight was intended. She shakes her head, eyes following towards the castle and fog. She runs the fingers of her free hand along the candle, drawing out what looks like pyreflies. As she absorbs them, Navi lets out a relaxed breath and her muscles loosen a little. If she's not quite refreshed, it's at least a start. The mage offers the candle back to Mirage, but she may find it no longer works.

    Navi doesn't fear the fog, apparently.

    It's a few long moments, possibly of awkward silence, before Navi finally manages a softspoken, "Thanks."

The rain had begun to intensify a bit as the two reached the large arched wooden door to the castle front.

"No problem, I'm sure the inside will be fiiiine--" Mouse put a hand to the large weatherbeaten door--and it creaked open, slowly and ominously--the interior almost entirely dark. Oh, well then.

"You still got that magic candle, Nav?"

TO BE CONTINUED?