World Tree MUSH

    Near the Cradle, the towns and areas are more developed and... safer. Yes, safer! Having a hub for Vines like this is pretty nice, making it a great place to retreat to and get away from the troubled world Athena herself has. Besides, she took a job for the Gardeners and needed to pick up her payment, so now she can enjoy this... very... clean city. Unnervingly clean.

    Whether by design or chance, the office to pick up bounties happens to be across the street from a main plaza set up near the welcome center. Great for anyone who wants a map or the like, or who just has questions. On a hot day like today, it's also gotten a street vendor with sno cones being sold, along with some shaved ice for people into that! Which is... not what Athena has seen often in her region, so the oddity of a very obviously hot young woman in riot armor that is NOT set up for the summer is now eying the line with the obvious wonderment of if it's worth the wait. Probably with 'yes' winning out.

Anna is halfway through so cone line with Spiral perched on her shoulder; outside of their home blossom, Spiral has no particular compunctions about being fully-visible to everyone. The pair has an almost tourist-like air of curiosity, but it's warm enough in the plaza that they've decided that now is time for sno cones.

Anna happens to glance over and see Athena, and whispers something to Spiral, who almost looks like she wants to argue back, but after a brief back-and-forth, Spiral hops off Anna's shoulder and floats over to Athena at a leisurely pace. "Hi!" says the small golden-furred catlike creature. "My friend over there wants to know what kind of sno cones you were planning to order, just so you can skip the line."

    A talking cat is... not actually that weird after Athena has seen so many odd things. It's still unusual, so gets a raised eyebrow... but not a question. Offering to help her skip the line is an easy way to get on the goddess's good side, anyway. She leans over some, hands on her thighs, and just looks at the cat intently for a few seconds.

    "Tell your friend thanks, then," she finally says, cracking a smile. "I could use one. I like the blue flavor." That's the flavor she wants. Blue. Well it probably is a flavor in this place, and it's not like anyone knows what that stuff /actually/ tastes like. It's just blue!

Spiral ... is slightly nervous when the goddess seems to pause and stare at her, but she nods. "Okay, blue flavor it is!" she says, and floats back to Anna only slightly more quickly. Landing on her shoulder again, she glances back over to Athena, and her eyes briefly flicker with a pearlescent glow and sees something that seems to startle her.

A moment later, Anna reaches the front of the line, pays, and heads over to Athena carrying two sno cones, while Spiral carries a third. All three of them appear to be blue-flavored. "Blue-flavored sno cone, as requested!" says Anna cheerfully as she offers one of them to Athena; her voice is faintly androgynous. "Hi, I'm Anna, and this is Spiral. What's your name?"

    If she doesn't have to wait nearly as long, it's okay with Athena to hang around. The girl and her cat are obviously friendly and perhaps just lonely... which Athena doesn't care one whit about, but she also doesn't have a problem chatting. Besides, a talking cat is odd enough that maybe this isn't just a normal mortal.

    "Thank you," Athena says stiffly, still adjusting to that sort of thing. She accepts the sno cone and gestures, "I can pay you back in a moment, let's find a seat. My name is Athena. A pleasure to meet you both."

    There's a plaintive chirp, and a hovering drone with two large owl-like lense-eyes lifts from the battle armor's shoulder. "And this is Little Owl," she adds. "He can talk, he's just shy and his AI is pretty young."

Anna doesn't seem to mind Athena's stiffness. She peers curiously at Little Owl, but Spiral seems to take him completely in stride. As they head over to a nearby bench, Anna shrugs and shakes her head, and says, "Oh, you don't have to pay --"

"That's fine, thank you," Spiral interrupts. She playfully bumps the side of Anna's head with her own. "Sorry, Anna here just has a bad case of ... hero-itis. Even if it's just on the level of getting someone a sno cone."

Anna rolls her eyes and says, "Yeah, yeah ..." She does nothing to contradict Spiral, though.

    Athena just chuckles at that. "The definition of hero has certainly changed," she points out. "I have the money, I was just paid. Don't worry about it." She takes a seat and offers a spot next to herself for Anna.

    "Hero-itis, hmm?" Athena glances at the bounty office. "Do you actually have talent and powers, or is it just something you aspire to? I don't mean to offend, I'm honestly curious. You don't seem like a warrior, but I've learned it can be hard to tell in other worlds."

Anna nods. "Well, all right then, thank you," she says, regarding the money. She sits down next to Athena, and holds up the sapphire pendant around her neck. "Spiral gave me this Star Gem, which has the power to ... well, basically, it'd transform me into a magical warrior and give me power for the purpose of fighting the monsters that plague my homeworld," she says. "It's just ..." She makes a face. "The short version is, emotions have a big impact on magic where I'm from, and I haven't ... quite ..." She shakes her head and gestures vaguely. "... worked through some of my own issues that're holding me back from using it yet. I do have a power called Windrunner, which is basically just running really fast, but it's less-useful for helping people."

Spiral frowns, peering at Anna over her sno cone. "What're you talking about?" she says. "You can't really fight with Windrunner alone, but you helped Ms. Sheik defend the town from those pirates in other ways."

Anna shrugs somewhat uncomfortably, focusing on her own sno cone. "I know ... it's just ..." She shrugs again and shakes her head.

    "A hero in training, then," Athena reasons. "Hm. Well. Mortals are funny that way. With enough heart they can aspire to, and reach, some incredible goals. Just be careful not to fly too close to the sun. If that tale survived the ages." She passes some coins over, and sinks into eating her snow cone.

    "Ms. Sheik?" Athena hmms. "Odd name. Pirates, though. Interesting. So much going on across the worlds."

    "And then there are guys like me." a voice intones. Dante's just...here. Slurping a strawberry milkshake. He has cardboard boxes with him containing pizzas. Instead of looking like a rocker with a big sword on his back, Dante's wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and his coat is folded up beside him with a guitar case. "I hit the genetic lottery, so to speak. It's where all the crazy powers come from."

    He recognized Athena pretty easily. Pretty girl with high-tech battle armor is a striking image around here, after all. "Don't think we got to share names beforehand. I'm Dante."

    "Athena!" Aloy calls out, right behind Dante. She hadn't /arrived/ with him, but they were both in the general area, and a familiar face was... fine for Aloy, even if she probably ended up rolling her eyes. "Who's your friend?" Aloy must be in a good mood, she isn't being quiet and just watching.

    She might look a little odd in tribal getup here, though.

    "Oh hey, Hunter Lady. You're here too." Dante throws Aloy a salute, grinning cheerfully. "Village isn't in bad shape since we were hunting all those dinosaurs, is it?"

"That story's survived on *our* world at least," Spiral says dryly. "Well, Sheik was obviously ... high-born, I think, it might have been an alias." Then she hesitates. "Would I be out of line in thinking that 'Athena' isn't just a name your parents thought was cool? Because I have the ability to detect someone's magical potential so I know who to give Star Gems to, and, um ..."

Anna looks like she's about to interject, but then two others show up, and she sits up straighter. "Um, hi," she says, sounding just a bit nervous.

Spiral looks at Aloy and then Dante, her eyes flickering with pearlescent light for each of them, and she seems to do a double-take at Dante. "Uhh ... yeah, that ... definitely looks like 'winning the genetic lottery' to me, all right," she says weakly.

    Lifting her hand to greet Dante and Aloy, Athena calls out, "Hello." She's siting on the bench, so doesn't bother to get up now. Comrades in arms are nice, but she was already speaking with Anna here. "Athena," she answers Dante though.

    And to Spiral, "Yes, that Athena. It's a long story. We were gone for a long while, but in my world, we've returned. After a fashion." She also pokes a finger toward Dante and Aloy, "Are you two all right? I dropped the drone off already."

    "I'm good. Nothing I can't walk off." Dante seems to have gotten over the wolf thing pretty quickly. He cocks an eyebrow at Athena, "'That', huh? Guessed you were Greek. Call it a hunch." He remarks, before opening up one of the pizza boxes and grabbing a slice. "Any of you want some? I got plenty, figured it was a good way to break the ice."

    Aloy shrugs, "I'm here, yes. I try to explore some, and I was curious about the offworld item. The 'drone' as it was called." She will snag a slice of pizza though, looking at it curiously, then turning to regard Anna. "Hello. I don't think we've met. I'm Aloy, from the Nora lands."

    She does have a question to answer doesn't she? "The village is safe, and rebuilding the wall. I don't think they'll be troubled again any time soon, but we should find out what happened if we can."

Spiral nods to Athena. "Interesting!" The small golden catlike creature looks over at the pizza boxes, and gestures with her sno cone; she's small enough that it takes two hands. "Well, I'm busy with my sno cone, but I'm Spiral, and this is Anna," she says. "I'm her sort of magical-girl-animal-companion, basically."

"I think it's more 'literally' than 'sort of basically'," Anna murmurs in a lower pitch that sounds even more androgynous than her usual voice. "Um, anyway, Aloy," she says, "you're saying there was some kind of attack where you're from?" She sounds almost disappointed that she missed the incident. She peers down at the pizza boxes, transferring her own sno cone to her left hand. "Also, what kind of pizzas are there? Are they all the same, or ...?"

    "Here, I can get a slice for you," Athena starts to say... but Little Owl zips down and snags one first, making a buzzing noise before hovering over toward Spiral as a bit of a peace offering for his earlier rudeness toward the feline creature.

    Athena chuckles, then manages to get a slice for herself. "Magic is... was dying in my world, and only recently came back. IT's mostly escaped creatures that were in the Underworld finding a way to incarnate. Aloy's world has an entirely different problem."

    Dante has brought meat lover's and also olive and veggie pizzas. "Right. Any luck with figuring out the data stuff yet? Or is that kid with the airbag robot still working on it?"

    Listening, Aloy shrugs, "I don't believe in magic. On my world anyway. Still thinking about it on others." She scratches at her head. "My world is full of robots that take the place of certain animals. They've been getting more unstable for the last few decades, and one of the broken ones went after a village. Dante and Athena here helped defend it," she explains to Anna.

    She shakes her head to Dante. "Not that I've heard."

Anna nods to Athena and Aloy in turn, and takes a slice of meat lover's pizza. "Well, my world has ... well, there's people with magical abilities, and then there's monsters called Curse Phantoms who are born from negative emotions," she says. "And emotions have a big impact on magic," she adds for Dante and Aloy's benefit. "Curse Phantoms are invisible to most people, too, you need to have some magic to be able to *see* them, let alone fight them." She bites into her pizza with even more enthusiasm than the sno cone she bought earlier, even though it's hot out.

Spiral nods. "And *my* people, the Starbringers, go around to planets with Curse Phantoms, and give people Star Gems so they can transform and fight," she says cheerfully. "Although, now that Anna and I have started wandering the worlds, we've seen ... non-magical people who I'm pretty sure could see Curse Phantoms anyway. Still haven't figured out any pattern to that." She looks at Aloy thoughtfully, and her eyes briefly flicker with a pearlescent glow again. "I'm sure *you'd* be able to see them, for example."

    "Worlds are pretty strange when they run into other worlds," Athena agrees. "In mine, we're having a problem of souls. There aren't enough to go around I think. It's woken up things not meant to awaken."

    She looks at Spiral. "So not a cat after all. How odd. My world has others exploring the stars, but..." She shrugs and leans back, draining the sno cone cup.

    Dante asked a good question. "Nothing yet. I ran into the reborn Orochi of my world and some kind of ninja getting it somewhere safe, too. They helped me out against an attack."

    "Hm." Dante scratches his chin, and he turns to Athena. "You said magic came back, right? Are the gods of other pantheons coming back, too?"

    Aloy points to herself. "Me? If you say so," she says to Spiral. "I see a lot of things that people on my own world don't see, maybe that's why. This place seems to operate like that." A pretty insightful comment from the primitive warrior, but she works right past it swiftly. "As for the analysis, these things take time. Even my Focus can't just read it if it's encrypted."

Spiral nods to Athena. "Yeah, uh, my true form is basically ..." She concentrates, and in a bright flash of light, she transforms into an odd white starfish-like creature, holding the sno cone between two of its arms. "... like this, basically." The voice seems to come from its entire body, in lieu of a mouth. Another flash of light, and she changes back. "So, yeah, we take forms *similar* to creatures from the planets we visit, but we try not to match them exactly."

Anna looks up at Dante. "She mentioned Orochi, right?" she says. "I ... know *that's* not from the Greek pantheon." She takes a moment to finish off the slice of pizza.

Spiral snickers. "*Wow*, Anna," she says wryly. She nods to Aloy. "That might be it!" she says. "Like I said, I'm nowhere near figuring out a pattern to the ones that aren't obvious, like emotional connections." She thoughtfully tilts her sno cone back so that she can get further into it. "Hmm ..."

    "Perhaps it is a measure of Destiny or Fate," Athena suggests. "But those are not my domains. In your world, that might translate to the potential for magic." She shrugs, then tosses the cup into the trash and sprawls back.

    "Anna is right," Athena says. "Orochi is Japanese, and I've heard rumors of the Norse. No Roman, though... I only know they exist from the memories of my host. I know the Egyptian gods are probably about, but might still be 'asleep' for now. They existed in my time."