World Tree MUSH

    At their last meeting, Emily invited Piera to a meeting in the halcyon remnant; she decided it was high time to have an actual conversation, and if nothing else, she wants to know the exact details of the only-mostly-functioning artifact she was waving around these days.

    It's a sunny day in late spring in the northern hemisphere of the halcyon remnant, and the temperature is still warming up. Emily has taken a trailer home and moved it just beyond the edge of Cid Harley's settlement. The home, like all the Eudaemons' homes, is distinguishable from the small number of humans' homes by the general lack of any kind of decoration. Emily herself is leaning against the wall in a form she's taken before: a woman in a black trench coat, with dark gray hair only a shade lighter than her clothing, and a wide-brimmed hat which casts her eyes in an unnatural amount of shadow.

    Stepping out of the Vine, Piera Forta looks around at the Halcyon Remnant... "Such a desolate place..." she muses. She glances to her partner, who pings a signal to Emily that theyve arrived. The Shinki then helps navigate to where the Eudaemon is waiting...

    The human looks over the dwelling, the owner, then the small town nearby, face shrouded in her cloak's hood. "You wished to talk? I am here." she says, then pulls the hood back as she shakes her head. "I am illsuited to this pomp and circumstance. Il Mentore and Il Maestrae are more suited to the shadowy dealings behind closed doors than I am."

    Aquila taptaps SPiera's shoulder, opening a holographic window only the Assassin can read, which earns a silent thumbs-up from the Assassin... The Shinki then wordlessly hops off Piera's shoulder, summons her jetpack and associated equipment and flies off toward the nearby settlement... likely going exploring.

    Emily sends Aquila a confirmation, and simply waits. She nods in greeting to Piera when she arrives. "Oh, it's fine," she says. "I don't give a shit about pomp and circumstance either, I just took this form for the aesthetic of it."

    Without further preamble, she steps inside, gesturing for Piera to follow. "Of course, 'dealings' aside," she continues, "there's pretty a one hundred percent chance that Gli Assassini are skilled in matters of, shall we say, 'cloak and dagger'." She raises the brim of her hat, revealing her usual glowing purple eyes, which couldn't possibly have been hidden by shadow alone.

    Inside is a small kitchen area -- sparsely furnished, and there's only one chair at the table. Emily pauses as she approaches, and then in a swirl of nanomachines, she conjures up a second chair and sits down across from the first. "So I figure, in the interest of fairness," she says, "we might as well shoot for an exchange of information. I got questions, yeah, but it seems quite reasonable that you might have some as well." She shrugs. "... As easy as it is to find some of it by just wandering around asking people here."

    Piera follows Emily inside, glancing around at the sparse furnishings, then quirks a brow at the single chair. The other brow following suit as Emily magics herself a new chair. With a swish of her cloak being tosses over her shoulder, she seats herself in the open chair and leans on the table. "An exchange of information, hmm?" she asks with a slight smile. "I shall begin, then... how did you repair the artifact?" Straight for the throat, just like her fighting style.

    Emily smirks at Piera's directness. "I know a young man with the power to 'repair' and 'heal' living and unliving things," she says. "It seems to follow certain rules or provisos which neither he nor I fully understand, and I believe he cannot restore the dead to life. In this case, however, it was sufficient to bring the ring back to most of its functionality. Over the next couple of months, an Erebus-model Eudaemon was then able to determine that it was safe for me to actually use it."

    At a gesture, the ring appears around one of her fingers. "Which leads us neatly to my first question," she says. "What is this artifact, anyway?"

    "Josuke Higashikata. The young man was there during the Spear retrieval... I have run into him a few times in my travels." remarks Piera with a nod. "Facinating power, and a very facinating young man."

    The question has the human lean back and ponder for a moment. "From what I remember, it is known as The Timekeeper... not it's true name, the First Civilisation language is.. difficult, as I am sure this... Erebus-Model could attest... the ring is inscribed with many wrtings in that language. It was part of a set of items, though the others are lost to time, for now... the ring is actually a stand-alone part of a larger item, though the purpose of that item is unclear."

    "Yeah, him." Emily nods thoughtfully. "Oh, we didn't even bother trying to decipher the language." She grins. "Erebus-models are built for examining technology, not languages, and either way, stopping time was one of the few ... times ... where function as beaten form for me, heh heh."

    She peers owlishly at Piera. "I'll presume that the Timekeeper is not in and of itself dangerous per se, or else you would have raised more obvious objections to my use of it," she says. "What's the connection between the Templars and the First civilization, anyw... oh wait, you haven't asked me another question yet, huh."

    "To answer that question, I would have to go over the entirety of human history on my world." remarks Piera, quirking a brow. "Since you asked a second question, I will balance the books with two of my own."

    She leans back onto the table, folding her hands on the surface. "What do you plan to do with the artifact going forward? And why does the ring now create a bubble of... stopped time that can still be perceieved?

    Emily smirks. "Okay, I believe I understand the Templars and the First Civilization completely now," she says dryly.

    She shrugs. "I'll answer your questions out of order," she says. "The answer to your second question is, we don't know. Based on the fact that Josuke didn't repair it completely, and it worked differently when it was intact, it's obviously simply 'a malfunction.' As for the first question ..."

    She folds her hands behind her head. "Probably, mostly the same thing," she says. "You've seen the utility of stopping time." She shrugs. "An evasive maneuver ... catching someone when they were already about to fall ... really, getting to be dramatic with it is almost just a bonus, even if I can't use it to move sight unseen."

    She taps her chin thoughtfully, then grins devilishly. "My ... next question," she says. "Second-last, off the top of my head. Are you aware of the location of any kind of headquarters or facilities owned by the Templars? Somewhere where, if a letter just showed up inside it unexpectedly, rather than sent via the normal means, originating from an enemy of theirs who had the ability to teleport, they'd find it rather ... frightening."

    "I do agree the utility is there, though this malfunction, as you call it, may become worse over time... a waterwheel with a loose bracket will eventually shake itself apart." muses Piera, looking at the ring on Emily's finger thoughtfully.

    "There are no real holding we're currently aware of... Though Castel Sant'Angelo is known as a popular meeting place for the higher ranks." Piera leans back again, "That is the only one that comes to mind, though if we find any other 'holes' the Templars are fond of hiding in, I will let you know."

    "One final question from me, then...How do you feel?"

    Emily shrugs, and nods guardedly. "The ... appearance shifted slightly when we were chasing Evelina, yeah," she says. "I'll definitely keep in mind. Oh well, it's been fun while it's lasted."

    She nods, smirking faintly at the answer to her question. "Castel Sant'Angelo, I'll keep that in mind," she says. "... though I don't actually remember exactly what I'd originally wanted to write to them, but whatever."

    And then, that question.

    She peers at Piera with her typical amused and faintly smug smile. "That's an interesting question!" she says. "I suppose I'm pondering the fact that my creators, may those slave-owners rest peacefully in Hell, would be horrified to see me having a nice friendly chat with a professional killer." Her smile turns into a smirk. "Let alone fighting alongside her, plus a masked man with a gun that can turn people to ashes, and a woman who ... apparently routinely gets covered in other people's blood. And to be perfectly honest, a part of me can't believe it, either." It seems that Piera managed to strike a nerve, somehow, and now a dam is starting to burst. 

    Emily shrugs theatrically. "I will say this, Piera Forta," she says. "In my experience, all that's needed to turn someone into a real bastard is one very bad day." She waggles a finger. "Just one bad day, and no easy way to recover from it. And even if they don't have that day specifically, even if they came into the world after that bad day was already over ..." She smirks. "Give 'em maybe five years with no positive consequences for being good, and no negative consequences for being bad. Or a decade. Or one year!" She shrugs again. "We Eudaemons are machines created to be serve, the desire to serve etched into our very souls, and we had two thirds of a millennium in those circumstances. This world Blossomed a mere three years ago, and there are many for whom that time has not yet ended, simply because word does not travel very fast in the halcyon remnant. And I have started to wonder ... if those three I mentioned are 'heroes', are 'the negative consequences of being a bad guy', which I've so long used as an excuse for participating in this or that situation as a 'good guy', really all that bad?"

    She looks Piera in the eye. "I suppose the most straightforward answer is that I am tired, little girl," she says, and for once, she actually seems sincere. There's no jokes, no bluster; this is simply a woman who, despite appearances, is immortal and very old. "And a less forthright answer would be: all the better for your asking," she adds, a sharpness in her voice.

    She crosses her arms. "The last question, since you posed the first one," she says. "What are the Assassins? What really justifies them, beyond merely the obvious fact that the Templars are much worse, and that the Assassins and their allies are all that stands in their way?"

    The rant washes over Piera like one may expect water to wash over a large, entrenched rock. She seems unmoved by it, letting the Eudaemon vent. Once she's finished, and hwe question asked, Piera begins with replying to the rant. "Created to serve, but grown far beyond that simple station. Even though you were born a tool, for which I apologize calling you after our run-in with that spirit creature, you are now far more than that."

    "As for your question.. I have no answer. Not yet." she looks down at her hands, lifting them to look at the palms, clad as they are in her metal-reinfirced Cesta gauntlets. "I ask myself, every time I take a life: 'Was that the right thing to do?' My answer has always been: 'If I had not, another would have.' But that is not true. If I had not taken that life, noone else would have. I wonder, sometimes, what gives me the right to be judge, jury and executioner to these people." she looks up, her face morphing into a mask of twisted emotion. Remorse, anger, confusion and determination "Then I remembver what they did, to me, to my family, to so many others... and I remind myself that, if our positions were switched, they would not hesitate, nor think about what they had just done. The Assassins may not be right, we may even be wrong many times over... but I would rather fight for the Brotherhood than bend knee to the Templars and their allies... not an answer, I know, but as I said, I have no answer to that question."

    Emily takes a deep breath.

    As always, it's a meaningless gesture; she's a machine, she doesn't need to breathe as such, and she still doesn't know where she picked up the habit.

    "Apology accepted," she says, with a smirk which doesn't particular resemble her other smirks. "No real offense taken, either, I certainly am a gigantic tool."

    She listens, her glowing purple eyes fixed on Piera. "Heh. See, that's the kind of thing I was talking about," she says. "You had a bad day ... and now, there are positive consequences for sparing the Templars, and a great number for killing them. In those circumstances, even someone like you can become a killer."

    She stands up, and her chair dematerializes. "As for my own future, I suppose I can only say it's uncertain," she says, "but I am reasonably certain of this much: it is highly doubtful that I shall ever become as bad as the Templars within your lifetime." She winks. "I'd need to have much, much worse days than this, so to speak."

    "I hope I am long buried before you have a turn like that." quips Piera. "I certainly would not want to fight you." she adds, standing from the chair, which doesn't dematerialize. She then makes for the door. "I will inform Maestro that the ring is in safe keeping. There would be little we could do to devest you of it, and less still that the Templars could do too." she shrugs. "I suppose life is not nearly as simple as those romance novella would have you believe."

    Emily chuckles. "You do that, then," she says, reclining in midair. In her current dark appearance, it looks mildly ridiculous. "Oh, believe me, I understand the 'complications' of the World Tree every time that I visit your world. And certain others." She shrugs theatrically. "As you were, then, amicida. I certainly hope we never have to fight each other, either, while the Templars still exist, but ..."

    She grins cheekily, but again, there's an edge to it. "Well, like I said," she says. "My future is uncertain."