World Tree MUSH

    Night is falling on the small town of Welville, and Morrigan Lor'osa is just getting back to the Simson's Bed and Breakfast from a run into town. The telltale arrival of her grey 2003 Ford Windstar pulling into the drive says that she and Mary contrary have just made a successful return from...
    "I've got jerky, I've got chocolate, I've got chips, dip, and guac, who wants some?"
    A snack run.
    Pushing the door open and making her way inside and makes her way into the searing room where Raylene had everyone meet for the briefing, Mary Contrary settled on her shoulder as she plunks down in a seat.

Having decided firmly to just relax and not get in any kind of trouble, Bryllu is currently two and a half feet tall, humanoid in shape except for a pair of tiny mechanical wings that contain thrusters. She's obviously mechanical, as always. As night is falling, she's looking for a place to spend the night.

... not that she needs it, but there's not much to do during the night.

So she's about to ring the doorbell for the bed and breakfast when Morrigan comes rushing past, thrusters firing to get her high up enough.

    And in the Bed and Breakfast is already one (1) Shirou Emiya. Well. In the commons area of the B&B, anyhow. Tapping away at a phone with one thumb... and then pausing, frowning at the screen, and then rapidly tapping at a specific spot repeatedly. Backspacing? There is a non-zero chance that he is deleting and rewriting a message to someone over and over again.

    He probably didn't even think too much about what Morrigan may or may not have been doing out in the night, either. He doesn't really know the warlock that much to have any preconceptions one way or the other (you know, other than the fact that she reminds him of Caster for SOME REASON). But when she bursts in, declaring her bounty of... snacks, he stops whatever he is doing with his phone, and just kind of... blinks at her. "...AT... this hour?" He asks, bemused.

    Huh. That little mechanical thing that Morrigan almost bowled over sure looks famil-
    Pause.
    "Bryllu riiiiiight?" She ventures on searching her memory. She had met the tiny post-human at the Lowain Bros' big party. Then she showed up at Imboca too. Except she was rideable back then.
    "Huh what are you doing all the way out here?" Well that doesn't stop the Warlock from digging through her bags.
    In fairness, Morrigan hadn't done much skulking about. Maybe she snooped a little around town amid the snack run to learn more about Welville, it's people, the dead mayor, and the places they're going to eventually investigate. Unfortunately she's turned up with almost nothing on that front so far, but she can't be faulted for trying.
    "Yes. Now. At this hour. It's not like there's much else to do while we wait for a chance to check out that room under the mayor's house that you found, Sherlock."

"That's my venerable name." Bryllu agrees, "And you're Morrigan Lor'osa right?" She asks, before hovering over to shamelessly hitches a ride on Morrigan's shoulder. "I'm a tourist. Here to see the world." She explains, "Did you know most worlds are less than an exasecond old? I was shocked to learn this." There's a pause, "An exasecond is around thirty billion years."

She waves to Shirou, "Hi again, Shirou Emiya. Didn't expect to run into you around here." She doesn't make an effort to get off of Morrigan's shoulder yet, "That's one of the problems with your organic societies, you just shut down for hours every day. How do you get anything done like that? It's not like you don't have lights to work with at night."

    "Uh... What is an--" Shirou starts to ask, but Bryllu apparently has the foresight to answer his question before he properly finishes it! Good thing, that.

    "Also, Bryllu-san... you don't *have* to say my full name every time. I mean, you can if you want to, but... you don't *have* to, you know?"

    Speaking of him getting addressed. He blinks at the way Morrigan addresses him. "Sherlock...?" He repeats it first, before some memory triggers in the back of his mind. "Oh. Like the detective? ... They have those books in other worlds, too? Huh." He pauses to consider this. "I wonder how different they are in other worlds, though... Or if maybe some world has a real-life Sherlock Holmes out there...?"

    You're going to have to excuse him, he's still kind of struggling with this whole 'multi-verse' thing.

    "A-anyway, I'm sure someone could have found it too, so it's not that big of a deal," he claims, while his eyes sweep to the screen of his phone again. You know, nevermind the fact that he nearly fried his brain working the magic to actually find the hidden room. There may or may not have been nosebleed involved at the time.

    "I'm not really up to date on the particulars of that," he asides, after Bryllu's question on the woes of the organics, all the while he taps away at his phone... and then deletes whatever he was writing. Again. "But it's mostly because it's how we help replenish our energy in addition to food, I guess? Imagine if you had some complex computer running at full capacity all the time. YOu'd want to let it shut down for a while to let the temperature go down and stuff."

    And thus Morrigan has two passengers. Though Bryllu gets something of a curious look from the shinki on the Warlock's opposite shoulder, Morrigan starts unloading the snackage.
    She's got jerky, chips, dip, guac, just like she said.
    But she also plonks out a few cans of beer (for those who are of age, and can drink responsibly), some sodas, and jelly- a can of which she hands to Mary before pausing.
    "..."
    A can of jelly is offered to Bryllu too after a moment of deep consideration.
    "Yeah, a lot of worlds are fairly young." She concedes. "But I agree, night does get pretty borin for those of us who don't need to sleep."
    "Yep. Sherlock, like the detective." She confirms for Shirou. "I ate those books up as a kid when all I had going for me was the fact that my dad had a huge library to his name." But then she waves her hand. "You're way too modest, kid. I don't think we would have found that room at all if you and Misaki weren't working on mapping the place out." She says, popping the tab on a beercan and taking a slow sip.

Bryllu takes a close look at the can of jelly. "What's this?" She asks, clearly a little confused but too polite to reject it out of hand. "Sorry, what's a good way to refer to you, then?" She tilts her head at Shirou's attempted explanation of sleep. "Where I'm from we design computers to be able to sustain the thermal load they require to operate." She tells Shirou, "Though I've never seen him, as the power source for him no longer exists, back when we had stars our most powerful computer used the thermal waste of every layer to power the layer beyond. Got a dozen layers in total. He was a majestic intelligence. I've been told Bryllu Zibhu I was his last caretaker. I wish I could've been there."

    Shirou slooowly looks up from his phone back to Bryllu. "...Okay, so bad example. Should've known that problem would have been solved in the future... But you get the idea though, right?"

    Taptaptaptap. Shirou finally simply grunts in frustation, and sets his phone aside for now, propping his arms up on the table instead.

    "I honestly don't know about that..." He insists to Morrigan still... right before eyeing over the beer she apparently decided to indulge in. "Do they... allow drinking alcohol in here? In my Japan, at least, the laws for drinking in public were pretty strict..."

    "That's Jelly." Mary Contrary pipes up. "Shinki drink it as both a lubricant and coolant for our systems." She explains, popping open her own jelly can to take a sip. "The fact that it comes in flavors is pretty great~."
    "Where I'm from, computers and phones are still pretty new. But they've filtered in from other worlds pretty quickly, so we're just about 'up to date' with most modernized worlds last I heard. I mean I got Mary here at a licensed shinki dealer back home." She points out amid sips of her beer before pausing.
    "This is a privately owned establishement and I am ~well~ above the legal drinking age. If there's a problem with it I'm sure the Simsons will bring it up."
    Way to try and rain on the parade, Shirou. But then Morrigan tilts her head. "What're you doin on your phone there, hm?"

"I think I do, but it just reinforces the idea that my ancestors were right to abandon their organic shells." Bryllu answers, she takes another look at the Jelly before offering it to Mary. "I have enough lubricant and coolant, and I don't even know if this stuff is compatible with my own."

"And I don't have the chemical analytical systems to taste the flavors. One of the things I'm kind of hoping to address, since food seems like such a big deal to organic society. Wouldn't know how, though..." She peers at the alcohol, "Doesn't that contain a chemical that interferes with your organic logic systems?"

    "I-- I guess that's a way to look at it...?" Shirou doesn't seem... entirely *thrilled* with the idea of abandoning organic bodies like the people in Bryllu's world apparently did at some point in time. THe notion might even seem low-key horrifying to the poor boy.

    "Huh?" He blurts out at Morrigan's sudden question, though, blinking rapidly... before turning his hand over to his phone agian, just to tug it under his arms. "...Nothing important, really," he mumbles, with an akward cough. "I've never been very good with letters and text messages so I was just kinda struggling with figuring out what to write to someone..."

    Mary accepts the jelly back. More for her if Bryllu doesn't need it.
    Meanwhile, Morrigan tears open a bag of jerky.
    "It DOES." She confirms for Bryllu. "It's called social drinking, and it's something people do for pleasure." Pause. "Best done in moderation though."
    No one will be seeing a drunken Morrigan tonight, no. But Bryllu has the right of it when it comes to food being such an important thing for organics.
    "Ohhhh?" Morrigan muses, attempting to pull Shirou from his horrorterror. "Who you writing?" She asks, curious and probing while flashing a sharp-fanged grin. Pause. "--Speaking of." She says pulling her own cellphone from her pocket. "We should probably exchange numbers if we're going to be working this Welville case together. So we can reach out and tag each other in case anything comes up while we're separated."

"I admit I can't tell what their thought processes were, organic bodies were mostly abandoned even before the great galactic merger, and records of such ancient times aren't really something I bothered paying much attention to back when I could." Bryllu responds to Shirou, "I know it was a gradual thing, and I know that there's several species of sentient beings that went extinct when we could no longer afford to sustain their star, because none of them accepted our offer to prepare them to bring them into interstellar fold and we respected their refusal, so your aversion seems to have been shared."

"I don't really get the desire to interfere with your logic processes, but if you do enjoy that, have fun." Morrigan's interest in Shirou's texting gets Bryllu curious, too. "Do you have a romantic partner?" She wirelessly offers to trade contact information with Mary.

    "I guess... there are some things about being organic that people consider not worth letting go of," Shirou muses, after Bryllu's story. And for that matter, he's quick to note, over the subject of alcohol's effect on an organic brain: "Sometimes we just want to be less logical, you know? I haven't ever drank anything like that, but I kind of get the idea. Not everything in life has to be based purely on logic."

    Of course Shirou has to end up getting questioned further on what he was doing with his phone. SHeepishly, he scratches at his chin briefly, considering how exactly to answer her. "A fr--" he starts, but...

    His words turn quickly to incoherent sputtering when Bryllu asks THAT. "Wha-- N-no, it's-- it's not like that!" He protests with a rapid shake of his head.
.

    "It's what some people do to unwind and relax." Morrigan explains further for Bryllu's sake, alternating between sipping her drink and gnawing on that jerky.
    "Some people just aren't ready for that kind of change I guess. Even if it costs them in the end." Murmured with a shrug.
    Then Bryllu goes and presses Shirou inadvertently, and Morrigan can't help but slap her knee and start to laugh.
    "Geeze, your reaction kid. It's priceless."
    Mary idly accepts that offer amid sips of jelly. "Seriously though if it's private don't worry about it. We're gonna have enough on our plates pretty soon figuring out this haunting crap going on."

"I'm sorry, is that a taboo question to ask? My line isn't generally doing the romantic thing, so I have only one parent, one grandparent and one great-grandparent, not sure about further back, never looked into it." Bryllu tries to explain her lack of understanding of romance, adding, "And in my line of work, you spend ... in your units, centuries alone, so that doesn't give a lot of time for romantic entanglements."

    "I feel like you might have enjoyed that a bit too much..." Shirou mutters at Morrigan with narrowed eyes before turning his focus over to Bryllu.

    "Um... no, not really, just... I didn't really expect that," he assures her, nevermind that there's some hint of red color left to his cheeks. It does fade quickly too, though-- and he actually frowns some with the machine-girl's further explanation. "That... actually sounds kind of sad."

    "It's not taboo, some people just fluster easily."
    Morrigan? Enjoyed that? Nawwwww. Not even a bit.
    She's still flashing that sharp-toothed grin though.
    "Mmmh. Thing is, even for some of the longer lived species out there, not all of us have centuries to spend alone." She muses. "As a half-elf, I'd probably norrrrmally live for maybe two centuries tops." She considers amid sliding Shirou a can of soda. "How do you have only one parent, grandparent, and so on and so forth?"

"The sad thing isn't the loneliness of travel." Bryllu tells Shirou, "It's having a desire to explore, wander and find new things in a universe that's barely hanging on, and only due to our stubborn insistence on dragging it out for as long as possible. There was nothing to explore. Mining was a poor substitute, but it was the substitute I could get."

"Well, as you may imagine, as humanity has been completely digitized, we don't do the whole genetic exchange thing anymore. There's a process to initiate a new mind based on the imprints of any number of parents, most I know of is twelve, and then the parents take turns letting the young mind observe through their senses until the young mind has developed enough to get their own body. There's more technical details to it, but I haven't really bothered to investigate as I wasn't planning on producing offspring."

    "That's... really sad too, honestly..." Shirou says, with a very much sad expression edging to his features too. Though he also does seem to not think the idea of being alone being any less sad either, despite Bryllu's insistence otherwise. "Is that why you're... being a tourist now?"

    Oh, and yeah, he definitely sends another narrow-eyed sidelook to Morrigan. "...I have no idea what you are talking about," he insists, with a little huff. Yeah, because he definitely never flusters over anything, right?

    "That's... Huh." Morrigan seems taken a little aback at how Bryllu's people bring new life into the world. "Unorthodox." She settles on a term for it after a moment, setting her half-empty drink can down. Whether it's sad or not though she withholds her opinion there.
    "You know precisely what I'm talking about."
    Needling Shirou a little is just too fun.
    This is when Mary gives the Warlock a light nudge, bringing up a small hologram screen for her to read. Whatever's on it makes her frown pretty deeply. "Looks like no rest for the wicked though. I need to get driving. Tell the others I'll be back by the time we go check out the house again." She says standing herself up from her seat and opting to not finish her beer for the sake of safe driving. "An acquaintance of mine's gone missing and I wanna look into it."

"There's so much to see, so much to explore." Bryllu is clearly enthusiastic about it, "So yes, I'm finally able to do something that I have always wanted to do but never thought I'd get the chance." She hops down when the warlock gets up, and claims a spot on the table. "Good luck, I hope your friend is doing well."

    Well. That much from Bryllu gets a small smile from Shirou, at least. Though Morrigan's need to leave over the sudden (and potentially unpleasant) news gets him perking up.

    "Er... That doesn't sound good. Do you want help?"

    "Yeah, I'm hoping she's doing well, too." Morrigan mutters, dumping her bags out on the table to empty them of snacks. "Tell the crew to help themselves." She says, slinging her backpack over her shoulders and turning to head out. "Donno. You wanna come along? It's a long drive." She replies to Shirou. His call if he wants in or not.

"I'll come too, if you don't mind my help, but..." Bryllu jumps down, "I should refit first if there's any chance of trouble. This body isn't designed for trouble. Arrange a meetup spot and go from there?" She suggests.

    Shirou considers this for all of...

    ...Roughly one nanosecond.

    "If your friend ends up being in trouble and needing help, I wouldnt feel right for just staying here," he says, promptly standing up and reaching down to swipe up the tube-pack he's been hiding his silver sword in. "If it ends up being nothing you can still just drive us back here, right?"

    "That works, hash out the meeting point details with my secretary and we'll meet up there."
    Morrigan's tiny shinki secretary on her shoulder raises her hand.
    "If it's nothing I can get us back in no time, yeah." She replies.
    And with that, the Warlock is out the door.