(Untitled)

[the_measurers]

Last year, Geldeheim City had glittered for them, cold and translucent like a collection of great icecubes. This time, it was as if someone had taken a hammer to those icecubes. Many buildings still stood, but some were bisected, shattered by beams of power, or perpetually burning with magefire. Some of the city's ubiqutuous flat 3d projection

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[Where the Wild Thing Is]

[the_measurers]

The People's Glorious Educational Animal Menagerie (newly renamed) isn't in great shape. Inclement weather has messed things up. But the ruling council has decided that people need distraction from their power plays some cheering up, so funds have been authorized from the treasury. The heat is back on, at least, so the tropical beasts aren't dying any more. Which is good, because it's an open air zoo.

In fact, expansions have been authorized. The block to the immediate west was neatly disintegrated by Fay'lia weapons during the uprising. So it had been replaced with artificial turf and trees, with vents set up in the ground around it, making a ring of hot air around the habitat. A single stoic soldier, wearing the yellow armbands of the Popular Guards and carrying an automatic tranquilizer rifle stands watch. There's a fence too, but that's mainly to keep people out, seeing as it would do jack all to keep the single inhabitant in:

A dragon. Dozens of metres long, with shimmering gold scales. When it moves, its wings make a sound like dozens of gongs beating at once. It is a magnificent animal, glittering like gold scale mail whenever the light catches it. Yet it slinks close to the ground like some frightened lizard, rearing away whenever people come near it and darting to the edge of the enclosure, showing its teeth like a stray dog backed against a wall. This is not the behavior of the king of the wind and fire.

Those of you with magical abilities or something like them might find you feel this creature is not the dumb beast it appears. There's an intelligence buried there somewhere behind all the overwhelming fear.

Re: [Where the Wild Thing Is]

[birdhousesoul]

Magical abilities, front and center.

It took some inward negotiation to make a menagerie visit possible. Justice and Anders aren't two separate beings, and can't have conversations with one another, for better or worse. So when Anders and Justice are at odds, it's a lot like arguing with yourself, or with your conscience, or (depending on Justice's object of fixation) with your primeval reptile-brain instinct to kill kill kill. The menagerie issue was decided something like this:

Animals are cute. I want to see them!
It'll be depressing. All those pent-up, miserable creatures. They ought to be free, to live in the wild.
It's not depressing when you think about what life in the wild would be like for them. Probably some of them are food, and others of them wouldn't be able to find enough food to survive, and then there are hunters and furriers to worry about. Better to be in a menagerie.
What's a menagerie but a Circle for animals? The poor things can't possibly like the menagerie any more than I liked the Circle.
Well, if they hate it that much, they ought to do what I did, and make a run for it.
Hmm, I could liberate the animals!
But ... then they'd probably eat me.
I would much rather not be eaten.
Hey, I wonder if they have cats?

And so on. In the end, Anders goes to the menagerie, and likes it mostly. Until the dragon exhibit. Anders has seen dragons before. They don't act like this.

"Does that dragon seem funny to you?" Anders asks whoever's standing nearest. He doesn't mean funny ha-ha. His brow is furrowed in concern.

Re: [Where the Wild Thing Is]

[try_winging_it]

Hawke wondered about the wisdom of going to a menagerie with Anders/Justice, but in the end curiosity won, as it often does for her. Less curiosity about whether or not he'll open all the cages (though no doubt things will be exciting if he gets it in his head to do so) and more curiosity about what idiotic nicknames he might give to any of the animals.

"Well, let's see," she drawls her response. "Not trying to eat me or set me on fire. Yep, I'd say it does." She's fought a number of dragons and survived, which in a world where seeing dragons is usually followed very quickly by being dead makes her as much of an expert as there was back there. Here, of course, all bets are off.

The flippant sentence is at odds with her intent gaze and expression, however. Because this dragon definitely seems strange. For one thing, it's terrified. For another, it's not terrified in the way that a wild creature is usually terrified, not mindless. It cowers like a beaten child afraid of the next blow. "Is there any information about it? Something about what it is, where it was captured? Or just Dragon: Exhibit A?"

[lest_ye_become]

"It might as well be a frightened dog," Roxie says as she watches the dragon. Only word of the creature being held there got her attention to the menagerie, having slipped away from 'proper' authority awfully quickly once on planet. Running into some of the others from the station again was a coincidence... if not a terribly huge one, given that word of a dragon would certainly be the kind of thing to draw attention.

"Oi!" she shouts... at the dragon, that is. She's rather loud, given how small she is - it's enough to carry well past the constant thrum of the hot-air vents, and the the guard at the fence gives her a funny look. "Pick your head up! You're being disgraceful!"

[the_burnt_one]

For Hawke, nearby there is a placard. Apparently the Fay'lia were keeping the creature captive. Noone knows if it's one of their creatures or native to the unexplored areas of Geldeheim to the far south.

The shout only made the dragon slither farther back on its belly and show its great gleaming teeth. It's both pathetic and threatening. It hissed like the whistle of a thousand ton liner. The frightened thing inside it responded to the call of someone its own age though.

[try_winging_it]

"I'm not sure appealing to its pride will accomplish much, Roxie," Hawke says wryly, studying the placard. Captured by the Fay'lia, well, no surprises there. No useful information, either, unfortunately. "At least this time we have a live one, instead of a dead one with a heaping side of politics." Absently, she reaches up and scratches her nose, just underneath the scar that crosses it.

[Teo is interested. This dragon is unique in his experience. Dragons usually smell of fire and anger. This one smells of fear. He can sympathize; he wouldn't like being caged.

Teo runs around until he finds the place that lets him get closest to the dragon, wanting a closer look and whatever approximation of conversation he can get. He does not look threatening at the moment, just a big dog with a short stubby tail]

[the_burnt_one]

Strangely, Teo seems to be the one in the group the dragon's not scared of at all, despite being a gigantic warhound. The dragon slithers forward and cautiously sniffs at the dog.

The guard doesn't seem to care. Food budgets for the animals are short and if someone's beloved pet gets to supplemement that then we're sorry for your loss but not for our dragon's full stomach.

[birdhousesoul]

Anders isn't terribly concerned about Roxie yelling at the dragon. He's yelled at dragons before, himself, in the heat of the moment. Granted, shouting Suck on a fireball! at a High Dragon was not the high point of his magely career, but old habits die hard. Anyhow he didn't waste much mana on that spell, and he followed it right up with some proper ice to make up the difference.

He's more concerned about Teo. Cat person though he may be, Anders is fond of the mabari and would be extremely upset should Teo become dragon chow, quite aside from the obvious devastation it'd be to Hawke, whose emotional welfare ranks high on Anders' present list of priorities.

"It's like he wants to have tea with it, or something," Anders observes, perplexed. He's only seen Teo not attack a dragon once: on Sundermount.

With Flemeth.

However: "He didn't cozy up to Flemeth like this, did he?"

remind me to introduce you to my Flemeth sometime

[try_winging_it]

Hawke's eyes narrow as she observe the interplay between dog and dragon. Teo is her beloved companion, a prankster, and frequently a nuisance, but his instincts are worth paying attention to. "Cozy up to Flemeth? He has some common sense." she says absently, watching as Teo sniffs the captive in return.

But the memory of Flemeth spurs a different idea. More quietly, she asks, "What do you think the chances are that this dragon is actually a shapeshifter? Might explain the unusual way it reacts to people."

[Teo is more curious than ever. The dragon smells a bit less of fear now, and not at all of hostility, so his stubby tail wags as he moves a bit closer. There are odd undercurrents to its scent, fire that's not dragon-fire, and human girl, and old pain. He makes a curious whuf? sound by way of friendly greeting]

[birdhousesoul]

"Your mabari. Just wagged his tail at a dragon." Anders' perplexity grows. Part of him wants to laugh at the incongruity. Another part of him is rumbling warnings and demands. What wrong is done here? he doesn't say, can only hear the words in his own skull, in his own shared voice. He doesn't laugh, he winces.

"This is no ordinary dragon. Shapeshifter, mimic, enchanted prince who kissed the wrong toad, I won't venture a guess, but it's something. And we can't just leave it here. Look at it, it's miserable."

Oh, no, here it comes.

"Death would be a greater mercy, if it comes to that! Love, let's set it free. If it turns on us then, we'll ... just sort of do what we normally do with dragons."

Fantastic plan B there, Anders. And why does your mind come up with enchanted prince rather than princess? What kinds of fairy tales live inside that cute blond head of yours, anyway?

[the_burnt_one]

The dragon seems not at all intent on doing anyone any kind of harm right now. In fact it is licking the mabari with its great ropy tongue.

The guard, however, has finally noticed their conversation and quirks an eye at them. This dragon is a valuable asset and he has no wish to see a headline the next day that says HEROES OF DECEMBER INSURRECTION (AND ALSO A GUARD) MADE CRISPY BY ROGUE DRAGON. Someone might want to do something about him.

[try_winging_it]

Hawke groans. "Anders, someday I'm going to drag you off somewhere and explain the concepts of subtlety and timing. Ideally with a brick." Which would make it a rather self-defeating lessons, but ignore that. Honestly, surely it should be common sense that if you plan to do something illegal you wait to discuss it until the guard is not paying attention?

Still, he might not have been close enough to hear, even if he's taken notice of their concerned interest, so Hawke feigns nonchalance and attempts to lead Anders and Roxie away. She puts on a nice easy-going smile for the guard, and says under her breath, "Yes, I'm fine with that, but how about we plan it out first, hmm? Just for the novelty?" She doesn't worry about Teo. He'll follow in his own time.

[Teo is in fact delighted. Usually it's him licking people. And they're always so unappreciative, too. He can't imagine why. He barks a little, short happy noises, and licks the dragon on the nose when he gets a chance.]

[lest_ye_become]

Roxie looks between Anders and Hawke, and eyes the guard. She walks up to him, hands folded together, in what would be just the picture of innocence if she hadn't been agitating the giant reptile a few moments before.

"You probably don't want to get in the way," she says to him calmly. "I doubt you're being paid enough for it. Do you really want to try and get in the way of people who are comfortable dealing with things that size? You'd be better off saying someone clubbed you with a rock when you weren't looking."

'Dealing with'-killing. The euphemism is painfully obvious by her tone of voice.

Then she turns her back on the guard and walks back over to the other two.

[try_winging_it]

Hawke blinks. "Or we could do that," she concedes. Perhaps she should go offer to club the guard with a rock, so he doesn't have to worry about his conscience later.

[the_measurers]

Idly, the guard had wondered what it had taken for the Senburu-trati'salan insurrectionaries to come to a world that was not their own and embark on an extremely dangerous mission to free people they had never met.

Before he had thought it was because they were brave and full of glorious revolutionary fervor.

Now he was beginning to realize it was because they were utterly bugfuck. Free it? Shapeshifters? The princess and the frog?

The guard, though visibly shaken, stands his ground. He does not want anyone freeing a valuable exhibit that's capable of having them all for a snack. He can't do much about it though. His tranquilizer rifle has dosages for a dragon, not a human.

"Listen, this thing is very valuable. If we can figure out how to breed it, we'd have mounts that the Fay'lia would fear if they ever t-try to invade again."

[birdhousesoul]

Anders has two modes for dealing with authority figures and their representatives. One is outright intransigence with a side of revolutionary invective.

The other is chatting them up, with a side of opportunistic flirting.

Hawke has pretty well shamed him out of the former, what with the talk of subtlety and bricks. Anders is forced to fall back on the remaining option.

He replies to the guard not quite insouciantly lightly, but with an air of unconcern. "That's why they've assigned someone like you to guard it, I take it. Is it a duty you volunteer to get, or do they make you all draw straws?" He walks toward the guard as he speaks, not quickly, and with his hands in clear view, no weapons or anything like that. (The staff is strapped to his back. Please do ask him about it, sailor.)