12-14-2015, 10:41 PM
The Witch grins pleasantly as Valerie claims his prize, swaying a little so that the twin-tailed hood of her god-tier outfit swings merrily about on the breeze. She is able to pick her own prize from the mesh of piled-up toys and fuzzy dolls soon after, and she does so after much consideration, picking through her options with a careful eye for frayed stitches and torn felt. Finally, she tugs what she considers to be the best of the bunch out from beneath a pile of bean-filled creatures: an octopus, with dark purplish rings spread across a peach fuzz spread of soft lavender.
Things go well after that for roughly seventeen seconds before Karkat asks The Wrong Question. Capitalization fully intended. It could even be called The Wrongest Question, if not for the fact that wrongest isn’t even a word at all.
But, oh, wow. Jade hadn’t expected everything to go to shit so quickly, but she supposes that this is what the universe serves her with when she has been happy for far, far too long. She crosses her arms over her chest, the colorful octopus squashed under them with a few soft felt tentacles nudging arbitrarily out, and pouts at Karkat.
“Now, that’s not a fair thing to say at all,” she says to the cherry-blooded troll, edging her way in between him and Valerie in a mostly unconscious gesture of defense. “Valerie couldn’t have controlled Strazio’s actions, and it was Gamzee’s choice to get involved in this thing anyways! You’re both more or less in the same boat, so why don’t you—“
A soft, unobtrusive series of dings alert Jade to several new notifications on her Spectagoggles. She pauses midsentence, stammers a bit, and then lightly clicks her tongue as she attempts to differentiate between the large amount of information and shifting images flooding in over the rounded lenses of her Dataverse device.
Lips curling downwards in a precipitous, hesitant way, much like how a person scaling down a steep cliff face descends, Jade takes a few seconds to fully tune out Karkat’s yammering and Valerie’s woe to scope out just what is being broadcast across the Dataverse, with the high hopes that maybe, just maybe, things will be going well for at least some of her friends.
She’s wrong. Oh god, is she ever so wrong. Sir David T. Monroe’s account of the great battle taking place in the Endless Dunes may be skewed whichever way, but Jade cannot dispute the telling forms of arms and legs dangling out from underneath the rubble, the way that the man hit with some ghastly hex convulses upon the ground with dry spittle foaming at his lips.
Blinking through tears that have unexpectedly sprung to her eyes, Jade does the only thing that she can do: offer her help, even if it takes her days to arrive on the wrecked soil of Nippur. Once that is done and all necessary messages sent, she scrubs a hand across her face and is unsurprised to find that it comes away a little damp.
She sniffles, and the First Guardian sitting at her side licks consolingly at her knees. This only serves to multiply her sniffling, but the godly wolfdog is undaunted by this and simply presses the side of its head firmly against her leg— a steady and warm weight, alive save for its utter lack of a heartbeat.
Her horror steadily increases as she watches the events unfold before her very eyes, and the young Witch eventually has to close the program as things begin to escalate further. The screams of the man Sir Monroe had struck with some horrible invocation continue to ring in her ears even as she turns her attention to more benign programs, such as her chat memo. What is the purpose of tears, when a tragedy such as this is so far removed from her?
Purpose, purpose, purpose! That is all she ever thinks about anymore. But what is purpose to a god? To one who used to value such petty things as self accomplishment and esteem, and still hears those calls as strongly as ever? She feels as an adventurer crossing over some great chasm upon a slender birch log, the ravine plunging down hundreds of leagues into the center of the earth, shuffling her feet and not daring to take the next step unless she is absolutely certain she will not plummet to her death after one fateful misstep.
But these are all things to ponder for another time. There are people watching her, expectant, and she does not have it in her to disappoint them. She is so hopelessly ensnared in expectations, that way; it was a lot easier when she was alone on her island, with only the sobbing silence to provide any comfort, but she wouldn’t trade this experience with her new friends for anything. Jade loves the world freely, so long as it continues to turn faithfully beneath her feet.
Just as Jade is about to continue admonishing Karkat, a girl dressed in black and red approaches from the crowd, happily introduces herself to Jade, and proceeds to tickle the utterly flummoxed Witch about her ribcage. Another girl, clad all in white, follows shortly behind.
“Hello!” Jade exclaims, giggling as Ruby impishly prods at her ribs. Hair the color of blackest midnight tumbles about her shoulders as she laughs, small constellations that pulse with the same fluttering rhythm of a hummingbird’s heart cycling through the curls in an impressive current of glittering stars. “It’s very nice to finally—“
She stops speaking abruptly, mouth falling slack for a few seconds as she inspects the new message scrolling languorously across the red-tinted screen of her Junior Compu-Sooth Spectagoggles. Roughly five separate dings go off from the Dataverse devices in her immediate vicinity, as if there were a swarm of musical bees nearby.
And Jade looks up.
“Oh!” There is a bipedal dragon standing humbly a few strides away, his enormous wings widespread as if to encompass all the rising dust and murmurings of conversation and activity around them. They are tucked back to his sides in one fell swoop, with all the sureness and finality of a blade being sheathed. His scales are red, each like a perfect jewel of cut stone, and they gleam impressively in the sunlight. He also has a super neat watch!
At her hip, Becquerel yawns, as if nothing out of the ordinary has transpired. Jade takes this as a sign that she shouldn’t be especially troubled by this fellow’s fearsome build and glinting eyes. The Omnipoterrier has spoken, it seems.
The god-child grins when the dragon fellow tips his head forward in greeting, moving towards him with feather light steps. She dips into a gracious curtsey, like she has read about in children’s storybooks, and then bobs back up in a swirl of glittering stars and admiring green eyes, which are almost humorously wide behind the round lenses of her glasses.
“It’s very nice to meet you, blazingExorcist, and you too, dairyDiarist— I mean, Ruby Rose and company! Haha,” she’s grinning so much right now, it’s starting to hurt her cheeks a little! “Isn’t that funny? We both are named after gemstones! It must be fate, or something!”
She waggles her fingers about in saying this, snow-white ears flicking up and down and all around like the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings. Her freckled cheeks are simply glowing with excitement, and this enthusiasm is only amplified tenfold once she decides upon what she would like to do next.
“Here, hold on a second!” Jade brings her hands up in front of her face, squinting into the vividly intense and shifting glow of Omnilium that manifests there, the stuffed octopus tucked securely under one arm.
She thinks of what she would like to summon for Ruby— a frog, of course, but each frog is so drastically different from the next that it will be difficult to decide upon what kind to create. They’re kind of like people, in that way— and not just humans, either! Each one is different and to be cherished, and left to do froggy things with their froggy lives, behaving in a way that is fundamentally true to their nature.
As Jade’s hands gleam with the amorphously fluctuating light of the summoning process, something begins to take shape there, slowly at first in glacial brushstrokes of creation, but gradually forming into an interestingly organic shape that emerges nose-first from the cloud. And, boy, what a nose it has!
This frog is dark in color, almost pitch black, and its skin rises up in hexagonal ridges all along its body. Some of these ridges have delightfully gleaming ruby red gemstones at their center which twinkle with a smooth, brilliant gleam. Its feet and underbelly are mottled with light grey, giving off the impression of black marble embellished with fluid spirals of white and grey.
Its froggy eyes appear to be reenacting a lunar eclipse, cycling between a flinty metallic silver to a magnificent and rich gold with every blink. Its snout has a peculiarly delicate protrusion from it, kind of like a star-nosed mole but in the shape of flowers petals. Its tongue is long, slender, and sticky as sap. Its ribbit will be almost like a nightingales call, Jade knows, albeit condensed and quick. She thinks that this frog has a certain kind of noble air to it, although she couldn’t say exactly why.
She smiles serenely down at the little frog squatting in the palms of her hands, and gently passes the amphibian over to her new friend. Ruby accepts it carefully, eyes wide with wonder, and Jade’s small smile spreads into a toothy, absolutely delighted grin.
“It’ll take a while for it to thaw, but just think of all the wonderful adventures you will have together! Isn’t that just wonderful? I’ll have to explain later, I guess, but right now I’m fine with leaving this one with you. It is the Satin Frog of Rubies and Roses— take good care of it, now!”
Then, because she cannot watch over these frogs all at once, not anymore— and because she has a feeling they will be a lot safer with these obviously formidable and trustworthy people, anyhow, Jade begins to work on calling another frog into being. She thinks that she hears Karkat mumble something along the lines of “What the ever-loving shit are you doing handing out frogs, Harley?”, but she mostly ignores that in favor of focusing on her work. And, lo, the frog manifests in her hands after only a few minutes more!
As she looks upon it, Jade reasons that this frog would likely still appear to be frozen after it finishes thawing, what with its slow blinks and barely-discernible breathing. It is all white in color, with wintry branches of pale blue running along its back and occasionally blooming into faintly tactile snowflowers. It gleams like porcelain, with sparkling grains of crystal here and there. Its eyes are a brilliant crimson and are exceptionally alert, with diamond-shaped pupils at their centers. Its feet are not clawed and appear to be made of shiny ice.
Small red beads of color rise up in places along its back, which completes an intricate yet subtle detail of berries, flowers, and snow that spreads over its body. Its throat is also almost entirely composed of clear ice, and it glimmers like a crystalline ball of spectral reflections and light. Its skin is unsurprisingly cold to the touch. Its limbs are long and well-built, perfect for leaps and bounds. Its tongue is a slate grey that is easily distinguishable from the rest of its snowy white mouth. Its ribbit will be like a songbird’s musical chirrup. She thinks that this frog is a lot less fragile than it looks!
“Here you go,” Jade chirps brightly, giving Ruby’s solemn, white-haired friend the frog she has made. Her teeth flash in a dazzling grin as the wintry girl accepts the frog. “This is the Crystal Frog of Ice and Snow! Please look after it closely, it’s one of the prettiest ones I have.”
Cupping her hands together once again, Jade turns towards her draconic friend, blazingExorcist, and begins to shape a new frog. It springs to fiery life in her hands, a sheen of glittering ice covering its skin, stalled in a crouching position as if it were still setting comfortably upon a lily pad.
This new frog is scaly and red-tinged, with a white underbelly that glows with a burning inner light even through the sheen of frost covering it. Each scale is marbled with amber-yellow dust particles, as if someone has taken a handful of golden flakes and blown them across its back. Its eyes are a warm brown, like burnt coffee, and a hexagonal, criss-crossing pattern distinguished in white runs down its back.
Two horns stick out from the top of this frog's head, brownish in color and slightly worn. Most impressively, it has two leathery wings arching off from its back, which are folded so that the frog is crouched similar to a gargoyle on the side of a tall building. Its ribbit will sound like a crackling blaze. Jade feels that this frog could be a real spitfire, if given the chance to break out of the ice encasing its inner flame.
“Ah! There,” she tells the draconic paladin, carefully handing the frog over. “This is the Frog Born Of Flame. Which is awfully funny, seeing as it’s all covered up in a coat of ice right now! Don’t worry though, it’ll melt. Just give it some time, like all things need at some point or another.”
Jade grins, satisfied with her work. As she goes to speak once again, however, a new PesterOmni alert zaps across her screen. A line of inky black text winds its way over the chat program’s screen ever so politely, but Jade still balks at what it has to say. Or, rather, at what egregiousInquisitor has to say.
“Oh nooooooooo,” Jade laments, clutching at the sides of her head, her hair streaming down in front of her face and swathing it in shadow, expression the very picture of sorrow. She makes the mistake of flipping over to a live stream of the Colosseum tournament, gargling some choice words around the lump of terror in her throat as she watches a rather large warhammer rupture directly through Adam Gaite’s chest in sickening, intimate detail. “Ohhhhh nonononoooooo!”
Things go well after that for roughly seventeen seconds before Karkat asks The Wrong Question. Capitalization fully intended. It could even be called The Wrongest Question, if not for the fact that wrongest isn’t even a word at all.
But, oh, wow. Jade hadn’t expected everything to go to shit so quickly, but she supposes that this is what the universe serves her with when she has been happy for far, far too long. She crosses her arms over her chest, the colorful octopus squashed under them with a few soft felt tentacles nudging arbitrarily out, and pouts at Karkat.
“Now, that’s not a fair thing to say at all,” she says to the cherry-blooded troll, edging her way in between him and Valerie in a mostly unconscious gesture of defense. “Valerie couldn’t have controlled Strazio’s actions, and it was Gamzee’s choice to get involved in this thing anyways! You’re both more or less in the same boat, so why don’t you—“
A soft, unobtrusive series of dings alert Jade to several new notifications on her Spectagoggles. She pauses midsentence, stammers a bit, and then lightly clicks her tongue as she attempts to differentiate between the large amount of information and shifting images flooding in over the rounded lenses of her Dataverse device.
Lips curling downwards in a precipitous, hesitant way, much like how a person scaling down a steep cliff face descends, Jade takes a few seconds to fully tune out Karkat’s yammering and Valerie’s woe to scope out just what is being broadcast across the Dataverse, with the high hopes that maybe, just maybe, things will be going well for at least some of her friends.
She’s wrong. Oh god, is she ever so wrong. Sir David T. Monroe’s account of the great battle taking place in the Endless Dunes may be skewed whichever way, but Jade cannot dispute the telling forms of arms and legs dangling out from underneath the rubble, the way that the man hit with some ghastly hex convulses upon the ground with dry spittle foaming at his lips.
Blinking through tears that have unexpectedly sprung to her eyes, Jade does the only thing that she can do: offer her help, even if it takes her days to arrive on the wrecked soil of Nippur. Once that is done and all necessary messages sent, she scrubs a hand across her face and is unsurprised to find that it comes away a little damp.
She sniffles, and the First Guardian sitting at her side licks consolingly at her knees. This only serves to multiply her sniffling, but the godly wolfdog is undaunted by this and simply presses the side of its head firmly against her leg— a steady and warm weight, alive save for its utter lack of a heartbeat.
Her horror steadily increases as she watches the events unfold before her very eyes, and the young Witch eventually has to close the program as things begin to escalate further. The screams of the man Sir Monroe had struck with some horrible invocation continue to ring in her ears even as she turns her attention to more benign programs, such as her chat memo. What is the purpose of tears, when a tragedy such as this is so far removed from her?
Purpose, purpose, purpose! That is all she ever thinks about anymore. But what is purpose to a god? To one who used to value such petty things as self accomplishment and esteem, and still hears those calls as strongly as ever? She feels as an adventurer crossing over some great chasm upon a slender birch log, the ravine plunging down hundreds of leagues into the center of the earth, shuffling her feet and not daring to take the next step unless she is absolutely certain she will not plummet to her death after one fateful misstep.
But these are all things to ponder for another time. There are people watching her, expectant, and she does not have it in her to disappoint them. She is so hopelessly ensnared in expectations, that way; it was a lot easier when she was alone on her island, with only the sobbing silence to provide any comfort, but she wouldn’t trade this experience with her new friends for anything. Jade loves the world freely, so long as it continues to turn faithfully beneath her feet.
Just as Jade is about to continue admonishing Karkat, a girl dressed in black and red approaches from the crowd, happily introduces herself to Jade, and proceeds to tickle the utterly flummoxed Witch about her ribcage. Another girl, clad all in white, follows shortly behind.
“Hello!” Jade exclaims, giggling as Ruby impishly prods at her ribs. Hair the color of blackest midnight tumbles about her shoulders as she laughs, small constellations that pulse with the same fluttering rhythm of a hummingbird’s heart cycling through the curls in an impressive current of glittering stars. “It’s very nice to finally—“
She stops speaking abruptly, mouth falling slack for a few seconds as she inspects the new message scrolling languorously across the red-tinted screen of her Junior Compu-Sooth Spectagoggles. Roughly five separate dings go off from the Dataverse devices in her immediate vicinity, as if there were a swarm of musical bees nearby.
Quote: BE: Well, would you look at that!
BE: It seems I've found two other people who also use PesterOmni.
BE: Both female.
BE: One is wearing a black dress/cloak thing with green star-like sparkles all over it and white dog ears sticking out of her black hair.
BE: The other one is wearing mostly red and black.
BE: Has some red mechanical contraption hidden under her red cloak.
BE: If either of these people are you, look up!
And Jade looks up.
“Oh!” There is a bipedal dragon standing humbly a few strides away, his enormous wings widespread as if to encompass all the rising dust and murmurings of conversation and activity around them. They are tucked back to his sides in one fell swoop, with all the sureness and finality of a blade being sheathed. His scales are red, each like a perfect jewel of cut stone, and they gleam impressively in the sunlight. He also has a super neat watch!
At her hip, Becquerel yawns, as if nothing out of the ordinary has transpired. Jade takes this as a sign that she shouldn’t be especially troubled by this fellow’s fearsome build and glinting eyes. The Omnipoterrier has spoken, it seems.
The god-child grins when the dragon fellow tips his head forward in greeting, moving towards him with feather light steps. She dips into a gracious curtsey, like she has read about in children’s storybooks, and then bobs back up in a swirl of glittering stars and admiring green eyes, which are almost humorously wide behind the round lenses of her glasses.
“It’s very nice to meet you, blazingExorcist, and you too, dairyDiarist— I mean, Ruby Rose and company! Haha,” she’s grinning so much right now, it’s starting to hurt her cheeks a little! “Isn’t that funny? We both are named after gemstones! It must be fate, or something!”
She waggles her fingers about in saying this, snow-white ears flicking up and down and all around like the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings. Her freckled cheeks are simply glowing with excitement, and this enthusiasm is only amplified tenfold once she decides upon what she would like to do next.
“Here, hold on a second!” Jade brings her hands up in front of her face, squinting into the vividly intense and shifting glow of Omnilium that manifests there, the stuffed octopus tucked securely under one arm.
She thinks of what she would like to summon for Ruby— a frog, of course, but each frog is so drastically different from the next that it will be difficult to decide upon what kind to create. They’re kind of like people, in that way— and not just humans, either! Each one is different and to be cherished, and left to do froggy things with their froggy lives, behaving in a way that is fundamentally true to their nature.
As Jade’s hands gleam with the amorphously fluctuating light of the summoning process, something begins to take shape there, slowly at first in glacial brushstrokes of creation, but gradually forming into an interestingly organic shape that emerges nose-first from the cloud. And, boy, what a nose it has!
This frog is dark in color, almost pitch black, and its skin rises up in hexagonal ridges all along its body. Some of these ridges have delightfully gleaming ruby red gemstones at their center which twinkle with a smooth, brilliant gleam. Its feet and underbelly are mottled with light grey, giving off the impression of black marble embellished with fluid spirals of white and grey.
Its froggy eyes appear to be reenacting a lunar eclipse, cycling between a flinty metallic silver to a magnificent and rich gold with every blink. Its snout has a peculiarly delicate protrusion from it, kind of like a star-nosed mole but in the shape of flowers petals. Its tongue is long, slender, and sticky as sap. Its ribbit will be almost like a nightingales call, Jade knows, albeit condensed and quick. She thinks that this frog has a certain kind of noble air to it, although she couldn’t say exactly why.
She smiles serenely down at the little frog squatting in the palms of her hands, and gently passes the amphibian over to her new friend. Ruby accepts it carefully, eyes wide with wonder, and Jade’s small smile spreads into a toothy, absolutely delighted grin.
“It’ll take a while for it to thaw, but just think of all the wonderful adventures you will have together! Isn’t that just wonderful? I’ll have to explain later, I guess, but right now I’m fine with leaving this one with you. It is the Satin Frog of Rubies and Roses— take good care of it, now!”
Then, because she cannot watch over these frogs all at once, not anymore— and because she has a feeling they will be a lot safer with these obviously formidable and trustworthy people, anyhow, Jade begins to work on calling another frog into being. She thinks that she hears Karkat mumble something along the lines of “What the ever-loving shit are you doing handing out frogs, Harley?”, but she mostly ignores that in favor of focusing on her work. And, lo, the frog manifests in her hands after only a few minutes more!
As she looks upon it, Jade reasons that this frog would likely still appear to be frozen after it finishes thawing, what with its slow blinks and barely-discernible breathing. It is all white in color, with wintry branches of pale blue running along its back and occasionally blooming into faintly tactile snowflowers. It gleams like porcelain, with sparkling grains of crystal here and there. Its eyes are a brilliant crimson and are exceptionally alert, with diamond-shaped pupils at their centers. Its feet are not clawed and appear to be made of shiny ice.
Small red beads of color rise up in places along its back, which completes an intricate yet subtle detail of berries, flowers, and snow that spreads over its body. Its throat is also almost entirely composed of clear ice, and it glimmers like a crystalline ball of spectral reflections and light. Its skin is unsurprisingly cold to the touch. Its limbs are long and well-built, perfect for leaps and bounds. Its tongue is a slate grey that is easily distinguishable from the rest of its snowy white mouth. Its ribbit will be like a songbird’s musical chirrup. She thinks that this frog is a lot less fragile than it looks!
“Here you go,” Jade chirps brightly, giving Ruby’s solemn, white-haired friend the frog she has made. Her teeth flash in a dazzling grin as the wintry girl accepts the frog. “This is the Crystal Frog of Ice and Snow! Please look after it closely, it’s one of the prettiest ones I have.”
Cupping her hands together once again, Jade turns towards her draconic friend, blazingExorcist, and begins to shape a new frog. It springs to fiery life in her hands, a sheen of glittering ice covering its skin, stalled in a crouching position as if it were still setting comfortably upon a lily pad.
This new frog is scaly and red-tinged, with a white underbelly that glows with a burning inner light even through the sheen of frost covering it. Each scale is marbled with amber-yellow dust particles, as if someone has taken a handful of golden flakes and blown them across its back. Its eyes are a warm brown, like burnt coffee, and a hexagonal, criss-crossing pattern distinguished in white runs down its back.
Two horns stick out from the top of this frog's head, brownish in color and slightly worn. Most impressively, it has two leathery wings arching off from its back, which are folded so that the frog is crouched similar to a gargoyle on the side of a tall building. Its ribbit will sound like a crackling blaze. Jade feels that this frog could be a real spitfire, if given the chance to break out of the ice encasing its inner flame.
“Ah! There,” she tells the draconic paladin, carefully handing the frog over. “This is the Frog Born Of Flame. Which is awfully funny, seeing as it’s all covered up in a coat of ice right now! Don’t worry though, it’ll melt. Just give it some time, like all things need at some point or another.”
Jade grins, satisfied with her work. As she goes to speak once again, however, a new PesterOmni alert zaps across her screen. A line of inky black text winds its way over the chat program’s screen ever so politely, but Jade still balks at what it has to say. Or, rather, at what egregiousInquisitor has to say.
“Oh nooooooooo,” Jade laments, clutching at the sides of her head, her hair streaming down in front of her face and swathing it in shadow, expression the very picture of sorrow. She makes the mistake of flipping over to a live stream of the Colosseum tournament, gargling some choice words around the lump of terror in her throat as she watches a rather large warhammer rupture directly through Adam Gaite’s chest in sickening, intimate detail. “Ohhhhh nonononoooooo!”
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Gamzee Makara Wrote:S’aight. After all, dogs have a tendency to motherfuckin’ bite.