Game Update: May II 2377

[nashiramods]

Weather & Recap ⭐︎ By Daylight ⭐︎ By Starlight

🎶 Recommended Listening: Transformers Prime Main Theme - Brian Tyler ♪
may ii 2377
EPISODE 2: Bathhouse Blitz! Save the Black Cat and the Golden Butterfly!
May 17 - May 24

Weather: Chalra City is enjoying a balmy and sunny late spring with some light rain here and there. The inland breeze from the nearby beaches brings a cool touch and the promise of summer, and flowering forsythia adds splashes of bright yellow to many parts of the city. The highs for the month average around 72°F/22°C, with lows around 50°F/10°C.
Star Suite: The Library has been unlocked! Every Nova Knight will also recover a memory from their past life. More details in the post below.
Recap: In Episode 1, you successfully investigated and foiled your very first plot by the enemy! After Nautis identified the high-end complicated-patterns fashion craze around the Dan Flashes boutique as originating from the Harbingers, the Nova Knights did some thorough investigating and then, in their first serious battle since the night at Lucky Stars, defeated Dan Flashes himself. You can find the previous month's event log here.

You can see what the Harbingers themselves are up to in the aftermath of the event in the Episode 1 Harbingers Gaiden! Mostly a lot of bickering, but they're now aware of the threat posed by the Nova Knights, and they're already making plans to eliminate them.

BY DAYLIGHT
⭐︎ Now that Dan Flashes is out of business, a new business has taken over the space — so quickly, in fact, that it doesn't seem like it was ever vacant at all. There's now a frozen yogurt joint in its place called FroYo Better Believe It!. The only thing Nautis finds suspicious about it is the fact that people like frozen yogurt at all.

⭐︎ Shelley Lustre, art teacher at Everwave Academy, has announced that he'll be holding an art contest for the students. The theme: hidden beauty. Given his already very polarizing personality and deep fondness for seashell-studded sculpture, this promises to be a very...divisive competition.

⭐︎ Public bathhouses are a staple in Chalra City, and they're no exception to the march toward modernization. Newer public baths are bigger and boast much more amenities than their more traditional counterparts, which is precisely why the historic Golden Butterfly Bathhouse is at risk of going out of business! Run by Granny Chocho, whose family has been operating this bathhouse for the last two hundred years, the Golden Butterfly is located right around where the red-light district and the most historic part of the city intersect. But what the Golden Butterfly lacks in fancy amenities, it makes up for with its historic charm, attentive service, and hard-scrubbed cleanliness — which is exactly what its faithful regulars have been trying to spread the word about.

If you pass through that part of town this week, you might meet some customers and even Granny Chocho herself handing out flyers to try and recruit new customers — and if you bring the flyer with you, you get 50% off your entry fee. Not a bad deal, especially if you like quiet and simple! It might be worth checking out, though you'd have to enter as a civilian.

At the end of the week, though, the flyers are a little different — now they're offering a discount on the new scented bath salts the Golden Butterfly is selling! You're not familiar with the brand — a pearl in a stylized oyster shell, bearing the text Seaside Lustre — but they're being advertised as being great for both relaxation and rejuvenation. Apparently, you can have it all!

BY STARLIGHT
⭐︎ Recovered Memory: In the couple of days following the Dan Flashes fight, everyone will recover a memory from their past life — specifically, their final moments in the fight against the Abyss. More than just the dying wish, this is a full memory of whatever last conversation, fight, or whatever they had before dying in the final battle aboard the Nashira. You're not required to, but you're welcome to detail the contents of your character's memory in the thread for recovered memories below. You can also keep track of your character's past life memories with our handy-dandy info page template!

⭐︎ Hideout Status: As a result of everyone's tidying efforts earlier in the month, it's actually pretty nice in here now! There's a big sectional couch for lounging around, at the very least. It's even starting to feel kind of homey.

Another fruit of your labor is that a new part of the crashed ship has become available: you can now access the Library, a modest-sized room with floor-to-ceiling shelves, every last one of them packed with books. Magic books! Much like a modern tablet but with actual pages, these individual books can hold a wealth of magically-stored information and recall what you wish to learn on its pages. Naturally, none of these books are in the local language, but in standard Hassalean. That's not a problem for you guys, though — perhaps due to your recently recovered memories, you all discover that you also have the ability to speak and read Hassalean, as though you simply downloaded the knowledge into your brain. Neat!

If you'd like to have your character peruse the library, you can reply to the thread below to have the mod roll for what they find.

There's also a small hydroponic garden along one corner, though nothing is currently planted in it.

⭐︎ The Rewards page has been updated with the next Star Suite upgrade: the next room to unlock is the Aquarium, and the reward will be a Silver-level Star Suite power. Save up those SP!

⭐︎ Intel: Thanks to the missions earlier in May, you all know quite a lot more than you started! To recap: you now know that one of the Harbingers is named Prince Shellustria, and his magic is of the Glamour domain.

You also learned that the data Nautis needs to locate the Star Map fragments was stored in the soul of the ship's mascot, a black cat named Niangniang with whom Nautis does not seem to have been on good terms. Nevertheless, she's definitely been reincarnated on Earth too, so you'll need to find this cat so Nautis can retrieve the necessary data. Apparently recovering data from someone's soul is a perfectly safe, painless process, but the way she emphasizes these points makes you feel like maybe she hopes something bad happens to this cat. Anyway, she's working on a means of tracking down this elusive mascot, so she'll get back to you with more info later!

⭐︎ The Fate of Nova Zenith: Late at night on May 17, everyone receives an uncharacteristically subdued update from Nautis. Apparently Nova Zenith read through some books in the library about what was known to the Hassaleans about the Abyss and decided to investigate on his own — and ran afoul of Prince Shellustria himself. Unfortunately, Nova Zenith was outmatched on his own, and before Nautis could summon any backup, he was overpowered by Shellustria and claimed by the Abyss. He isn't dead, but captive, and he can be saved if they defeat the Abyss — but all the same, the loss of the oldest member of their group will doubtless rock the rest of the Nova Knights.

Comments

[fibrillate]

They can't. They don't think they can. But they listen, because their brain is loud and complicated and Natalia's voice is easy, and they take more of a stance this time before swinging again. They still don't actually know how to engage their core or anything like that, which means there isn't a lot of change to the way they throw the punch. They don't swear this time, at least, but tears are welling up in the corners of their eyes.

[theriflespiral]

"Better," she nods, catching the blow outside with the same hand. "Push forward from the heel on your back foot and drive everything into that rear hand. Commit! Make me feel it!"

Yes. This! She can see it, even if Pandora can't. "Watch closely and duck."

There's a twitch in her eye and hand, and Pandora can see her slowing up but committing her hip and torso, putting every muscle from the heel to her hand into the wide, telegraphed swing.

[fibrillate]

It's easy to dodge, and—once they notice it's coming, once they realize that Neos is letting them dodge it (maybe she's taking pity on them, that's the only reason anyone would, obviously), they duck down into a squat on the floor. When the punch is gone, so is Nova Pandora—they break Supernova, something that they probably shouldn't be doing in the hideout with other people in the next room, but it just feels so impossible to keep all of this up. Everything feels so heavy. The fire that had just driven them quenched in record time by their own stupid brain. Again.

They stay down in that squat, and their heart aches for how they can't even maintain the one thing that's supposed to make them feel better. "Fuck," they say, quieter and more clearly. Their throat is tight. "Stop it, Neos. It's pointless."

[theriflespiral]

"Well--" she pauses. Sees the squat and the break. Listens.

Her eyes are wide. For a moment, her anger rules her, the Danno that lives in her head rules her, she winds up,

But then-- then, she remembers. She remembers herself, when-- when...

Her fists release, she drops stance, and, through gritted teeth, she says, "Mikhail."

[fibrillate]

If Natalia had actually followed through, Hope would've understood. God knows they want to do it to themself enough times over and over again whenever they get like this. But nothing comes, and they sit more comfortably on the ground with their legs folded underneath them, and they keep their head lowered.

"Not what I'm called," they try. They don't feel very funny in the moment, but with tears already rolling down their face and anything more complex buried underneath everything else, they have to take what they can get.

[theriflespiral]

"... his name. It. Was Mikhail. He doesn't have one anymore. Industrial accidents never happen back home, you see. If seven hundred pounds of yellow-hot steel landed on a child, it was obviously the result of saboteurs." The vitriol drips from her tongue as easily as breathing, and she puts a hand to her heart. "I... He was that friend. I will tell you the secret to my success after that."

And now, she knelt down close, and whispered into Hope's ear, still struggling to maintain Supernova. How long has she been in it? The hate she feels at herself echoes in her tone. "I obeyed all the punishments Danno gave me, I threw my tantrums at my tutor Albrecht, until at last, one day, I felt... Nothing. My heart, frozen in place, continued. I proceeded like that. You may, too, if you let it happen. You will be armored from the sorrow, sank into the cold, lost and disconnected. And you will continue. Step by painful step, oh, you will continue."

"It will give you at least three, long, fearless years, that feel like an eternity, that make your passions into ash in your mouth. But. You will not feel the grief. You will not feel the pain, as I am. As you are." She stands. "The option waits, if you truly wish it. I. am not happy. I may never be happy. But I live. And so long as I do..."

Her eyes turn to the entrance. "Then I may still act."

[fibrillate]

It's hard—impossible, really, to ignore what Natalia is telling them when she's this close, when her words are so clear and full of hatred. Not directed at them, they force their brain to believe, but still loud and clear.

It's because it's so clear, though, that Hope doesn't really want to acknowledge it. They shut their eyes and try to force the tears to stop coming, but they obviously won't ebb that easily. "Shut up," they say, their throat tight. "I can't shut everything out like that. I would've done it years ago." Words are difficult like this, like they've been the whole time, like they're all stopped up inside Hope's chest. There won't be some big speech from this grown adult, from the now-oldest Nova Knight, from the person who's supposed to be some kind of responsible pillar who only feels crumbling and ancient.

"I wish you knew what I had to deal with from myself every single day." It's not even something powerful or biting. It's just pathetic. They're pathetic.

[theriflespiral]

"Good," she says. "My only use now is as a weapon. Live with this however you want. But live, Hope. In a way I cannot."

She makes a motion in front of her, and hums in irritation as she realizes the teleportation is one-way.

[fibrillate]

"You sound like him," they sob out, not sure if they're heartbroken or livid at the realization before acknowledging that they just don't have it in them to be anything more than what they are right now. The words keep ringing in their own head—which ones? All of them.

"Go back to everyone else. I need to be alone."

[theriflespiral]

"Hm?" She shakes her head. "I will leave. but I have more useful things to do, now."

The wind follows her as she picks up the pace and leaves.