June I Event Log

[nashiramods]

Who: Everyone! (That's right, even you)
What: The Nova Knights race against the enemy to locate and capture the loose Constellation first, while Maya and Hope find their way out of the Abyss.
When: June 8 - June 14
Where: Chalra City


🎶 Recommended Listening: You're Not Alone! - BanG Dream! 〈lyrics〉 ♪
june i event log
EPISODE 3: Shall We Dance? A Starlit Step in 3/4 Time!
June 8 - June 14
TIMELINE
6/8-6/12 Dowsing Machines+
6/8-6/14 Library: Shelving Project
6/10 Signal Boost
6/10 Escape: Pandora & Glimmer
6/11 Investigate: Flash Mobs
6/13 Capture: The Dancer

Nautis upgraded everyone's dowsing machines to track Constellation activity, although to mixed results so far. The Nova Knights made a lot of progress on the Library reshelving project, though, so three cheers for literacy!

On the 10th, Kalim and Natalia help Nautis send a signal through the Abyss, and while it takes everything they've got, it succeeds: thanks to the falling star pointing them home, Maya and Hope successfully escape the Abyss that night. They finally reunite with the other Nova Knights, and meet the two newly awakened Knights, the upbeat go-getter Nova Valorous and the somewhat contentious Nova Pastos.

Hope and Maya also have critical information to share on their return: they know for a fact that the art teacher Shelley Lustre is Prince Shellustria himself. They'll have to figure out what exactly to do with that information since they can't risk jeopardizing their own secret identities, but it's an important first step to learning more about the Harbingers.

On the the 11th, Cynthia and Jamil make contact with the loose Constellation via one of the many flash mobs in a park and get caught up in an ensemble show tunes-style number, confirming it is the Dancer. Thanks to their ability to absolutely Get Down, they learn exactly what they need in order to tame the Dancer and capture it so that they can return it to the Star Map.

Mutsumi and Dirk encounter the Dancer themselves on the 13th, and using what Jamil and Cynthia learned from their own encounter with the Constellation, they're able to successfully capture the Dancer after letting it play out its impulse. This takes the form of a simple waltz, for which music seems to simply manifest around them. Once one of them is fully in sync with the Dancer, the other Knight successfully captures it — and the confused crowd around them kind of just wanders off with only a vague impression of what just happened.

So not only did the Nova Knights save Niangniang last month, they've also succeeded in preventing a Constellation from falling into enemy hands and reuniting with two of their captive comrades. And they're just a little bit closer to a way to defeat the Abyss. Things are starting to look up for the Nova Knights.

The Nova Knights have also gained access to the Aquarium in the hideout, a spacious room mostly surrounded by a massive water tank, including from above. It's clear this was a place of importance on the ship, based on the small signs of ancient wear and tear, but at the moment the Aquarium's waters are empty of any fish. Perhaps that's to be expected when it's been buried underground for centuries.

The full mission results can be found here.

Comments

[avemortis]

Nova Mortis has never quite felt this before, but it's semi-familiar, almost like playing in a band. She's never played accompaniment for a dancer before, only been the dancer to someone else's music in ballet class, but she finds herself just as drawn in by a pulling, by some invisible swelling.

She can feel her dowsing machine getting hot in her pocket. It's working — something is working, anyway. She keeps playing, and the magic of each note becomes gradually more visible. Not the lace-patterned smoke of her sleep spell, but a gentle pink and white glimmering, a beckoning call. Whatever Dirk and Cal are doing is resonating with the Dancer, she can tell. They just have to keep it up a little longer...

[string_instrument]

Keeping it up is the hard part. Nova Pastos is in a weird limbo--pun unintended--wherein he has to do things while not thinking too hard about them. This is quite possibly the most agonising and impossible thing anyone could have ever asked of him.

Whether or not he realises it (and don't worry, he does), Nova Pastos is a thinker. He's self-aware to a fault. Excruciatingly, endlessly, all-too-consciously and tortuously aware. Of himself. Of what he's doing, and thinking, and being.

His waltz is balanced precariously on a razor of knowledge: that he is waltzing, that he needs to continue walzting, and most crucially of all, that he doesn't know how to waltz.

He can't simply lose himself in Lil Cal's lovingly glassy stare forever. He has to do something--mentally, in order to keep himself from fucking this up, he has to immerse himself. He can't think about the feeling or he'll lose it. Even this thinking is starting to make the sensation fray from his nerves, his brain overtaking the impulses that started this dance.

So he thinks about dancing--but not the fact that he is dancing. He thinks about movement, but not about moving. He starts memorising, instead--learning the waltz by doing it. It's a clear rhythm, a pace and process like a ritual. The winsome sway of Cal's limbs as he turns with his beloved puppet in his arms earns a quirk at the corner of his mouth.

More pinks begin to trail from his own feet and in the wake of his lanky and plush forever friend--darker pinks, richer hues that echo the mildly absurd colours of his magical costume. One, two, three. One, two, three.

If nothing else, by the time this is all over, Nova Pastos--and Dirk Strider--will forever remember how to dance the waltz.

[avemortis]

The effort Nova Pastos is putting in is worth it — it's working. Nova Mortis can feel the swell in the magic, in the feeling and she knows, on some intuitive magical level, that that is the spirit of the Dancer resonating. Just by letting himself learn, Nova Pastos is doing it.

She doesn't dare let her fingers stop now, her guitar encouraging the Dancer to stay with Nova Pastos and Cal, but she starts to worry about how she'll capture it. Should they have had a third person here? Should Nautis have assigned some other, more capable Knight to assist?

But no...before she can let her mind dwell on that thought, the warmth in her pocket grows hotter, then she feels it move. The dowsing machine, apparently acting on its own initiative, floats out of her pocket and into position in front of her. Eyes wide, Nova Mortis keeps playing, somehow intuiting a key change just as it happens, but her focus seems to be focusing the dowsing machine, too. With a start, she realizes she's controlling the little device with her guitar.

It's time.

The screen on the dowsing machine goes blank, then suddenly it bathes Dirk and Cal in brilliant blue light, a beckoning call to the Dancer — come home.

Don't tell him this is technically a feat of pantomime

[string_instrument]

As Pastos' confidence with the steps he's learning--or learned, now--grows, he gets an idea. It's a small seed at first, but as his body moves with his will as much as the Dancers' that seed begins to thread tiny roots--not in soil, but into the machine of his body.

His pulse is hot under his skin, his thoughts quickening as the idea takes shape.

It takes some planning. Some mental rehearsing. He repeats it in his head, over and over until he's ready--building his confidence, yes, but also imbuing each repetition of the dance's steps with purpose, teaching his muscles and memory what to do, and mirroring that process in his mind until he is absolutely, one-hundred-percent certain of his success (no rounding allowed.)

He thought simply keeping the dancer with him was stressful... this is somehow both easier (through self-determination) and yet more harrowing by far. He focuses on breathing, and planning.

Jesus, he can feel his heart pounding.

The reality of this process is measured in seconds--at most perhaps minutes--but the magnitude of effort is disproportionately felt, artificially lengthening and intensifying the sensation of time itself. It is a precious balancing act of anticipation, intent, and restraint.

And so, as he steps, turns, twirls, and dips his way towards Mortis, as the brilliant, warming pink of his magic grows and spreads, as Mortis's dowsing device beguins to stir--

He reverses. Twirling after the dip, his feet change places, he sweeps Cal's arms over his own, he steps back instead of forwards. Suddenly, Pastos is not waltzing with Cal--Cal is waltzing with him. No longer is Pastos the lead, but instead the led.

And as the dowsing machine beams brilliant blue over his own stunning pink--

A moment of passion, of sincerity and art. The result not only of many, many years of self-led training, but of illusions acted out in the solitude of his apartment, bestowing Cal with life.

He tilts back, balancing on one leg, the other extended almost gracefully as Cal's arms seem to support him mid-air. He does not waver. Does not fall. He maintains that perfect, precious state of balance-in-motion.

And then he's on his feet again, and the glow of pink and blue twirls together as Cal twirls him. A beautiful vortex of magicks--with a k--that for the Knight(s?) within it turns briefly blinding.

But only briefly. Up, up it spins, leaving him and Cal behind.

Still twirling, so Dancer-like, overhead.

Then, slowly and elegantly in denouement, it descends upon Mortis and her device.