and if you fall

[hasapoint]

WHO: Need and: the first prompt and general wildcard interaction is OTA. The second prompt is closed to her and Allynbee, Bakugo, and Yusuke. It doesn't have to be a megathread but if you want one that's cool.
WHAT: First prompt: Need meanders around and makes a weapon that throws rocks good and tests it on a wall. Second prompt: returning to the River to see what's there to be found. I'm happy with either prose or brackets!
WHERE: Cavern of course! First prompt is in the city or wherever within the lantern's light you'd like your character encountering Need. Second prompt is overlooking the River.
WHEN: Between the intro log and the first Crossing. I'm leaning after the Ferryman's announcement but if you want a thread set before then I'm game.
WARNINGS Not sure. General discussion of the lethality of slung stones is a possibility, and the unpleasantness of being submerged in the River.


check the cupboard for your daddy's gun
Need is quite tall, heavyset, and the oldest-looking person present, with a seamed and scarred face and a wary, watchful aspect. Having spent a long afterlife in service, she feels at loose ends here and is often in motion, walking slow circuits and checking to see if anything has changed, or unpicking bits of fabric so she can find uses for it as string.

One of the first things she does is put together a sling. It doesn't look like much, just a length of braided twine. She takes it up into the higher reaches of the subterranean city to try and test it, with a series of rounded stones for ammunition. The crack of the sling, or of the stone hitting, carries in the quiet as she refines her aim.

"Fired clay bullets are better," she says conversationally, not looking directly at whoever she's speaking to. Crack! Need pulls the now-trailing end of the sling up, wrapping it loosely around her fingers. "Cast lead is best. But if I'm wishing for things that aren't here, first I want a sword."

it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
It's hard to get much out of the Ferryman. Knowing how often she's been cryptic to the living, Need has set her jaw and not tried to wheedle out an answer. The little that she has picked up has been the intimation that she can glean something by returning to the River.

Maybe the other three have also spoken to them, or followed someone headed this way, or meandered here on their own. Regardless, Need looks out across the broad expanse of dark water and exhales slowly.

"It's better than the ocean," she complains, a 'but' clear in her tone.

Comments

[hasapoint]

[Need isn't as warm and openly compassionate as the Ferryman, but she also doesn't have their knowing aspect. She considers.]

Well. I have an inkling that there will be more than one of these Crossings. We will know more once it's happened, and be better prepared for the next one. [Though as she said earlier, change can happen very quickly.] Maybe you can start with something only mildly mortifying, not a terrible secret.

You could even write it down, first, if only as a plain statement. 'I let my twin die in my place', that kind of thing. [...That's a strange hypothetical. Need doesn't remember if she had siblings at all.] I might do that. Try and get a sense for how much is lost and how thoroughly.

[oh yep she's recalled now. It might be a bit late, this poor kid's getting herself under better control, but whatever. Need reaches into an apron pocket and finds a square of linen with a rough square-knot pattern embroidered in the corner, something she'd picked up while making the cord, and offers it.]

[urtitan]

[Talking to Need isn't wholly dissimilar from talking to Celehar - the only other soul here she parses as an authority of sorts, albeit in his case it's due to his profession rather than his lived experience -, Frieda finds. Neither of them excudes a magnitude of warmth, but each seems principled and willing to share their thoughts no matter the topic. Not being rebuffed already provides solace to her.

Again, she nods along, having arrived at much of the same conclusion but still grappling with it. What a relief would it be to forget everything - the truth of her world and her people's history? Part of her is almost angry at Nagito for bringing up all these disquieting possibilities, but he's not wrong, especially about the aspect of deserving to forget. She takes the offered handkerchief and dabs at her eyes with it]

I'll think about that.

[Writing her options down, that is - but ultimately, she'll likely refrain, too scared that someone might see her notes, even if she finds writing utensils other than her "magical" book.]

I don't have a twin, though. My siblings are all younger than me.

[She knows that it was only a hypothetical example (though it is an interesting choice...), but talking about her family, one of the few things she doesn't want to forget about, is calming, and be it as brief a mention. If she's going to lose herself over the course of the Crossings to come, she'd like the others to know that she was a sister and that she loved her parents and siblings.]

[hasapoint]

An eldest. I see.

[Probably expected to take responsibility early, Need wagers. Hm. Is responsibility what weighs on this girl so? She'll have to think about it. It's annoying not being able to just examine hearts and minds, but in all honesty she rarely probes deeply anyway. It's more enjoyable to take things as they come.

Well, the topic seems to put her more at ease. Probably better not to ask if they've outlived her.]

Is your family particularly large?

[urtitan]

[Frieda's case is a strange one insofar as she wasn't pressured to take on the responsibility of inheriting the Founding Titan and all its knowledge and power - she volunteered for it, hoping she'd be able to overcome whatever seemed to possess her uncle and grandfather after their respective succession and render them inactive. Of course, she was an overly idealistic child.]

Fairly large - enough so to always be lively, in any case. I have four siblings.

[The fifth one, the illegitimate one, she has forgotten.]

My brothers are seventeen and fourteen, my sisters twelve and ten.

[She really hopes that they and their parents managed to run away. She hopes for that so much.]

How about you? Do you have any siblings?

[A twin, perhaps?]

[hasapoint]

Are they rambunctious, or more well-behaved?

[There's a slight suggestion that Need prefers children to be 'rambunctious'.]

Me? I don't remember. It was a long time ago.

[Very long. There's just a slight wistfulness to the admission. It had bothered her once, but it doesn't now. Given how people - Celehar, primarily, but Yusuke to a lesser extent - have reacted to hearing a bit about what she turned herself into, Need figures it's probably better not to share too readily. Besides, it seems like boasting.]

I was part of a religious order, late in life, where we all addressed one another as Sister. So they might count.

[urtitan]

A little bit of both! But on the whole, they're good children and good siblings.

[Her brothers would take offense to being called "children", she knows that, but it's what they are! As for Need, Frieda's own cultural context makes her assume that she was a nun.]

Did you consider your order sisters as your siblings?

[hasapoint]

I'm glad.

['Nun' is not at all far off, though if called that Need would insist she'd been a lay Sister instead, not bound by vows in the same way.]

Hm. More or less. We had a certain focus on developing and training skills and talents and it was expected for most girls to only stay for a few years and then go back out in the world, so many of them I barely knew.

[Need remembers most of them vaguely. She does have a smear of faces, several names - Vyush and Preta, Alles, Peoi, Hesri, a few more if she stops to dig for them - and a scattering of details, a sense of presence. It's all so far gone that it's threadbare, more of it like a story she's heard and recalls than anything else. She's very far from who she'd been.]

A few were closer to being daughters, of a sort.

[urtitan]

[That kind of order is a foreign concept to Frieda, but it sounds interesting and, in a way, more beneficial to both the sisters and the people than a traditional cloister.]

That sounds nice. I'm sure they were happy to be with you.

[Having an older, more experienced person to turn to is worth so much, all the more so in the absence of family. She remembers her uncle, who was so wise and kind... if only she'd been able to understand him before she inherited his knowledge, but that was impossible by nature of the Founding Titan.]

What sort of skills were you all taught?

[Talking about Need's life is a soothing distraction, and she appreciates being humoured, though she'd understand if Need wanted to get back to her practice in due time.]

[hasapoint]

Hah. Of course they were happy I was there, I brought in a lot of money for them! I was a lay Sister. My main role was making swords to sell, and I was good at it.

[It had been a good life, she remembers that much. In the last few years she had been weakening, growing tired more easily, taking the healers' advice to conserve what was left, and that had been frustrating sometimes. But it was the peaceful decline she hadn't asked for, had never deserved.]

What skills did we teach, rather. I came to the Sisterhood later in life. We'd teach fighting or magic to some girls, otherwise it was mainly trades. And I say "girls" but plenty of them were adults.

[urtitan]

[Frieda is visibly surprised to hear that Need served as a swordsmith. While her homeland sees more equality between the sexes than many others at a comparable development level, primarily due to women's natural aptitude to the three-dimensional manevouring gear the military uses, female smiths are still a rarity.

She wants to explain that she figured they had to be taught the order's skills first before being sent out to serve the people with them, but Need's mention of magic trips her up.]

There's magic in your world? Real magic?

[She was sure that even across worlds, it only existed in storybooks!]

What kind of magic?