FSE

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Shou awoke in a rush, mind abuzz with the frantic energy of a fast-fading dream. She had been amidst something quite important, hadn't she? She shook herself awake, freeing herself from the last vestiges of sleep. No, she hadn't, she'd been enjoying a deep and well deserved sleep. She felt remarkably fresh for a hangover, and the savory scents of breakfast wafting from the kitchen brought a smile to her. What a gentleman, waking up early to make her breakfast! She snuggled back into Khaesho's arms with a sigh, then stopped. Her gentlemanly suitor was still in bed with her, the gentle rise and fall of his chest pressing against her back. Then, who was in the kitchen?

She found her way into some pajamas and poked her head around the corner to witness a truly bizarre sight. No less than a dozen disembodied white gloves worked against the stove, scrambling eggs, frying bacon, flipping pancakes, flipping pages in cookbooks and generally making quite the busy work of her kitchen. An odd figure perched in mid-air; Not quite a skeleton, but a wire frame of a body, recognizably human, but lacking any real definition or features. Her eyes opened a little more as she attempted to gaze through the magic surrounding him, but the tumultuous ebb and flow of energy was far too complicated for her to even begin to make sense of. She recognized the wire frame as Kalokin, but the dizzying paths of energy proved beyond her grasp.

As she regarded him, Kalokin turned his faceless body towards her and nodded. “Shouyousei! Good morrow, I hope you don't mind me borrowing your kitchen. I ran out of things to do and decided to puzzle out your people's culinary practices. I must say, your people use the most archaic and convoluted measurement system I've seen since the dark ages, it's been quite the little puzzle. The eggs and bacon weren't too difficult, I could have intuited those, but these… pancakes, they are called? I cannot promise they will turn out correct."

He almost seemed apologetic about it, and the idea of a deity apologizing for cooking breakfast improperly was just absurd enough to bring a laugh to her lips. “No, I don't mind at all Kalo, as long as you clean up once you're done. I hope you made enough to share?" There was even a fresh pot of coffee bubbling in the corner, he'd really thought of everything. She almost went for the pot by force of habit, but she honestly didn't feel the need for it. It was quite a novelty, waking up refreshed and alert without needed a booster dose of caffeine.

The many hands paused for the briefest moment before they and the wire frame simply faded out, vanishing from existence. Kalokin's voice slipped from everywhere, and nowhere at once. “You forget, Shou, I am a being of pure energy. I have no need of food, I simply wished to entertain myself, and do you a favor at the same time." He faded back in, hands and everything, to begin plating her breakfast, taking only a single steaming cup of joe for himself.

“Shall I go rouse Khaesho then? He's enjoyed enough eastern cuisine, I'm sure he-" She turned back towards the bedroom, but Kalokin snapped into existence in front of her.

“It would be better to let him sleep." Shou yelped and jumped back a step as he continued. “There were some… issues that he had to tend to last night, and it's been a frightful long time since he allowed himself a full night's rest. That, and I was hoping to talk with you alone for a moment."

“Okay." She started, heart pulsing from the unintended jump scare. “But as a ground rule, please don't just appear behind me like that, you gave me quite a fright."

“My apologies, lady Murasaki." He didn't sound very remorseful. In fact, she almost thought she saw mirth dancing on his face… but he didn't have a face, so she must have just imagined it. She turned and sat down to his elegantly plated breakfast, complete with tall glass of milk, and gestured to the mug sitting across from her.

“Okay, so if you don't eat food, why the coffee? And please, call me Shou." It seemed quite the contradiction to her, but his smirk was the only answer she received.

“I'll tell you what, Shouyousei. I am a keeper of secrets, and you ask after an old and forgotten piece of knowledge, but I'll tell you what. Let's trade questions, shall we? You answer mine, and I'll answer yours." One of the disembodied gloves floated over for her to shake. “Truth on both our parts, such is the deal?"

She shrugged and shook the hand, staring curiously. “That's fine, but can you do something about your face? As in, can you make one?"

Kalokin nodded carefully. “I can, but you'll see why I don't in just a moment." It took a few moments, but skin crept across the wireframe, a face emerging from it, and something about it was terribly wrong. The visage regarding her lay squarely in the deepest pit of uncanny valley, and just looking at it made Shou shudder, especially when the mouth parted to speak. “I can reconstruct a human face, but without emotion to guide it, it simply looks wrong. If it pleases you though," Plastic snapped over the not-quite-a-face, a smugly smirking Guy Fawkes mask that fit him like a glove. “Masks usually do the trick."

Shou nodded, already digging into her breakfast with a vengeance. “Mumch Be'er!" she mumbled through a mouth of bacon. The look really suited the elitist, faintly snarky tone that he used.

“Excellent. I'll call that half a question, and take the first serious one. Good Shouyousei, what names have you made for yourself? Who are you?" The smirking mask shuffled off, replaced with a concentrating, furrowed brow.

It caught her off guard, and she took a moment to finish chewing this time before replying. “What do you mean? I'm Shouyousei Murasaki, but you knew that already. My middle name is Elizabeth, if that's what you're after."

He shook his head, fingers steepled in thought. “Not quite. You know Vash is the honorary title for a vessel of the Stráž, yes? In addition to that, loosely translated, Vash'Khaesho Dhaesden has the name Scorpent, and the title Hermit of the Snow-capped mountains, as befitting someone who joined the Scorpent guard, and survived in the wilderness. He has more, of course, but those are the ones he used to introduce himself with, albeit in his native tongue." (TODO GO FIX THE INTRODUCTION)

Shou thought that over while enjoying a bite of surprisingly fluffy pancake. They'd turned out fabulously after all. “Well, you could make a title out of my job, for certain. I've gained quite the popularity on the stage, you know. I'm an artist as well, in my spare time. I don't have any grandiose titles though."

Kalokin shrugged. “It might do well to put some thought into making some. If you rub shoulders with my Vash long enough, you are certain to encounter my siblings, and there is such an emphasis on making a good first impression." He fell silent then, and it took a good minute for Shou to realize that he was simply waiting for her question.

She gestured towards the still-steaming mug in his hand with a grin. “Okay, spill the beans. You haven't taken a single sip, and by your own admission, you don't eat or drink. So, why pour yourself a cup of coffee."

The mask shifted into something akin to a nostalgic grin, looking down to gaze into the cup. One of the hands shifted into a spoon and stirred it slightly. “So, I am vastly intelligent. My mind is unbound by biological limitations, and I've always taken pride in my intellectual ability. I can tell the order of cards in a deck by examining the ink on each of them, and keep track of every card through a shuffle. I can tell how dice will land the moment they leave a palm. I can shoot an arrow, throw a spear, or hurl a stone and hit any target, at any distance with pinpoint precision, and I spent much of the early ages boasting that my mind was perfection incarnated, and that my calculative ability knew no bounds. My mastery of illusions is the stuff of legends, and my boasts were grand enough to match."

He fell silent for a moment, pulling over a packet of sugar to drop into the drink. “Enter Rykhan 'Rook' Ghanyr. He's always looked for a way to beat me, and one morning, inspiration struck him. He wagered that, using nothing but normal, everyday items, he could construct something so elaborate that I would be unable perfectly recreate it as an illusion, in real time." Kalokin siphoned out some of the coffee into a sphere, casually tossing it into the sink. “Naturally, I accepted before he even listed the terms. He wagered an eternity of service to me against immortality-"

“Wait, hold up." Kalokin's mask shifted to a curious, bemused expression at Shou's interruption. “Immortality? Like, real world, not-legendary immortality?"

Kalokin nodded. “It is not impossible, but immortal does not mean undying. A good arrow can still kill an immortal, as can just about anything else. Actually, no, you're right, 'eternal youth' would be a better translation, I think. Now, if I may?" Shou nodded sheepishly and returned to her breakfast. “He wagered an eternity against an eternity. If I won, he would surrender the afterlife to devote his soul to me, a servant forever. If he won, then I would use my considerable knowledge, skill, and magical potential to actively keep him from aging. And his wager was this."

He pushed the mug of coffee to the center of the table, and Shou looked down at it, confused. She looked back up to him, his mask deadly serious, and she looked back down. “A… a cup of coffee?"

Kalokin shrugged. “It was tea in the original wager, but his challenge was that I would be unable to predict exactly how the wisps of steam would rise quickly enough to make a matching illusion. I could make an illusory cup, but the steam wouldn't match. So I sat down and looked into it, and every time I thought I'd taken everything into account, he would expose some new variable, adding exponentially more time to the research I'd need to do."

Kalokin stared at the wisps, consumed by them, eyes motionless behind his mask. “The material of the cup, and the glaze, affect the heat transfer, which changes how quickly the water cools. The presence or absence of dregs make a difference, as does the flavor and strength of the tea. And just when I thought I'd gotten that sorted, he added a lump of sugar, quipping that no cup of tea was complete without sugar or cream. So, I had to look into additives; sugar alone took a century to master, with the different kinds, qualities, grain sizes… then there's cream, from different animals, in different quantities and temperatures. If you stir it, that changes everything as well."

Shou was catching on now. “It's impossible. There are too many different variables that would affect the steam wisps. If you're outside, there might be a breeze, and if the challenge was to recreate steam trails, then he could ask you to do any hot beverage, cocoa, tea…" she gestured to his mug. “Coffee. Hell, there must be hundreds of different styles of coffee alone."

He nodded gravely. “And again, the grind of the beans needs to be considered. The brew style matters." The coffee was beginning to cool, running out of steam, so he sighed and took the mug up, carrying it to pour out in the sink. “But it's not impossible… just impossibly time consuming. I, of course, insisted that I could do it, if I was given enough time to research steam and work through the equations, and that I would not claim his soul until I could, but he was adamant that I take the loss and swallow my pride. The compromise we reached was that I would keep him forever young (TODO, FIX PIZZA SHOP) until such a time when I could perfectly recreate the steam of any beverage he set before me. Then he could live his natural life to its end, and after which I would claim his soul.

Shou took her empty plate to the sink and rinsed it off, curiosity almost satisfied. “So where is he now? Is there some centuries old gambler running around the Inghan empire? I mean, that's why you poured yourself a cup, right? You haven't mastered it yet, so you're still studying?" (Todo, fix In'Ghan to inghan.)

Kalokin's mask didn't change as he stared down into the counter, but something in his aura did. A shift in mood, but not one he telegraphed to her. “The name Ghanyr died shortly after the vicious and bloody rebellions that bear his name." He could sense that she was about to ask further questions and held up a hand to silence her. “I have more than answered your question, and have been lenient with your further queries; it is my turn to ask of you now, remember?"

Shouyousei let out a small 'eep' of embarrassment as she nodded. “Right, sorry, I just got carried away. You tell quite the interesting story, you know."

He nodded “Indeed, I do know. So now, Shouyousei, I ask of you."