spira_rp | Killers everywhere, it ain't no place to run.

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Killers everywhere, it ain't no place to run.

The Desert Palace, all in all, wasn't such a bad place.

Tyki rather liked it. It was almost lively under the near funereal, subdued air. There might have been a fog hanging over everything, the heavy weight of a member missing, but underneath that was a subtle layer of anticipation, a mountain-stream burble of excitement at what the meeting might hold. For those normally resident, the reaction to strangers was mixed. Some approached the situation with their heads held high, giving no indication one way or another how they felt about the sudden intrusion. Others seemed nervous, the unknown quantities enough to frighten them, not that they broadcasted it. For the minions, there seemed to be a novelty to it. It almost seemed to take the edge off the fear the Arrancar were harbouring.

Almost.

Neliel, however, apparently Sosuke Aizen's biggest fan, seemed positively mired in it. There were moments when she came out of herself a little, but it was obvious that he was on her mind. Him, or her precarious position.

The young girl Road had taken to seemed less concerned, but it was possible she didn't understand the gravity of her situation. The short man with the pet Malboro covered whatever worries he had with a bright veneer of smirking sarcasm, but Tyki could practically smell the fear on him. The lanky Tag with the attitude problem didn't give anything away, instead choosing to sneer one-eyed at everybody, teeth grit and bared like an animal caged, as though he didn't care whether he lived or died so long as he got to sink his teeth into somebody. It was possible this was the case, but Tyki had rarely seen somebody who didn't care when it came down to it. Perhaps he'd get to see his real feelings on the matter after the meeting's conclusion. That might be fun.

The others hadn't presented themselves for inspection.

Tyki found himself enjoying it all. Road was keeping an eye on things, doing her best impression of a precocious young girl there under Tyki's watchful eye, but the reverse was probably more true. She knew more than he did, about everything. It was her who told him what would become of the Arrancar if things went south, her who told him about the members he had never heard of, who he'd never bothered to read the backgrounds of. He simply watched and enjoyed.

What had surprised him was that the majority of the members present and, indeed, those expected, were natives of their own floating continent, and not Ivalice. Some of the residents were certainly lowerworlders, but all of the visitors seemed to come from Niflheim, Lucis or the Jyllandi Union. Was it merely a trip for them, a chance for the to size each other up on neutral ground, with Aizen's imprisonment serving as little more than window dressing? That was possible. None of the had any real personal investment in the man, nor his continued safety, or that of his underlings. He suspected Kreeth was simply there for the holiday.

There hadn't been any newcomers for a few days. The last had been the two from the Union and before those, the Lucian envoys, apparent nobodies there in the stead of somebody important. It was probably fortunate the absent lowerworlders didn't send the same in their places, or the palace would run the risk of being standing room only, with underlings turfed out of their rooms to house the temporarily higher-ranked dogs of members. Road said they were still waiting on a woman from Reseune, a town that bordered the two major halves of the Niflheim Empire, and some mid-tier noble from Nagapur who Road, all full of childlike delight, was expecting to kick off at some point during her stay.

There had been some arrivals last night, but they'd come in without fanfare, or announcement. They felt familiar, so Tyki assumed they were residential minions, gone and returned. He'd soon find out, anyway. He'd left his hat and cane in his room, but still made sure to dress nicely. His white side wasn't welcome in such a place, and the black was far, far classier. He found himself gravitating to the kitchen without effort and he was almost surprised how quick such a thing had happened. Perhaps that was how the palace got you.

He pushed open the door.

"Good morning," he said.

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Nel kept her eye on Tyki's cigarette, and lighter. She'd had to enforce the no smoking rule already, and didn't want to have to upset Tyki by enforcing it with him, too. Although so far, people had been quite good about doing as they were asked and refraining from smoking in the kitchen.

She knew when Hojo had passed through, because Hojo was just ignorant like that, but so far, his wanderings aside, the kitchen had been free of the scent of second hand tobacco.

"I hope you're taking that outside?" she asked, her voice lilting and playful, even though she meant it. Tyki probably didn't need a hard reminder.

Apache made eye contact with Szayel and gave him a pointed look, just a narrowing of the eyes. It wasn't as sophisticated as whatever quasi-telepathy some people in the palace used to communicate without speaking, but it adequately communicated that he should Shut Up and Not Mention her shared knowledge of the language in front of them.

She hoped.

"No, I just like to smoke standing up," he said, not being able to keep from being sarcastic before his first cigarette of the day, even to Nel. "Of course," he added, stripping back the tone he'd used and just leaving the smile. It wasn't an unfriendly one, either. "I wouldn't dream of smoking in your kitchen, certainly not after hearing what happened to a certain professor."

He made his way to the back step, striking the match on the abrasive paper that came with the book it had been attached to. He wasn't much good at traditional magic, and he didn't quite trust himself not to burn himself, or something else, or everything else, when trying to light his cigarette with it. He'd sacrificed a cuff to his ineptitude in the past and he didn't fancy spending the rest of his time in the palace singed as a result of a second failure. As such, he kept cheap books of matches, something of a rarity, on his person for the purpose instead.

"It looks like it will be a surprise to all of us then," he said, indicating that he did not, in fact, know who was supposed to be turning up either. "It'll be like Hogswatch come early. ...Lucians do have Hogswatch..?"

He really wasn't sure.

Edited 2018-10-09 00:51 (UTC)

So the Noah didn't know either. Or did they, and Tyki was too smart to tell Ignis that? It really could go either way. Unless the incomers were more Noah, it wasn't likely to make any big difference anyway. Khamja were disparate individuals with occasionally aligning interests, little more. There were alliances and rivalries within the clan that formed and fractured as if with the push and pull of tides, and with approximately the same regularity.

"We do," he confirmed. Hogswatch was a borrowed holiday, and not their only one. It wasn't the highlight of the Lucian festival calendar as it was for others, that honour went to Nocte Deae, but, "Never let it be said that Lucians will pass up an opportunity for family and feasting." Especially in midwinter. Hogswatch came just after Long Night, which meant that some parts of Lucis rolled from one party almost straight into another.

He placed the used plates in the sink, and began running the tap to get the water hot enough to wash up.

Nel caught the snark, and the immediate reining in of the snark, treating Tyki to a raised eyebrow and a slight smirk. He made Gamuza cower just by being present, but Nel had learned to be around men that scared her, and one of the tricks was not letting them know you scared her.

Bringing up Hojo made her scowl though. "If I catch a certain professor smoking in here again, a glass of water will be the least of his worries," she said, before turning her attention back to Apache. The 'speak and die' look she was wearing was subtle, but there, and doubtless something Szayel had encountered many times before.

Ignis and Tyki's dialects weren't that difficult, then.

Szayel caught the look from Apache, raised both eyebrows, and then shifted to push his glasses fractionally higher up his nose instead.

Well then, he hoped whatever they were saying was juicy enough to warrant his use of patience. In the meantime, he required coffee or he was going to get narky.

"So," he said, addressing the room, and eyeing up Ignis in particular because he was closest, "are all the members that have arrived this delectable?"

Tyki lit his cigarette as Ignis spoke, and opened his mouth to respond on the subject of Hogswatch, but stopped, blinking at Szayel. Well, that was rather forward, wasn't it? The way he asked, without embarrassment, not-so-subtly commenting on them as he did it, made him think of Sherril, and his unfortunate tendency to ... comment. And touch.

Tyki rather hoped that he wouldn't touch. Having to play up to this high society noble family refinement nonsense was exhausting enough without needing to deal with that too. Still, it didn't hurt to be polite.

"No," he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke out of the door. A light breeze took it, perhaps a little faster than Tyki thought it would. The trees were barely moving. "Not unless you're into young girls or winged Tags."

Apache rolled her eyes at Szayel's question. Didn't take him long, did it..? Less than five minutes and the creep was already perving on the visitors.

She stiffened slightly at what the Noah said, though. For somebody who looked like him, to say that... rankled. He hadn't said it cruelly, but he'd still used the word, one she hadn't heard in a while.

"Winged?" She asked.

An Aegyl? Or a Gria? Or was that their mutation?

Ignis cleared his throat at Szayel's question. He was much more forthright than anything Ignis was accustomed to, that was for certain.

He refrained from mentioning that Szayel hadn't seen Gladio yet. There were some things that didn't need to be said out loud. Not that Ignis particularly wanted to set Szayel on Gladio's trail. Gladio was his friend, but he might have cause to change his mind if Ignis did that. He was reasonably certain that Szayel wouldn't be Gladio's type anyway, since he was neither female, nor Nyx Ulric.

Nel grinned at Apache. "Kreeth," she said, answering the question of who was winged. "She's an Aegyl." Her wings were quite impressive. "A bit creepy," Nel admitted, "but she's a scientist and she hates Hojo, so she's all right."

That was the benchmark, as far as Nel was concerned. If a scientist hated Hojo, they were probably okay. If they were like Szayel, and practically spaffed themselves over Hojo, they definitely weren't.

So there was an Aegyl here, was there? Szayel's eyes widened with barely restrained delight. He was so lucky he hadn't missed all the fun while he'd been forced to be away. It would be a disaster if he'd had to miss the opportunity to study an actual Aegyl.

And a scientist, at that. Fascinating.

There was just one question. "What's a Tag?"

Apache almost answered the question, but she kept her gob shut on the subject. It wasn't common knowledge on the lowerworld, the fact that Mistants were responsible for wearing and maintaining an identification tag. It had never been mentioned, even once, since she'd arrived, not even when her nationality was made clear.

It was the one major difference between the continents, besides the language.

Hers were in her room, in her belongings. They were in a bag, screwed up and stowed in a box, with a key, in her wardrobe.

"A Mistant," Tyki said, looking over his shoulder at Szayel, who had been the one to ask. "Where we're from, they wear identification tags, so that's what they're called."

They, he said. Before being taken into the Noah Clan, after spending enough years living rough on the streets of Undelwalt, that would have been 'we'. Fortunately for him, he made enough of a fuss out there to be picked up by those who shared his genetic mutation, and so he was raised in relative comfort, without the tags that had been hung on his neck from childhood.

It was pretty liberating, being able to walk around, looking like he did, without having to wear a tag. The Noah weren't the only ones who enjoyed the benefit of not needing to wear a tag when they looked or behaved very differently to the rest of the population. The von Überwalds, de Magpyrs and others also had the same freedom from limiting trinkets.

Nel recoiled from the news. By Jyllandi standards, she was a Tag, even though her mutation wasn't visible. Her body fluids had curative properties, it wasn't like she was a criminal.

"Why?" she asked, looking at Tyki with open disgust and bafflement. Was being a mistant not inviting enough bullshit, Jylland felt the need to clearly label everyone the normal folk should despise.

And then there was Apache, who was Jyllandi and had never mentioned the tag thing. No wonder; she probably had one herself.

"The identity tag also bears a ranking of the individual's combative abilities," Ignis said, looking down into the sink as he began to wash up. "Since so many in possession of such mutations have increased strength, chakra reserves, or unique abilities, the Jyllandi Union and others decided that tags were the best way to register them."

He looked over his shoulder towards Nel. "Ivalice has licences, Eos, or Jylland, does not."

Szayel listened to the conversation with interest. Tagging mistants certainly made them easier to keep an eye on when they weren't plainly visible. On the other hand, it would be a little inconvenient to have to wear one himself and submit to examination for the purposes.

"Just think," he said,as the kettle flicked off, "we could tell Nnoitra that he'd get an identity card with his strength level on it comparable to others if he went to Jylland. He'd never come back."

"Guilty until proven innocent," Apache said, sullenly, rolling her mismatched eyes.

It wasn't fair, really. It also didn't make much sense to her. People like Aizen, terrifyingly powerful people, wouldn't be expected to wear a tag, but Wonderweiss, all but normal if not for his Hollow and his pink eyes, would be tagged so people knew he was dangerous. It was a backwards system of identification, something that groups had been lobbying to can for decades.

Szayel wasn't wrong about Nnoitra, though. Tags were traditionally reviled, often treated as outsiders restricted to menial work, though they were becoming more and more accepted as the years went on, but that didn't mean there wasn't good money to be made as one. She thought of the Totomostro, in Altissia, that allowed Tags to get into the ring with each other, or monsters, and prove their mettle against strong opponents. Nnoitra might not like the scorn wearing the collar brought him, but he'd not turn his nose up at showing off in battle for money. They did pretty well out of it, there.

Edited 2018-10-09 20:12 (UTC)

Tyki looked over at Nel and nodded at Ignis's explanation, sucking in and breathing out another lungful of smoke. Her disgust was understandable, really. Mistants got a raw enough deal without those whose imperfections you couldn't see being stuck with the indignity of an ID tag as well.

"It's ... an old law," he said, giving a shrug. "But still a law. Some people are trying to get an end put to it, though as many others are trying to make it so that everybody out of the ordinary is tagged, including people like me."

That wouldn't go down well, but it didn't stop people demanding it. To a lot of people, it didn't matter if you were the first or the tenth generation of people with the taint of Mist, you weren't normal and shouldn't be mixing with the general population. Mudbloods, some of the called them. Dirty blood. Those with the filth of the Mist in them, ruining and warping them, physically and magically. Some of the proper purity maniacs, like the Blacks, Malfoys, Lestranges and Carrows of Nagapur, had called for complete segregation, but they were considered extremists even by those who wanted tighter restrictions on Tags. He didn't fancy their chances of putting a collar on a von Überwald, though it could be fun to watch.

Überwald had been traditionally lax on tagging anyway. With the amount of Mist in the region, and the number of backwoods and small towns and villages out there in the region, many of those afflicted never travelled and never received tags. With Überwald's recent inclusion in the Niflheim Empire, some of their officials were trying to get them rolled out en masse to those who should be registered, but it was taking time and a lot of manpower. Funnily enough, the more men they sent out there, the less manpower they seemed to have. And less men, too.

Edited 2018-10-09 20:25 (UTC)

Ignis listened to Tyki's elaboration as he washed up. He sat in on council meetings, in Insomnia, so he was aware of most scraps of continental policy that had crossed the council table for discussion, including the use of tags. Some things, however, were a foregone conclusion.

"If that were to happen," he said, "everyone in possession of a kekkei genkai would be subject to tagging." He smiled, wryly, "Including the Lucian royal family." And by extension, himself. Needless to say, Lucis's independence came in useful; as a sovereign state they could ignore such decisions of they were made by the Jyllandi Union.

Although it would still have some political ramifications.

"That's awful," Nel said, clearly still shocked by the information. The idea of taking children like Ulquiorra, or Wonderweiss, or Kadaj, and sticking a tag on them because they might be dangerous rankled. "At least everyone has to carry a licence," she said.

Any system that would have slapped a 'danger, mistant' banner on someone like Ulquiorra because he was grey that didn't bother to slap anything on someone like Aizen even though one bad mood could see him raze a city, seemed to have gone fundamentally wrong.

She looked back at Apache again. She'd never mentioned it, and it seemed pretty clear why.

"Yes," Szayel said, dismissing Nel's concerned, "but you could identify the interesting specimens on sight."

He thought back. More of the submissions for the Arrancar project might have survived if they'd borne tags from the beginning. The correlation between successful Arrancar subjects and mistants would have been obvious from the start.

"Maybe if you ask really nicely," Apache said, to Szayel, "the Jyllandis will let you go with them when they leave, and you can get yourself a tag and introduce yourself to all the mental scientists that live up there who'd consider you an interesting specimen. If we're lucky, they'll dissect you."

She paused, looking at him for a moment, taking in his pink hair and ridiculous yellow eyes, and shrugged.

"Though they might find you interesting anyway, I doubt they see many Selkies up there."

She knew they didn't see many Selkies up there. Being the result of an Al Bhed and Hume parent, Selkies were virtually never seen on Jylland, except as a rarity, because there were very few Al Bhed there to produce them. She expected some had travelled and settled, but they would still be considered unusual by the general population. She didn't remember seeing many when she was growing up.

"It might be that the Tag rule gets stopped in Niflheim and Lucis at some point," Tyki said, optimistically. "Since we both refused to join their Union, it might stop being necessary to obey their rules."

Might. There were enough people in Niflheim that liked the idea of tags that it would be difficult to pull the idea off the table, especially since it had been in use for longer than the enmity between the Union and Empire had been going on. Lucis, on the other hand, had only adopted it after dropping their isolationist policies, but if Tyki remembered right, them adopting the Tag law had been one of the conditions of an alliance with the Union in the first place.

He wouldn't mind having to wear a tag again all that much. He still required another form of ID to point out his Kekkei Genkai, since going about grey and looking like a Tag, while being unmarked, was a good way to end up dragged to a police station having your information run through a system. Maybe it would be easier. Besides, Tags weren't all bad. Sometimes a touch of something exotic made things more fun.

He finished his cigarette and flicked it away, closing the door behind him and moving back into the kitchen proper.

"It would be nice if we could have Licenses instead," he said. "Other than for having to travel down here, I mean."

"Indeed," Ignis agreed, listening to Apache's obvious ire. "Selkies are a rarity, especially in Lucis. You'd be quite the celebrity." There were also scientists associated with the Kingsglaive that might be content to give him a poke.

Szayel's chakra didn't exactly stand out, but if he was an Arrancar he was one of Aizen's underlings, so he had to have some uses. From the way he spoke, it sounded like he was a scientist himself.

"Unfortunately," he added, "I don't think we'd fit you in our ship." Mores the pity, of course.

Szayel gave Ignis a long, considering look up and down. "Well," he said, "you'd be surprised at how flexible I am. I'm adept at fitting into tight spaces."

He smirked as he turned to make his coffee. It was instant, the usual type kept in the kitchen, but only because that was quicker. Anyone that had it in them to go through the rigmarole of making coffee the long way before their first cup was an inhyur monster.

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