trans_9 | Get you Gone

"What sorts of things would you have?" Arha asked quietly, sitting carefully next to the girl. "There is much that you have, I see, and much of which that is more than it seems. Perhaps it would be a thing you pick for me?"

Roxie looks over at Arha. She thinks—

She retrieves a small burlap sack silently from the bottom of one of the piles, unwrapping it. Inside is a beautiful, stylized octopus all crafted out of layers of interlocking silver and bronze. Clearly it could support the weight piled on it, but it seems calm and delicate like a flower.

Her blue-within-blue eyes widened slightly and she put out a forefinger to touch it hesitantly. It had many arms--such a creature she had never seen. It was a pretty thing.

"I have never seen such a creature like this," Arha said thoughtfully. "What is it called, this thing of many arms?"

"It's an octopus," Roxie says. The metal is cool to the touch—cool, but warmer than it really should be, as though it had been held close to body heat for a long time. The plates that construct it, interlinked together and with little connecting bars as structural supports, all seem extraordinarily well-articulated—if she picks it up, the tentacles shift and hang almost naturally, the entire scaled structure shifting with the movement. "It's based on the shape of the common sea octopus (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Octopus_vulgaris2.jpg). They're hunter-scavengers who are very clever for their size."

"Oct-o-pooze," Arha murmured, her eyebrows arched as she carefully lifted the thing to inspect it. "It is a water creature, yes? Mm. My planet has no open water for creatures such as this. This is a thing well made."

"Actually, they can survive for a little while out of water. Some octopuses actually come on land when the tides go out to eat the sea creatures that are stranded."

In Arha's hands, the little sculpture-thing moves fluidly, almost enough for it to slip right out of her hands if she doesn't keep a firm grip.

"I did some of it," Roxie admits. "It was halfway broken when I found it. Mostly it was just reassembly, but I had to replace some of the plates."

If Arha looks close, she can probably see the difference there, towards the middle—a few of the segments are fresher and less weathered than the rest, though they've been exactingly made to match the same measurements and materials.

"You are skilled at putting things together," Arha said with a smile. "It is a good talent to have. Most needed." Her fingers brushed over the creature delicately, as her other hand held it securely. "It seems to be a clever creature, this oct-o-pooze. Clever to survive, and clever to find food in such a manner."

"In zoos, they've had issues with octopuses stealing fish from the other tanks to eat," Roxie says, and she has a hint of a smile. "They'll escape, eat, and then go back and close their tank again before anyone notices."

Her gaze slides from Arha's eyes to the sculpture. "Put it on your wrist, with the arms spreading away from you," she says cautiously.

"Oh, they are clever things," Arha murmured appreciatively and, without hesitation, arranged the octopus exactly as Roxie had instructed. It was her curiosity that drove her in this respect and the fact that Roxie was capable in her own right as a sort of...warrior shaman figure. It was, perhaps, not exactly the right term for her, but it was what she felt from the girl as both Jed-Eye and Bene Gesserit.

It was Arha herself who had done the approaching, after all, and this many tentacled creature was quite fascinating. She appreciated Roxie's explanation and the stories behind it.

"And now repeat after me: zhi you zhang yu fang shou."

The Chinese is a bit mangled, even for her time period, but at least the rhythm makes it a halfway decent mnemonic.

Arha did so, slowly, pulling the sounds of the words into her mind and fixing them there so she would always remember them. Repeating the words was a bit odd with her accent, but she managed it decently. They were odd words, but she imagined they were from some dialect she remained unfamiliar with due to the difference in their Universes to begin with.

They were challenging, but no more difficult to say than 'oct-o-pooze' was.

With each word, the plates of the thing rustle a little, like leaves caught in a light breeze, and then with the full phrase--

Four of the arms slide to grip around her hand and arms, plates sliding against each other to ensure a tight fit, arms locking toher to stay on securely. The other four arms rustle gently, moving warily like those of a living thing. However it all works, there's no sign of motive power or other driving methods--it's all just moving by itself.

"Oh!" The word popped out caught between delight and wariness with a huge helping of curiosity. Was it like armor, then? She peered at it this way and that, touching different parts to see how it all worked and fit, her fingers gently probing and her expression lit up like she'd been given a pouch full of water after days of thirst.

"The words make it go? Mm, powerful words, then," she asked, fixing her eyes on Roxie for a moment. "Is it magic?" Magic was not always magic, but she would say the Force was like magic. It was beyond a certain amount of understanding -- a living force. She lowered her voice a bit.

"Clever thing," she said nudging the main body with a fingertip.

"The words don't really matter," Roxie says, keeping a close eye on Arha's arm. Against her touch, the octopus-thing moves like a living thing, though the four arms stay tightly grasped onto her. And it's warm to the touch now...

"Some of my magic, mixed with a few other things. Try and pick something up with it."

It was definitely warm, now, she notice.

Arha tilted her chin slightly and slid the cloth belt from her waist. The attached crysknife, however, she freed from the belt and kept it in its sheath. It was the belt that she reached for with the oct-o-pooze thing attached to her. Safety came first, as always.

And with her movements—

It's like a phantom limb: the sensation's almost-but-not-quite there as the four poorly-coordinated arms twist in response to her intent towards the belt...

It's the kind of thing that seems like it would take focus and practice to use properly—not that that's at all unusual for a Bene Gesserit.

Oh, that was interesting. Arha brought her focus in sharply, concentrating on the belt. She would have to see just how much she had to concentrate to get it to work. Hyperthreading had its uses, working the oct-o-pooze was just another layer of mental control. If it could grab things, she wondered what else it could, feasibly, do.

For the moment, though, she honed her focus on the belt, and her eyes were blue-within-blue slits. Fascinating.

It's like working with new, unfamiliar limbs--through distant, strange channels of sensation she can feel what the metal touches... With four avenues of motion and a flexible, rearrangeable carapace, the mapping of what goes to what is far from inuitive.

"Like it?" Roxie asks quietly.

"I do," Arha said, flashing a smile. "It will probably take a bit to learn how to use properly, but I do like it. The flexibility seems to indicate that there is more to it than on first appearance. I assume it can be used for offensive and defensive purposes, one one had the proper scope of its use."

Roxie nods. "I've practiced some, and it's very flexible. Just... Kind of hard to use."

Her expression suggests that she likes to stick to rather more straightforward methods.

"Perhaps it is the approach that is wrong," Arha said in a soft voice. "Or perhaps you simply need to get used to thinking of it as a part of you before it becomes second nature." She brushed her fingers over the main body thoughtfully.

The thing seems almost... alive, even with the control. It ripples a little under Arha's touch.

"I already have a weapon that's a part of me," Roxie says lightly, carefully self-deflecting the resentment that popped up at her first suggestion. A hand goes to her neck, retrieving a little silver bell on a chain.

"Mm, then perhaps it was waiting for someone with the proper touch?" she offered. "I think, after seeing what I have on this ship, that there are things that may wait for a particular person to respond to the right way. Is such a possibility?"

Arha noticed the rippling and rested her fingertips against it for a moment. It could be alive in a sense, but she didn't know how. Her eyes flicked to the bell for a moment and then nodded.

"That might be the case," Roxie concedes, and that relaxes her a little, as the topic shifts away from her perceived inadequacies. "I've heard many stories of things that have languished for ages before being found by their destined holders."

Roxie's eyes follow Arha's fingertips. Something about her suggests she knows every detail of how it works—even if she wouldn't be able to quite explain properly.

"One does know know of such things until they have found their place," Arha said, flicking the belt from the grasping tentacles of the oct-o-pooze into her other hand. It was a great deal of intent, but with a split mind, Arha could manage it well. She took but a moment to flick her sheathed knife into her other hand as well and then secure it to her cloth belt. The empty space where her other blade had been felt odd, but it had gone with Luke and thus she felt better for it.

The oct-o-pooze was beginning to feel better on her arm as the moments passed.

Get you Gone

Re: Guns? Guns are for suckers.

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