[open-ish post!]

[ravkanwitch]

Nina's been wearing more modern clothing recently - especially after she figured out the solution to her bone knife dilemma, a holstered rigging that she can wear either on her upper arms or her legs. And after her encounter with The Darkling, she's been wearing them more blatantly and currently has them strapped to her upper arms, on top of her shirt.

She's found a couple of revolvers similar to what she was used to shooting with Jesper* and set up some empty bottles in a makeshift shooting range as far away from the mansion as she can. Yesterday, she sent both Janet and Laertes a note with the location and time, hoping they can easily find her.

Nina is frowning. She just fired a test bullet and it zipped right between two bottles.

*Instead of a Zemeni revolve with inlaid pearl, it's probably closest to a Colt Single Action revolver with six bullets, where you reload it with a cartridge rather than single bullets in the cylinder.

Comments

[ravkanwitch]

Nina sighs. This is on par with when people ask her how she can be acquaintances with Kaz Brekker - and the answer is, it's better to be his acquaintance than to be his enemy - but perhaps worse, since she is actually friends with Luo Binghe, not simply acquaintances.

"Look," Nina says levelly, "I know he has a lot of wives and I think that's really distorted how he views women and his relationship with them. He's... trying to be better. He's been nothing but kind to me. He took care of me when I was turned into a child and he volunteered to take away my nightmares - but he gave me agency in that decision, as well. He knows there's things I dream about, even have nightmares about, that I might want to keep in my mind..." She pauses, briefly. It's also probably best not to talk about the blood magic situation. "Anyway, if actively he's trying to be better, I'm not going to just abandon our friendship. Besides... I have the sneaking suspicion that it's better to be friends with him than it is to be enemies with him."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet latches onto that last assertion of Nina's with some relief. "I'd hate to be on his bad side," she agrees. "He wiped the floor with me." She scowls, still a little pissed off about it. "He's..." She laughs. "Definitely dangerous, if you ask me, but we had some drinks together and I didn't mind him as much. Maybe you just need to take the edge off of him."

[timebethine]

"Meet him at a more human hour," says Laertes wryly. Now that he has a name to put with the face, he can see the broad shape of a powerful man gruffly behaving himself in newly humble circumstances. "His friend Shen Qingqiu vouchsafed to me that his life was full of uncommon travails and triumphs, which made his temper changeable and violent as a winter storm. I thought it best to avoid him thereafter."

[ravkanwitch]

“Shen Qingqiu is also… an interesting man. But quite nice,” Nina says, though she’s clearly holding back on something. Dead? In love with Luo Binghe? Incredibly, frustratingly dense??

Nina is now also wondering if she should, perhaps, find out more about ‘Yuri’ and what he’s doing. At least before slandering his name. If people are coming from different worlds and timelines, what if he arrived from… earlier?

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet barks out another laugh. She aims and fires again, but her bullet goes a bit farther afield this time. Chalk it up to distraction.

"Shen Qingqiu," she says cheerfully, "is the prettiest loser I've ever met. Seriously, I'm pretty sure if this place had an internet connection, nobody would ever see him again. Especially if the internet was in the basement."

[timebethine]

Laertes laughs, more from confusion than anything else. "He seemed sweet enough to me," he says. "But tell me more about this Yuri. Why ought we to beware of him?"

He takes aim again, and nearly whoops with delight as his shot strikes the fencepost on which a bottle rests. The bottle wobbles, but doesn't fall.

[ravkanwitch]

“Close!” Nina says, in an encouraging tone, then pauses to think for a moment.

“Now that I’ve said all of that about Luo Binghe, I suppose there is something about not… assuming too much. He… did what he thought was right but ended up terrorizing a kingdom and getting a lot of people killed.”

Killing a lot of people should be the proper phrasing - but now Nina’s a little worried that she’s not a proper judge of character.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Hey, not bad," Janet says to Laertes. There's something about him that makes you want to encourage him.

To Nina, she says, with a calm little shrug, "Most people are doing what they think is right. Sometimes what they think is right is completely fucking wrong and evil."

[timebethine]

"To what end did he do it?" Laertes asks. "What aim moved him?"

[ravkanwitch]

Nina switches the safety of the gun on because this will take more than a few moments.

"I don't know him personally," she starts. "I've only seen him once, ever. He was more of a... nightmare, a story from when I was younger. When he was young, he was an idealist about the Grisha, the ...people in my world who have abilities. He had lofty ideas about how they-- we were treated in our world and how we should be treated. The slavery, the slaughter, the way everyone looked down on us. They call us impure, witches, animals. He wanted to lead us into a new age. This is... it makes sense. I don't fault him for that. But his dark magic twisted him and it twisted the means that he used."

She shakes her head. "Manipulation, murder, and torture... even the murder of innocent Grisha. I was sent back to the orphanage I grew up in since I was too young to participate in the Civil War. He led the students to safety - myself included - and then razed the orphanage to the ground and hung our Grisha instructors in the trees for the whole world to see. He's... corrupted."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet keeps her own revolver levelled toward a target for a moment longer, but then she lowers it and clicks her own safety back on. If she gets too pissed off, the last thing she wants to do is accidentally shoot her own foot off.

"Nina," she says, as plainly as she knows how, "that's so fucked up. Seriously. That's not something where you need to stop making assumptions, that's something where you need to pepper-spray the motherfucker and run."

[timebethine]

Laertes thinks of Annie, of the bodies buried in her long silences and the violence he would gladly do to see her safe forever--but the image of Nina's teachers hanging from the trees makes him feel dizzy and sick. There are some means that no end can justify. "To replace one tyranny with another is not justice," he says. "If that man is here ... either he'll seek any means to return to his cause and his war, or he'll seek any means to claw back his power. Whatever his purpose, I'm grateful for the warning."

[ravkanwitch]

Nina nods a little, gut feelings reconfirmed by both Janet and Laertes' reactions. Sometimes she feels as though The Darkling has turned into a myth of sorts, a cautionary tale to tell Ravkan children. If you don't behave, the Darkling will capture you and steal you away into the Fold. But no -- he once was a man as well.

"I could have sworn he died... but I know that in this place, that doesn't always mean the end." She then gives them both a small smile. "Just be careful, okay? Wouldn't want anything to happen to either of you."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet doesn't smile back, but she meets Nina's gaze levelly. "I'd say I can take care of myself, but around here, that's not always true." With some level of wry amusement, she adds, "Luo Binghe's actually the guy who proved that to me. I'll be careful."

[timebethine]

"If he can best a magician such as yourself, I'll make doubly sure to be careful with him," says Laertes. "I can handle a rapier better than a pistol, but the least of you could make me a quietus before I could bare steel."

[ravkanwitch]

Nina nods again, though her mind is still racing. Her expression turns a little rueful. "I didn't mean to steer the conversation in this direction. I haven't even asked how the two of you have been."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet shrugs again, more tightly this time. "I think I need a hobby, so this was good timing. My hobby used to be ruling a kingdom, but that's not really panning out here."

[timebethine]

"I've found a thousand ways to occupy my days," says Laertes. His smile is thinner than it was before, but it's sincere. "The gentlemanly arts hath their charms, but there's equal pleasure to be had in planing wood, or baking éclairs--or learning to shoot with such fine ladies as yourselves."

[ravkanwitch]

Nina laughs a little. "I'm between the two of you. I haven't been sure what to do with my spare time so I've been doing a little bit of everything... and some of it half-heartedly. This is good, though. Fresh air. Friends. A little bit of careful, planned aggression."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"I love careful, planned aggression," Janet says brightly. It's almost her making fun of herself; she knows this is almost too predictable of her to say. "Not that I'm against a little careless, unplanned aggression. Keeps me young."

[timebethine]

"Did you ever find players enough for your game?" Laertes asks, remembering how they'd met with a sudden rush of interest. "I regret to say that I'm no closer to competing than I was when I came here, although I've been reading all I can of the theory. I've tried none of the practice," he hastens to add. "Nor will I, without a watch set over me."

[ravkanwitch]

"I'm still interested in playing," Nina agrees, looking over at Janet. "And maybe there's a way Laertes can as well."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"I'm working on it," Janet says with a subdued sigh. She runs her thumb along the barrel of the revolver with the hand that isn't holding it, although she's still taking care to aim it away from anyone and anything. "I have to change a fuckton of rules without enough magicians. But once I figure that out, we can play two on two if we have to."

[timebethine]

Since the shooting has tapered off, Laertes carefully clicks the safety on. "Have you asked the cultivators? I've met at least two; theirs is a different kind of magic, but that would give you two on two."

[ravkanwitch]

"The basic principles of cultivation seem similar to the small sciences," Nina agrees. "That's, um... Grisha magic. I think you can make it work, Janet."