Application and Rejection (and Interaction) [Closed- Nightclaw, Pax, and Silv]

"Specialize is a bit of a strong word. I'm best at manipulation, physical manipulation you know, gravity, energy, that sort of thing. Not, ah, not electricity though." He cringed at the though, remembering the feeling of 500 volts running up his arm in the middle of lecture. He took another gulp from his stout, buying a few seconds to think.

"My graduation thesis was going to be some fancy explosives I rigged up, much easier and safer than your conventional, chemical sort." He pulled out a small quarter pound metal block from his jacket, and laid it on the table, activation sigil facing upwards, which he pointed to. "See you touch it with the counter-sign, and then it blows up. Well. Then you throw it, and then it blows up. Fairly simple, very safe. Unless you touch it with the sign, it's totally inert. I guess if you were to get hit in the face with it, you know it's still made of iron." He started to take another drink, and realized he was out, and signaled for another glass of the same.

"You know, uh, you." you motioned towards the other woman, "It's fairly simple, I threw the quicklime at him, and the jar broke. Quicklimes pretty caustic, it doesn't need so much encouragement to do that sort of thing to a person."

Tourmaline almost fell out of her chair. "Gravity? You can manipulate gravity?" She didn't even know that such magic existed. "To what extent? Can you like, completely reverse the polarity? Or is it more like just a tilting kind of thing?"

Her mind, even muddled by the alcohol, was running through equations, thinking of possible engineering applications. "Could we get in touch sometime when I'm not drunk?"

The man seemed more intent on explaining his device than what Tourmaline thought to be a groundbreaking type of magic with serious implications. After her initial shock, she examined the device. "Interesting. This is under the field of alchemy, right? My friend is an alchemist, though she works with elemental stuff rather than something like this. I think you'd be interested in talking to her, and vice versa."

The man seemed cordial enough, so Violet would likely not take issue with him. Of course, that depended on how he felt about Walpurgi and, of course, Life Alchemy.

"Kassandra." She corrected him as soon as he 'named' her. She blinked twice at the man when he explained what caused the incident. For a smart student, casually throwing such volatile objects sounded like a pretty... Misguided move. 'Misguided' being the most polite word she could think. "... And why did you do that?" She asked, wondering that sort of intelligent answer he'd give her, as she took another drink from her ale. At least the other woman over there wasn't so itching about flexing her brain muscles if she felt inebriated, smart talk was definitely not what she came.

"It's not that interesting. It just has to do with rearranging equations and stuff. I can, at the most, give something a grossly over-magnified gravitational field, but then it's not that big a deal normally because nothing around is that massive. I could probably find some sort of fancy, clever workaround if I really wanted to try that, but it's just not that interesting." Hugo had a pretty bad way of dismissing things that weren't interesting, you know, and gravity was no exception. It's true, he could have made something cool and groundbreaking if he really tried, but then, he didn't want to.

"Well." He burped under his breath, and took another swill while he though. "I thought he was going to hurt me, because he started to use Carta on me. I... Overreacted." he looked away, and swore under his breath. "It's not that important anyway. What's important now is that I figure out how to go home, right?" He desperately wanted to change the subject, so he flipped it all around, "So what about you, Kassandra, what do you do for a living?"

Tourmaline was still astounded. "I guess manipulation of a fundamental force isn't that far out of the rhealm of magic, but still, we're talking gravity. Gravity can't be... Like... Generated, you have to have something big enough. It's so much different than electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces."

She grabbed a napkin, drawing out a few basic ideas of what to do with gravity manipulation. Even just using it to generate potential energy...

Tourmaline tried to get out of her head, and listened for Kassandra's response.

"... Definitely not the smartest move." Then again, if that person was going to attack him with magic, she felt he had every right to defend himself, but given how he said that he 'overreacted'... Maybe there was more to his story than he's letting out. Finishing her drink, she let out a loud sigh as her glass hit the counter with enough force to make an impact noise, without the glass breaking, or even shattering it.

But then he became curioust about how she puts food on the table, something that she'd explain, after pouring herself another drink. "Traveller." She started, as he picked up the glass. "I travel across Esterelf, looking for a way to treat my... Condition." The way she worded the last part made it sound like she was relunctant to speak up about what she was talking about. "... And no, I don't mean my missing eye."

"Well, yeah. Like I said, you end dealing with equations a lot. Think about gravitational acceleration, right, 9 point some such meters per second squared. Then, you use a lei battery to affect the acceleration, so that maybe an object falls at 10 point some such meters, or 11, which isn't such a big deal. Or maybe you affect it in order to reduce the acceleration, to 5 or no meters per second." Looking at her childlike excitement was a little funny, but he wanted to check it so she didn't write too many letters to the Academy or something, "Mind, it's a rather inefficient way to do it, with our current understanding, to the point that you waste more money and lei energy rigging up something to make a ton of bricks lighter than you do just making whatever you carry it with stronger. I've read a couple theses about some sort of gravitational particle, or an impulse of the gravitational field if you like that sort of thing, and that would drastically change the way we might go about things, but such hypotheses are hard to prove with our current techniques."

He listened to the other woman's explanation, and smiled. "Ah, we're not so different then. I've been on the move for a while yet, trying to fix all this." He took a swill, or tried to, but found that he had somehow gotten onto his 5th glass of stout, and even that was empty. He asked for some water. "But, you have me at a, ah, disadvantage. You know the pain of my heart, but I don't know what's wrong with you."

Tourmaline was appeased, at least slightly. "Ah. Not quite the breakthrough I thought it was. Still though, the simple fact that you can manipulate gravity... I don't suppose you could teach me the Marks for it at some point?"

Tourmaline had, of course, heard of the "gravity particles," but they were far, far into the range of theory; so far that any practical use wouldn't come in her life time. It was definitely an interesting thought, but nothing that would do anything useful for an engineer like she.

Turning her attention now to Kassandra and Hugo's talk, she picked up quite clearly on Kassandra's hesitation to speak of whatever was ailing her. This bothered Tourmaline. "Why bother mentioning it if you don't want to talk about it?"

Tourmaline was completely unaware that she said this aloud.

For a moment, Kassandra placed one of her hands on her head, acting as if she was suffering from a headache. She essencially grew up to become a fighter, a hunter, smart enough to know how to combat a foe, but not smart enough to grasp complex mathematical expositions. She could shoot fire out of her face, that's all she cared to know.

Nevertheless, Hugo eventually displayed a sign of lament over her situation, and maybe a bit of kinship? Given how his own problem was quite peculiar, she felt, in a way, curious. However, that feeling of curiosity was quickly replaced with irkness as Tourmaline decided to interject before she could be given the chance to explain herself. Her face was firm like a stone, with nothing but a grumpy expression to showcase her emotions. Taking a sip from her ale, she placed the glass on the counter in a less than gentle way, and turned her head to look at her with a glare that could potentially melt Hugo if he got in the way.

Or blow up. Whichever came first.

"Because he asked, despite not being too keen over revealing that particular detail." She started, a couple of seconds of silence before she continued. "It could potentially kill you, one way or another." Her voice became a bit deeper at the last part, another sign of her annoyance towards Tourmaline. Whether she was bold enough to call out her attempt at intimidating her, or feeble enough to be affected by it, it didn't change the fact that Kassandra was kind of right. She couldn't gauge what Tourmaline felt about her Incantus or Walpurgis in general, and if she tried to pull something against her about it, either she'd retaliate in self defense, or Trebax would attack her in order to 'leave no witnesses'.

And even then, Kassandra didn't have enough tact to make her understand that without flat out saying it.

Nevertheless, after that delivery, her features eased up, and her attention returned to Hugo. "I appreciate the sentiment, for what it's worth." It could sound that she was being dismissal about it, and in a way, she was, but she could still note that Hugo was at least being the most cordial. "But what are you going to do? Doesn't sound like you can return to your Academy."

((EDIT: Haha I'm a gigantic moron I was half asleep when I wrote this and didn't realize it wasn't my turn
I'm unsure what to do to fix this))