baby you're the highlight of my lowlife [T|P]

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Clarity was sat cross-legged in a glade in the Village's southern park, her staff lying behind her back. The mid-afternoon sun was beginning to peter out, but that had little bearing on the woman's perennial beaming. After taking in her young protege a second time over, the pale woman had arranged for them to spend this time together. The silverette had briefly alluded to her intentions - her capabilities - but had not disclosed the occasion's full scope to the young woman.

Once Chiyo was sitting directly in front of her (as Clarity had instructed), the ivory tower unsheathed her ordinarily black-gloved hand and extended both extremities in the girl's direction, plainly beseeching that Chiyo take them, offering only a blithe smile as explanation.

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[j]

THUNDER
FEEL THE THUNDER

Chiyo sat before her new training partner. She wasn't sure what Claire intended to do, sitting down on the ground in a meditative sort of state, but she placed her trust in the strange woman's hands. It began to grow slightly dark just then, as Claire reached her hands out, she gestured for Chiyo to reach her digits out as well.

Chiyo reached her hands out obediently, and silently grabbed her hands, closing her eyes and imagining a sort of magical thing to happen. Several moments passed, and nothing seemed to occur. Chiyo opened one eye, peeking out to the tall woman. Was Chiyo supposed to do something now?

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CODED BY REM OF WW

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It would take a few moments. Claire's inherent ability was, in some sense, potent, and in others, it was woefully ineffectual. She could not force the dreams upon others if they had no desire to experience them. There was an event horizon of relaxation one had to pass across, that tiny glimpse of nirvana one could access when they ceased to focus on the material world, allowing their thoughts to float away...

When Chiyo opened her eyes, at first it would seem that nothing was out of the ordinary. But then, she might notice that the woman whose hands she held was standing upon her two feet. But in fact, there was something else fundamentally different about her partner: Hadn't her hat been so much wider? Hadn't she been so much... taller...?

Had she looked so... little?

A very different (though unmistakable) Claire Seychelles stood before Chiyo, grinning in that jovial, dauntless way she had, though her teeth glinted from betwixt a young girl's cherub lips, her porcelain features huddled closer on a rounder, smallish face, her diamond eyes seeming wider by comparison, brimming with innocuous goodwill. Her hat had shrunk to quite ordinary proportions; as her headgear had grown less voluptuous, so had her figure: Clarity was a girl, a small girl, all her black buckles and armour having disappeared, leaving behind only an ivory sundress that blended with her body.

She was short, as well, perhaps half her present-day height. Chiyo would have been hard-pressed to pinpoint it, but her friend had summoned to mind her appearance from... three hundred years ago. She was already thirty years of age, but she could have been ten.

This was a Dreamworld, the manifestation of a quasi-unique power passed down through the Seychelles lineage. "Don't be frightened," squeaked the much younger Clarity. "It's me. We're sharing a dream. You can leave anytime." Chiyo might have noticed that she had only imagined that her eyes had opened, but that if she concentrated on retracting herself back into her body, that she could have sensed her real eyes were still, in fact, shut, though this reorientation all at once made the vision seem less real, so it was quite possible that the realm was ensconced in some tangible magic, and that revisiting it would not be so simple as closing the eyelids once again.

"We can learn things here..." she explained vaguely, attempting to haul Chiyo to her feet. "Learn things we'll know forever." If the other female allowed herself to be pulled fully into the dreamscape, she, too, may well have found her form altered, though in precisely what fashion was, to the extent that she was not controlled by her subconsciousness, a thing of her choosing.

"And... I wanted to show you... what it was... like..."

"There you girls are!"

To the south, a character remarkably akin to the present-day Clarity stalked into the sunlight out from a sparse treeline. Though she was of a height with the Claire Chiyo knew better and similar in appearance, she was plainly a different person: Her facial features were sharper, cat-like, without such guilelessness, and her hair parted on the opposite side. She lacked any trademark headgear whatsoever, and though she bore artefacts of that familiar chitin-like metalwork, they were found in a v-shaped collar and a row of bangles that lined either forearm, almost like a set of manacles. Her eyes glimmered purple, like amethysts, but they regarded the girls with kindness as their wielder approached.

Like Clarity's own garments, the dress that this woman wore was pale, such that if one did not concentrate it was almost difficult to notice where the cloth ended and her flesh began.

The glade that the three of them stood in was rather like the one the two girls had just departed, yet it was much broader, the grass was greener, and the sun bore down upon it from high in the sky. At the northern end, the bank of a lake fed by a rushing waterfall, its spray cascading down a nearly sheer mountain of grey stone. The trees were thick pine, but the fauna at their base was oddly colorful. The odd butterfly flitted past on the gentle breeze. To the west and south, far enough away that one was half-guessing to remark upon it, twin rivers wrapped around the woods, forming a semicircular moat.

"Mother!" Clarity shouted in childish glee, rushing forth to embrace the abdomen of this immensely tall woman. Despite the lack of any mention, Chiyo would find she somehow knew this woman's name to be Isla. Isla hugged the tiny Clarity with one arm.

"I told you girls not to stray too far, but it seems you've found the perfect place," she commented, her gaze sweeping over the meadow. "Father will be gone a long time," she reminded them both, "but by the time he returns, we will have a mansion awaiting him, yes?"

Clarity peeked upwards from her koala-esque clutch. "A mansion, mother?" she recited, as she had so many years ago.

"Yes!" the woman's enthusiasm redoubled; her smile widened. "There's nothing here, little ones, nothing at all: That makes it the best place. The best place to build something magnificent!"

Isla looked upward, treating the young blackette with a fond smile. "Wouldn't you agree, Chiyo?"

Clarity finally released her embrace and turned to look back encouragingly at her friend.

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[j]

YOU CAN CALL ME
FOUR IN THE MORNIN' I CAN BE WHAT YOU NEED

Upon glancing through a single semi-closed eye, Chiyo found her surroundings to be nearly entirely similar to those she'd formerly perceived. However, it was the child standing before her that forced her eyes open in their entirety. In a shocking turn of events, Claire had, while Chiyo'd closed her eyes, become a young girl. She'd wholly shrunk, in a manner that you'd glance upon an album with pictures from an individual's youth. This in fact prompted Chiyo to peer downward towards her own frame, which had similarly shrunk.

"Don't be frightened, It's me. We're sharing a dream. You can leave anytime."

The young Claire explained. Chiyo had never experienced anything quite like this, except for perhaps Genjutsu. But this wasn't quite a Genjutsu, was it? A dream, as Claire had explained unfolded around her. To an unaware Chiyo, the environment looked very much similar to how it appeared before, although slightly different. It wasn't quite noticeable to Chiyo that this was supposed to be the past, but that probably wouldn't have mattered much to anyways.

"We can learn things here... Learn things we'll know forever."

Claire continued. An interesting notion. Perhaps in this situation Chiyo would witness her new partner's abilities. Gentle digits reached forward to guide Chiyo to her feet, while beginning to explain something else. Barely half of a fractured sentence came forth before they were interrupted by another. A woman approached, a woman that looked a awful lot like Claire. Chiyo awkwardly pointed at the lady, and then back at Claire, while looking between them.

"Mother!"

Claire shouted enthusiastically, running over to hug the uncanny woman. As Chiyo shyly approached the two, she discovered the lady's name to be... Isla. There was no explanation for how Chiyo could know the woman's name, and she felt comfortable not understanding.

"I told you girls not to stray too far, but it seems you've found the perfect place. Father will be gone a long time, but by the time he returns, we will have a mansion awaiting him, yes?"

Following the certainty through which this vision of Claire's mother spoke to the two children; Chiyo couldn't help but wonder if there was some established familiarity between the two that she couldn't recall. Rapidly Chiyo shook those thoughts from her mind though, choosing instead to accept convenience as an excuse for occurrences.

"...Wouldn't you agree, Chiyo?"

Some conversation had ensued while Chiyo cleared her internal confusion. Chiyo blinked a few times, a thoroughly bewildered young Chiyo didn't quite catch what was said, and briefly considered asking Isla to repeat herself; instead choosing to simply agree, rather than further extending the conversation.

"Ehm.. Yes definitely... probably."

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CODED BY REM OF WW

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Botany (Forest)
Rank: "E"
Skill: Skill
Effect: A skill that allows the user to identify plants.
Special: ---
Drawback: ---
Description: A character with this skill has a basic knowledge of plants and how they grow. They know how to tell various species of plants apart and under what conditions each type of plant grows best. Most of the time they can tell poisonous plants from non-poisonous plants. User must choose a specific Region each time they go up this Skill. A successful Botany Skill check provides knowledge of plants, while failure indicates the character does not know or cannot recall anything about that plant. Difficulty of plants are found in each individual plant. Identifying a plant by just the leaves, fruit, seeds, or other form that does not show the whole plant increases difficulty by 1 grade. Each time learned user gets 5 die roll to increase the skill.
Limit: ---

0 | 5 [Skill: 0]

"Excellent!" Isla exclaimed, throwing up her arms, elucidating at once where it was Clarity had inherited her exuberance from. "Now, we're not going to get much done in an afternoon!" she pointed out, thrusting a finger forward as though pressing some invisible button. "I shall endeavor to construct us some rudimentary shelter for the night. While I do that, why don't you girls find us something to eat for tonight? Remember to bring it to me before eating it! We wouldn't want you getting ill!"

The young Jotunn nodded enthusiastically at her parent, who waved one-handed and disappeared into the eastern forest, weaving her way underneath low-hanging branches.

Isla was quite like modern-day Claire, but (perhaps simply because the two 'children' had been rendered so small) her presence seemed somehow more intense, such that a certain weight was lifted by her departure, even if a maternal security went with it. Idyllic as the dreamworld was, there was nothing to suggest that it was entirely safe.

"Don't worry," Clarity reassured her friend, turning to her with a smile. "This place is entirely safe." Oh. "I mean, you can still feel pain, but none of it will carry over to real life, and I can change what's going on however I like. You'll gain that power too, the longer you spend here." It would have been a little reminiscent of a certain science fiction film franchise if such things had been invented yet.

"Let's go!" the little girl urged, snagging Chiyo's hand and darting into the westerly treeline. Underfoot, there was a positive rainbow of fungi, flowers, shoots; the trees hung thick with ripe fruit. Clarity had perhaps retroactively made this task a little easier for herself by encouraging her subconscious to fill the immediate surroundings with an orchard of plants of which she had knowledge, though much of the specifics had eroded with time, such that she found the various shapes and colors only vaguely familiar, like a word one had seen before but could not quite define.

She stopped only a little ways in; immersed in this vibrant reality, the two of them could still see the glade if they looked back. The porcelain doll let go of her friend's hand and spun around in delight, her sundress swirling with her. Her eyes were on the canopy above. "But seriously..." she said, grinning but not quite looking back at Chiyo. "Pick what you can, but don't eat it till we go back to Mother. She'll remember what's safe, but I can't quite be sure..."

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[Kinzoku]

Kaizu +5 TP [LEARNED] || +18 SP