1585/Of Angels And Bees

Of Angels And Bees
Date of Scene:	16 February 2015
Location:	Heaven or Hell Tower <HoH>
Synopsis:	Riva and Psyber hang out and talk shop.
Cast of Characters:	253, Riva Banari

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Riva Banari has posed:
Heaven or Hell seems to be slightly quiet for the moment. Perhaps some people might be blaming the lack of explosions in the aftermath of the huge assault on Boston by the Abyssal Fleet, or perhaps it's because Kongou has been using acrobatics to keep Psyber from overworking again. Either way, Riva is sitting around in the general living area, chilling on the couch in a demonstration of extreme slackitude while fiddling around with a handheld game system. Beeps and boops echo through the air. The table next to her has several boxes of gaily decorated plates piled high with homemade chocolate. Looks like there's still some left!

Riva has been snacking on a piece every so often.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber is not currently trapped by Kongou, thankfully. He just is taking a Sunday off for once in his life. The half-angel comes out of the door generally known as leading to 'Psyber's Room'. He's dressed pretty casually in just jeans and a baggy t-shirt that says some catchy phrase on it. This one has a silkscreen outline of some docks and says 'The Only Tea Boston Allows Is Liber-Tea'.

    He makes his way towards the kitchen and re-emerges a few moments later with a big sandwich, greeting Riva with, "Yo. Sup today?"

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva beep boops as she pauses her game, looking up when she's addressed. "Oh, hi Psyber!" She snaps the game device closed and plops it onto the table, though she still seems intent on slacking so hard she might merge with the couch. "Nice shirt. Not much is going on, I might have a date with Lloyd later for justice and charity." She waves a hand nonchalantly. "Could be worse, I guess. Initial propsects are middling. We'll see how that goes. Besides that, ummmm..." She pauses, thinking. "Looking for a way to handle this huge pile of chocolate. Relaxing a bit before I probably get called to put out a fire or kill horrible monsters or save the world. Nothing huge."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber takes a bite of his sandwich and thinks it over, "I'm not sure it'll go anywhere serious with Lloyd. He already has a girlfriend, last I heard." Psyber vaguely keeps up on gossip like that.

    "At least you got off better than some. There's people out there having to date Charr and Lute," He says with a faint grin, dropping down into the big recliner in the living room generally recognized as 'Psyber's La-Z-Boy' so he can munch on his sandwich there.

    "You could always donate the chocolate somewhere. Or melt it down and hold a big, in-faction fondue event." He suggests, thinking over what he'd do with excess chocolate, "I dunno. I've never had an excess of chocolate before."

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva wedges herself a bit harder into the couch. Maybe she's intent on just merging with the upholstered comfitude of it and transcending to some kind of higher plane of slackdom. "Yeah, I'm not too worried about it. Lloyd's a nice guy and all but he doesn't really hold my interest. It'll probably be pretty standard." She pauses. "Even so, even if I got Lute I'd be able to string him along and tease him mercilessly. I know what I want, and it's not him."

There's a pause as she picks up a piece of the chocolate and rolls it around in one hand. "Donation might be a good plan. Can't melt it, though. I sort of... added things to the chocolate and I don't think it would be a good plan to see what happens until I've seen what results come out of the..." She pauses, and intones ominously, "Special Batch."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "Still, gotta feel bad for that Hyral girl," Psyber muses, leaning back in his chair as he eats his big sandwich, "Special Batch sounds ominous. You should cook less ominous sounding things. Because Special Batch really sounds like you put drugs in the candy and I'm going to have the DEA breaching the south wall any minute or some shit."

    Mostly meant as a joke, though.

    "So how've you liked living here instead of your home world, anyway? I was surprised when you ask about moving in. I usually get residency applications from eldritch hobos and supernatural vagabonds."

Riva Banari has posed:
"Eh, Kyra can handle it. She's got some fire in her. Fire and explosives, anyway. She'll make something happen if Lute gets too frisky for her liking." Like Malboro pepper spray.

At the mention of the DEA, Riva waves a hand nonchalantly. "Naaaaaaaaaaah, it's not drugs. Not really."

She pauses. "It's Ayako's healing water. So all these candies use different colors, and weird things happen when she mixes them, soooo..." she pauses. "I made the Special Batch with the leftovers of like six bottles."

ANother pause. "I haven't tried it yet. I kind of want to but I have no idea what would happen."

Psyber then inquires about living in the HoH building. Riva scoots on the couch, putting herself upside down to hang her legs over the back of the couch, her head off the front with her ponytail dragging at the floor a bit. "It's basically just like home, really. It's just now my landlord happens to also be one of my bosses and is capable of stopping a tank by punching it." Beat. "And then there's the elder god." Beat. "And Death." Beat. "Whatever, you know what I mean. Just like home but weirder. Besides, this means I don't have to deal with having an address the Illuminati and Dragons know about. I don't need people recording what goes on in my room. That's /my/ job."

She might be joking.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "Well, I have a policy of not recording people's rooms, no. Privacy is a big deal to me, for the most part. It's why I also accept code names and aliases on applications. I'd be kind of a hypocrite otherwise," He laughs, rubbing the back of his head with a free hand.

    "Yeah you should probably try one of those chocolates in the Ring of Philosophy or something in case they schizo you out," Psyber advises, yawning a bit as he mills the point over before taking another bite of his sandwich, "And come on, it would take me more than one punch to stop a tank. Unless I hit it in the tread or the barrel or something."

    "I don't like fighting as much as I used to anyway. It never really solves my problems, just makes them exponentially worse, sometimes," He adds, leaning back in his chair some more.

    "Ah, but enough of that. Glad you're settling in so well."

Riva Banari has posed:
"Pfft, it's okay. No one would take Bob Bobberson seriously as an angel name anyway." Riva waves a hand nonchalantly, still upside down. "But I admit with a name like Psyber people would be expecting to see some chrome or a laser eye or something, but hey, I'm not judging. You're just full of surprises, Boss."

Riva wiggles her feet in the air speculatively. "I'm not too worried about chocolate, even if the Special Batch calls to me like a siren's song of unexpected consequential delight. In the meantime, the rest of them are perfectly safe and even healthy. I mean, hell, the heart-shaped ones actually restore your hearts." She giggles at that. She's probably made that joke repeatedly by now. "And I dunno, if you used Adjudicator and went full blast or something I bet you could flip it clear over if you didn't put a hole in it first."

She waves her hands as Psyber almost waxes reflective. "So what, did you have some kind of rebellious teen angel angst years where you got into fights in the bad part of town and listend to loud Gregorian chant or something?" He might have said enough of that, but Riva's clearly not passing up a chance.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "The story behind it is my fake name before Psyber was Paul Syber, a Polish private investigator. I argued with the courts to have one of my IDs finally cemented as a permanent identity, and when I put P. Syber on the form, they fucked it up," He notes, laughing as he shares this anecdote with Riva, "I've been stuck with it for about a decade now. Bureaucracy, you know?"

    "Haha, no. I used to be a Hunter, not an Investigator. I also used to be a lot more focused on combat as a method of problem solving. Then one of the Confederate Field Marshals nearly took over the entire Multiverse. I was on a mission to stop him and it had some really bad side effects. It wasn't a pleasant experience. There's a few Unionites left who went on that in active service," He notes to Riva, "None of us walked away from that unscathed."

    "That and... a lot of people starting to rely on me for support kind of forced me to change how I dealt with problems," He thinks it over and sighs, "Call it some sort of weird life-changing experience. Ironically, after all that time perfecting violence, I started to wanna do it differently. Now I'm more of a guardian than a warrior."

    "Thanks for saving Arthur, by the way," Psyber notes, rubbing his hands together while the sandwich is in his lap, "That was largely your plan and it wound up working out."

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva laughs at that. "Oh man, that's hilarious. Truly the DMV is the enemy of man and God."

Her laughter dies out when she gets into the next part. She flops over and pulls herself upright, leaning forward to peer at Psyber. "That's pretty terrible, man. I'm glad you managed to get out of it, but... I guess you're going to pick up scars as you go along. No way around it."

she tilts her head. "So you went from a cool badass badass brawler, but then you had that One Mission that went badly, and then you had to start changing how you operated when you started becoming the voice of experience and all the older people started shuffling off to the Phantom Multiversal Retirement Home."

The mention of Arthur causes Riva to blink for a moment, and then she leans back slowly, splaying her arms back along the back of the couch in an almost too-casual move. "Well... I talked to Mizuki and found out what was up, so I started digging up people who'd know how to handle the problem. I was just the enabler, it's no big deal."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "Something like that, yeah," Psyber says with a slight laugh, more nervous than actually happy, "I'm sure you can dig up accounts of the Annu Incident. But it's a deep rabbit hole," Psyber adds, thinking about it.

    "I mostly just... a lot of people started looking at me as a pillar of strength after Annu, because I kept working as my coping mechanism, I guess. Felt weird to have that much death on my hands and be seen as a hero," He shrugs a bit and takes a bite of the sandwich, "And scars is a good word. The Mark of the World-Slayer has been a heavy burden," he notes.

    "You say it's no big deal, but you noticed what we didn't. Don't discredit that," H e watches her seriously, "Who knows how long he would have been stuck there without your initiative."

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva nods. "I'll look into it sometime. It sounds like some super heavy reading." There's a considering look, and Riva picks up another chunk of chocolate and munches. "You've got a lot of coping mechanisms. I like some of them more than others." She points out. "But I guess I can't really throw stones. It's the glassest of glass houses around here. Working to save worlds and stuff seems to invite a lot of behavior that makes me want to do Nathan Hall impressions."

She sighs, and flips the remnants of the chocolate chunk into her mouth and then folds her hands behind her head. "I'd be lying if I said it wasn't because I was specifically looking for Arthur. There's way too much stuff going on for any one person to keep track of it all."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "All of my coping mechanisms are fine and healthy," Psyber says, taking another bite from his big sandwich. He takes a moment to sigh slightly and then says, "The Nathan Hall thing was a mistake and I shouldn't have done it. Efficacy of detachment aside, it just upset people and caused more problems. I'll stick to my own ways in the future."

    "You're probably healthier for him than Elsa, as cute as she is for her crush," Psyber says in an off-hand tone. He looks towards Riva slightly. Whether he picked up on whatever she feels for Arthur via her aggression towards Elsa or a general guess is undetermined. Could be a calculated bluff on his part to leverage information.

Riva Banari has posed:
"Yeah, sure, sure. I'm still going to worry about you, so you may as well give up on that note. You're stupid resilient but everyone's got limits... And it's not the physical limits I'm worried about these days."

There is a quick flush then when Psyber takes his shot. "Eeesh, is it that obvious? I thought I would get some success if I kind of wedged in sideways. If you saw it coming I guess I'm not being as subtle as I thought."

She grumps a bit, then, crossing her arms almost petulantly. "Elsa's /weird/. I don't think she even thinks like a normal person does, and she just browbeats Arthur without realizing that just dragging him through the spike pit of his baggage caddy isn't going to make it any better. She's just got this concept stuck in her head and she's behaving like some weird anime girl would." She sighs. "Also, I barely know her. Everyone just kind of walks on eggshells when talking about her, which makes me think she's the violent type."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "I'm more perceptive than Arthur. He won't have figured it out yet. Part of dealing with how many women bird dog after me is being aware that it's happening," This is probably the first and only admission Psyber will ever make to directly acknowledge the amount of girls that are interested in him. A rare lapse in his carefully, CAREFULLY displayed ignorance that it exists.

    "I don't know what her deal is, I wasn't around when the shit that led to her and Arthur came around. I do kind of encourage it, a bit, because the only way to reach Arthur is to forcibly break down his walls and she was the only one doing it at the time," Psyber notes, finishing off his sandwich and dusting off his hands.

    "She's not an insignificant combatant, though."

Riva Banari has posed:
"Yeah, well, most of the decent guys in the Union are either taken or are career bachelors." Riva gestures. "You're a good guy, of course the ladies want a solid and dependable guy like you. Hell, even I thought about angling in on it but after checking out the battlefield, I decided I didn't want to get into the romantic equivalent of the Hundred Years' War." She eyerolls. "I guess you like the bachelor life though."

She gestures for a moment, and then shrugs as it goes back to Elsa. "Do you really think just smashing the walls down will fix it?" She ponders this forr a few seconds. "I dunno, I feel like if I do a full court press on it Arthur's going to clam up, and then I'll have to start digging him out of holes to find him. It'll be /stupid/."

She shrugs again. "Well, if she pulls on me we'll find out just how good she really is. I'm not going to let her browbeat me into leaving him to the tender mercies of an anime caricature."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "I just don't feel I'm a healthy individual to be in a relationship with, for the most part. I have obsessions and problems which underly my apparent nature and that make it very hard for me to foster a healthy relationship with people," Psyber says in a serious and pretty objective sense, "It should tell you something about my interpersonal status that my closest relationships are Nathan Hall, a man whom surppresses his emotions... Laine, an emotionally abstract werewolf... Hastur, an Eldritch being that barely understands humanity... and Elliana Fairchild, an emotionally crippled woman."

    "I am, essentially, married to my career. And until such time as that resolves itself or becomes anthropomorphized into a woman aged 20 to 35, as so many other things in my life seem wont to do, I will likely struggle with any attempt at romance," He notes. That doesn't mean he doesn't have an interest in women, just that it tends to be unhealthy. Look at how he and Elliana interact.

    "I'm not sure how to reach Arthur," He notes, shifting topics as smoothly as a Detroit sidestreet, "He has his own emotional problems which I am incapable of breaking through. It vexes me greatly."

Riva Banari has posed:
"You don't have to convince me. Your relationship status isn't really any of my business now that I decided to stay out of that little tete-a-tete. I'm not one of those crazy people who believe that 'everyone is destined for truuuuuue love'." She fingerquotes hard on that one. "Everyone's got baggage. I'm just interested in finding someone whose baggage goes with mine, as the song goes."

She does point, though. "I'm glad you do hang out with people though. Don't need to get all kissy-kissy to have a some good old-fashioned hang out time. People seem to forget that sometimes too. God, it's an obsession."

She shrugs at the Arthur thing. "I think the first problem is getting him to vent. I see people taunt him and pester him all the time and he just builds the walls up higher. Even the whole frontal assault thing doesn't seem to really get him to unload. He has to be able to talk to someone about these things before he's going to be able to let it go, and I think he doesn't talk to you because of the place you fill in his life. You really are basically a father figure to him. I think you hit the nail on the head, earlier. You needed someone else to help work with him in a different way."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber lets out a faint scoff at the line about true love, "Arthur's Baggage meshes well with yours," Psyber notes, crossing his arms as he leans back in his chair, "At least, in my opinion. It remains to be seen, though. You aren't exactly an open book, you build your own walls after all."

    "Yeah, thanks," He remarks about his hanging out with people, "I think the weirdest moment about people's obsession with kissy-kissy, as you call it, was when Bahamut thought Nathan and I were gay." He looks to Riva, "True story, that."

    "Mmmn," He remarks, though, to the comment about Arthur, "Well. Good luck with prying at Arthur that way. I hope your strategy, if nothing else, gets him to open up with his problems and stop taking it all onto himself."

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva shrugs. "My problems are simple compared to you guys. I don't have all of these deep and overwhelming scars or any hideous trauma. I haven't been in the business long enough for that to happen. I have mostly normal people problems with a side order of 'oh, now you're an self-resurrecting semi-immortal bee-powered magical girl, have fun'." She shrugs. "I think all the imortant stuff matches up well enough."

The comment about Bahamut causes Riva to stare for several seconds... and then she busts out laughing. "SERIOUSLY? Man, that's impossible. You guys have this super rad bromance going on. It's like this cosmic tao of opposites attract, you guys are like the Yin and Yang of brodom. It's why it stands out when you shut down like that, man."

She nods and smiles at the last comment. "I appreciate your vote of confidence." She says sweetly. "I'm still trying to figure him out but I think I have a good angle. We'll see if I can build up enough trust with him to get him to open up. And to do that I need to /not/ walk all over his hangups like Godzilla."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "Yeah, I don't get it. Some people can't grasp a platonic relationship, I guess. Shows to the relative immaturity of a lot of the faction," Psyber shrugs a bit and then scratches at his head, "Nate's a cool guy. He's changed a lot since I first met him. If you think he's distant now, you shoulda seen him some years back, he was even less emotional."

    "We work together on almost all topics. There is only one divisive point in our relationship: Elliana Fairchild," Psyber notes with some measure of certainty, "The only topic upon which Nathan and I will never agree, and it is unclear who is right. Without an objective answer, we're opposed on her in all ways." He lets out a laugh that trails into a tired sigh, "I stand opposed to most of the Union on that front, actually."

    A sheepish grin grows on his face and then he shrugs, "Good luck with it. If anyone can succeed, you stand the best chance among us. You're coming at it from an angle he can't predict, so he won't know it's happening."

Riva Banari has posed:
"Seriously, he was even less emotional? I guess his interaction with all you guys helped him to warm up." A beat. "A little." A beat. "Kinda. Ish." Riva waggles her fingers a bit to emphasize. "Dude's logical as hell but I guess I can't blame where he's coming from. I knew one or two guys like that in college."

She shrugs, then. "Maybe you're both right. Maybe you're both wrong. Who knows? You guys have made your decisions, and you're more or less at peace with it, so who cares?" She shrugs on that. "I don't have a horse in that specific race, so mostly I just see how people start cutting bits out of you over it. I almost made my opinions on /that/ known recently." She twitches slightly at that. "There's disagreement and then there's straight up /emotional terrorism/. You probably would have disapproved of the result though so I decided to hold my piece. For once."

She then brightens slightly and looks over to Psyber with a sly sideways look. "Besides, you never know, you might end up as my Space Dad-In-Law depending on how things work out." Teasing? Or serious? With Riva, you almost never know.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "It'd be egotistical of me to take credit for Nathan on my own. A lot of people pitched in on Nathan to help him move along to where he is," Psyber notes, looking over to Riva, "When I first met him, he had no direct, no human connections, limited social presence. Now he has a girlfriend, friends, is a factional general. People think he doesn't feel, but he does. Probably deeper than anyone I know, he just refuses to show it. You have to watch the most subtle parts of Nathan to understand his emotions."

    But Riva's next part makes him wince and draw in a cutting breath, "Nnn, that. That was unpleasant, but it's the lot I chose when I took her side," Psyber looks away from Riva and out a window, taking a serious moment, "Elliana has a lot of labels on her. Traitor is chief among them. To a degree, I understand and accept I will always be arguing the least popular position. I'm defending someone who, for all intents and purposes, is a power-hungry, traitorous, scheming woman who bound herself to a Dark God in a bid for power. Objectively, I am an idiot and a fool. It may stress me to hear about this, but I understand why."

    He takes a long moment, "But... people forget. She's a 20 year old girl. A 20 year old girl who, up until three or four years ago, spent her entire life with a family murdered in cold blood, spent a childhood living on the street sometimes having to kill to get by, and in that time she resolved to change the world any way she could."

    Psyber looks back to Riva, "She walked into that cave that day knowing that, fail or success, she was about to throw away every single friend she'd ever made for an ideal she held. Can you imagine a wound deep enough to breed a conviction that powerful? It's... such a staggering proposition. A life of such hurt you would unmake the world and build a new one upon the ashes before it looks so unfixable to you?"

    "I was mad, like Nathan or Haruno, at first," He lets out a scoffing laugh, "I'm the reason she's heterochromatic. I shot her right in the fucking face the day it happened. I'm amazed she survived it. I held my grudge for a while, but as I watched it all play out more, I realized something: The more people pushing her and hating her, the more it cemented her into her role. Push and pushback. I realized, around that time, that if she was gonna retain her humanity that someone had to reach out."

    He lets out an awkward laugh again, "Guardian Angel. People think it means I just protect them. But it's the worst people that need the most help. I genuinely think she can be helped, in some way."

    He frowns to Riva, "I'm really sorry to wax all philosophical at you. I don't mean to... make the conversation about my problems," He rubs the back of his head.

    "Space-Dad-in-Law would be weird. Please never call me dad."

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva listens attentively as Psyber summarizes his relationship and opinion of Elliana. She doesn't laugh or add any smarmy commentary or snark or make any jokes.

She just nods and smiles. "Some people might call me crazy, but I think you're right. People just pull away when they get abused. It might make the person doing the abusing feel better, but it never actually solves the problem. Guardian Angel indeed." She sighs. "I don't want to think that someone can't be saved if you really want to try to save them. Thinking like that causes people to stop treating people like people."

There's another shrug as Riva rests her arms on her knees, setting her chin in her fists. It makes her face scrunch up a little bit from the pressure but she doesn't seem to care. "Don't worry about the philosophy. It seems to end up being the most relevant part of my college life from what I've seen so far."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber nods his head to Riva, "I like to think that, but a lot of people disagree. Nathan and Haruno are the most vocal among them. It's taxing," He says, shifting in the chair and coughing a bit, "There are some people I think can't be saved, there are some people I do. It's mostly based on instinct, at this point."

    "It's like you and Arthur, I guess. Or similar. It's a project I picked up that I sort of feel out as I go," He waves a hand to Riva, "Sometimes I succeed and talk her down from a call I disagree with. Other times I fall on my face and fail. It's usually that second one, aheh. I'm no Nathan Hall with words."

    "You know what I bet Arthur would love?" Psyber says to Riva, "You should paint him something. I bet he'd get a kick out of a space mural or something."

Riva Banari has posed:
"Well, I hope your faith holds out. I'm sure it'll be amazing if your hopes are fulfilled. I believe in you, though. If there's anything I can do to help... Just ask, okay?" Riva stops squishing her face at this point and flops back into the couch. "You know, I think that's a geeat idea. Maybe I'll paint it on the ceiling of his man-cave when he's out doing things."