Scene #7982: Not The Kind With Peanuts

Owner	Pose
Kale Hearthward	This is the Good Bar. It doesn't have a name, the sign out front just says 'Bar'. Kale's marked it as 'The Good Bar' on Arthur Lowell's terminal, somewhat because he had to enter in something, and also just because it's true. Kale's set up his 'office' here - so much that it's practically become his actual HQ, instead of the 'official' one in Seelonce. He's in a back corner, taking over two tables, with a large hand-drawn map spread out over one table (with various tokens, post-it notes, and etcetera paraphernalia on it) and a bunch of snacks on the other. Any amount of casual observation can reveal that he is simultaneously A. frustrated, and B. having the time of his life. The frustration comes from the challenge, and the enjoyment also comes from the challenge - the fulfillment of the Dark General, finally coming into his own, even if it is tucked into the corner of a bar, and even if his current main opposition is a wishy-washy catgirl and a technomusical scientist. A goblin runner swings by, dropping a fresh basket of onion rings and grabbing his spares. Kale doesn't look up from his map. Aside from the loitering goblin staff, and the dwarven proprietor behind the bar, the Good Bar is empty at the moment.
Xion	Xion had helped Kale several times prior, appearing like a rather unlucky Weird Wasteland encounter for several encroaching characters - and even just some Concord elites mucking about doing their own thing! Xion had several missions, and most of them were helping her friends. She hadn't directly interacted with Kale Hearthward directly the whole time. Just razzed him on the radio lightly, and fluttered about being a threat to his 'enemies'. But now the onion rings came due. There isn't anyone in the bar but the goblins and the dwarf, and then there is -- Xion appears within the BAR at a table, behind the goblin's path around, with a cold onion ring held in her fingers that she chews on thoughtfully. Dressed in jeans, red sneakers and white socks, a green and black flannel shirt looped around her waist, and a black babydoll t-shirt top, Xion leans back in her chair and looks at the hunched-over Hearthward, smiling and monching loudly to the Modern Corner General. "This really is your thing, isn't it?" Xion asks pointedly. She doesn't wait for a response, clacking forward on the front legs of her chair as her two-legged over ends, and sliding out to hit up the dwarven bartender. "Two of your stiffest brew, please!"
Kale Hearthward	"Whoa!" calls one of the goblins, on noticing someone not there before. The dwarf takes note of it, but reacts neither visually nor audibly to suddenly gaining +1 patron. Kale stands all the way up once Xion monches, sword-hand twitching, but doesn't make any moves once he confirms Xion's not making any moves. Slowly, he sits back down. "Yeah, yeah it kinda is." "The Paladins have, you know, lanes," he says. "Like, I get a long leash as an elite, but - not long enough to run off and prove I can singlehandedly run a conquest. Here, I'm in all the lanes. Strategic, tactical, logistics, diplomacy." He glances down at the map. "Granted, there's... maybe some stuff going on here that makes 'realizing' stuff more easy? Normo-causative pressure," he says, glancing at another post-it note to make sure he's pronouncing it right. "But - I'm getting to prove I've got the chops for it." "... And what are you doing?" he asks, as one of the goblins makes her way over with a pair of sturdy looking mugs with sturdy looking drinks in them. "I mean, in general - I saw you helped with a disturbance at the resort, and I think there were a few other times - if you're dropping in expecting thanks, then, well:" He gestures. "You're in the right spot for it. Drinks on me."
Xion	Xion's vibe on entry starts on mid-greeting, and the first few steps are a cutsceney jovial. She gets to the bar, and the goblin walks up the two stout offerings of the dwarven beverages which Xion graciously accepts and Kale graciously takes on his tab. "They're not really conquest sorts." Xion agrees initially, taking a tasting sip of her flagon. One sip, and the fumes off the liquor curlsthe tips of her black hair. "Ooh, strong." "But you are. And it hurt you, to step out into all those lanes at first. Testing muscles, soreness. Right? It's easier out here, faster, places move because you want them to move. And you're showing a sort of will. It's not the only sort of will, but here, it may be one of the strongest kinds." "The will to exceed." Xion walks her second flagon over to Kale, placing it down at the edge of his table, and knocks the middle of it with the base of hers, grinning. "I don't think you were the sort to be so open, before. You're welcome. Go ahead and drink - we can start the barfight after." She smiles, a knowing glint in her blue eyes, as she sprawls out at the table besides Kale's the top three onion rings off his fresh stack 'missing' their way to Xion's hands as she settles back to sip the Stiffest Drink, and finish her snack. Kale has the time to finish his drink and decide on how many onion rings he wants: After Xion completes she calmly steps out of her chair, places her hands on the back of it, and pitches it at Kale's booth-seat. "Since you asked, before: I'm seeing what everyone's excited about! The new Kale Hearthward!"
Kale Hearthward	"Sorry, the barfight?" Kale decides Xion's joking. "I mean, I'm pretty sure you're not Concord-sympathetic, so I can drop my guard a bit - and, well, I'm kinda excited about all this, so I'm fine being a bit more open about it." He sips at the drink gently. He purposefully has shied away from the 'stiff' end of the menu, so this is new - and after a few sips, he decides he can handle it, and drinks more normally. "Yeah - it... sucked for a while. One of me, and three - or, four, five, six... however many elites are in that Flotilla. They could divide and conquer, I could just... divide. Or conquer. You know, however the opposite of that saying goes." "The thing is, though..." He finishes his drink, and snacks on a couple onion rings while he considers his words, and right about then is a conversationally opportune time for Xion to bean him with the mug. None of the staff react to the emerging bar fight, though they've all produced helmets from somewhere and have put them on. "Wha - I mean, you could just ask how I'm doing!" says Kale, ducking behind the map table, and re-emerging with a box of assorted miniatures - which he flings at Xion. It's a heavy box, and the contents are very pointy.
Xion	"I have friends in every faction, but the way that Concord people do things tends to make me show up with a magic sword to stop a tornado. It happens enough!" Xion laughs lightly, having a good time talking openly. Language was a simple joy. "I had a talk-" A beating, fist to face. "-with Cantio, and I think this exercise was good for people. Not Staren, but, you know, other people. This was healthy for the heart, I think. To be squeezed, to be massaged, to have it gripped. Cantio was worried for her safety, that some great big force was going to come mess with her, or that they couldn't make it when things were 'real'. A whole bunch of excuses, really, but--" Kale is up, ducking around the map table, and Xion laughs some more, cheerful as she circles his corner table and ducks emphatically about, half-dodging, half just looking around table-strewn objects. "It helped you, too! Three, or six, or eight Concord dastards-" It has the exact cadence of 'eight robot masters', how coincidental. "- and Kale Hearthward was still there, still standing, and won fight after fight." The plate of onion rings goes flying as Xion knife-hands it up, the miniatures deflecting harmlessly off the plate -- the onion rings scattering in a batter-fry arc of collateral damage. "You love it, don't you? This is where you're happiest - or the happiest you've been!" Reaching back with the plate, she wings it Kale's way like a discus before going over the top and standing sneakers to maptable, holding down and out her left hand. Her right hand closes around Starlight with a metal 'shwink' of materialization. "It's okay. You talk this way too, don't you? With your friends."
Kale Hearthward	"Yeah, like- Kale goes to duck the plate. It whizzes by him, breaking against the far wall, and he takes scratch damage from the shards. "I had a talk with Cantio, too - I think you're onto something, maybe! And-" He hops up, from a standing start, up onto one of the tables, and starts running them, hopping from table to table, swashbuckling his way across the bar's seating. "Still standing! Still thriving! I may or may not win, but winds damnit if I haven't made a point here! If I haven't put my name in the beaks of others here!" He reaches back, grabbing one of his swords, and leaps from his current table to one right next to Xion. "And - this is what makes you happy too, huh? Having 'heart to hearts'?" He leaps, bringing his sword down - not directly at Xion, since he's not trying to kill her, but more towards her keyblade. "And - what, considering me to be one of your friends now?"
Xion	"Oh, I'm definitely onto something. I can feel it - people's worlds expanding." Xion grandstands, arms open on a table as she steps from wood to helmeted and moving fleeing goblin-head, to second table. The lack of patrons makes for good footing but poor fooding - Xion retrieves an onion ring with the toothed tip of her sword and a flick of her wrist, eating one-handed while fencing with her other. And she's pressed. With Kale actually taking a blade to hand and taking things at least conversationally seriously, Xion's casual guard is pierced and she is forced to react strongly, clashing keyblade to blade in a press that wobbles her across the table. Retreating down a tumble-falling chair and rolling to the ground, Xion finishes her onion ring with a big final bite, wiping her fingers off on her pantleg and taking a two-handed grip of her keyblade. "Thriving is the important part, too. You're living more than you're taking hits. Territory is good for a bottom line, but Kale Hearthward... Kale's doing well. Empires take and lose territory, but you've won the fights that mattered. Sometimes, with help. Sometimes, only the help of chance and the flaws in other people's hearts and swords." Jumping up, a step up the fallen chair flows into a sweeping chop across to clear her next step, and a key-tooth hooking set of thrusts to loop, hook, and pull close. "We're not friends yet. Friends are a handshake. You need to know I want to be, and want to be too. But you're important to someone important to me. So--" "--I want to see a more complete you than a conversation with words!"
Kale Hearthward	"I - think I get it!" Someone important to Xion - Kale files that thought away for later. "You wanna know what I think it was?" he says, picking up on the thread that he left dangling when Xion hit him with her drink. "At some point, last year, I ended up face down in the dirt again, and-" He swings his sword up, and breathes into it - the blade splits and reconfigures, with a long thin mirror suspended between the two halves. The motion creates an opening, though, and he ends up hooked and yanked down to the ground. "- I decide, if I'm gonna keep losing, it's not going to really be a loss if I learn something from it! So each and every time, I ask myself, 'So, what have we learned today, Kale!'" He spins - the blade starts leaving an afterimage trail, and while not immediately offensive, it's an attempt to start boxing Xion in and cut off her avenues of escape. "Maybe that's just that I should dodge a bit faster - maybe it's that I shouldn't be so quick to overextend, or to spout my beak off, or - a dozen other things. And it's worked!" "I get here, and - I stop losing, and I start winning, and-" He swings the blade again, trying to cut off her next move with another trail, and push her onto the defensive!
Xion	"You didn't really lose that often." Xion states, her cheer towards Kale's uptake clear in her motions - or as clear as a smile can be among the twist of bodies and the lift of blades. Caught on the mirror, she leans in, then yanks back and steadies herself on the table. Feet planted on the wobbling plane as sure as a flat surface, she lifts her blade to her chest vertically, readying a chop down backed by her weight and more-- "Learning is the right way to go about it, though! An open heart to the opportunities around you. Lots of things aren't worth the time if you're just looking to 'do' them. Plenty of things are worth the time if you let yourself grow and change from them." The mirage of afterimages-with-mass loop around Xion, balanced on the table, coiling about her in a hemming-in path, and she darts beneath the first swing's path by sliding across her table, glitch-skipping across intervening air to a second, and stopping herself with the hook of her blade and her heels beneath her, springing back, and into the second wave. Blade clashing against one image, she cannot simply directionally block the whole path, and tumbles over the wave of images with a skipping, bouncing series of sword-sparks and black ribbons of smoke that peel off of her black top. Landing in a crouch, Xion shoves forward a pulsing lance of dark red cored purple magic pseudopoda, a drip that travels parallel to the ground of pure gravito-kinetic crushforce. Rather than let it simply drip towards Kale, Xion spins around and swings the side of her blade into the conjured demi-ball, scattering flinders of crushing pressure like raindrops across the bar. "It's about who you are, Kale! It's about who I am. If we can both do all this, and we don't, and we never ever, even if we're strong enough, tough enough to enjoy this rough touching, are we? If it's never proven, can wings that have never opened still say they fly?" "So, who are you?"
Kale Hearthward	Kale moves. "You want to know who I am?" He jumps back, gaining a precious moment of time as the raindrops of pressure scatter. His eyes dart this way and that, tracking what he can, spending precious quarter-moments thinking- He lands, and he changes direction, leaping through the scattershot- - halfway through, twisting his whole body as he goes, spinning, twisting, managing to find just the right path through even though he has to contort himself in order to keep from occupying the same space as any of the droplets. And, somehow, he manages it, landing on another table in a roll and popping back up to his feet, kicking out and sending a chair flying across the bar towards Xion in the process! "I'm Kale Hearthward! I'm propped up by others, but only so that I can fly higher! I speak loudly, because I can back it up! I'm all-in, and I'm too proud to bluff!" "In other words - I'm just that good!"
Xion	'Somehow he manages it' seems to be the theme of the clash, with Kale turning the sudden barfight into a swashbuckling display of swordbirdship. Demi-ball-bearings scatter in a hanging paintsmear of sizzling magical pellets, and he isn't touched. Plenty else is, pingponging like billiards broken in three dimensions. A chair, however less 'artful', is no less effective at spinning through the air, cracking Xion in the forehead and sending her sprawling back in Kale's original booth, arms spread out across the back of the map table booth's back and legs up on the table. Despite the angry bruise on her forhead, she looks like she's having a good time. Starlight rests, tip-down, in the table she had been knocked away from. "Too proud to bluff, though?" Behind Kale, told on from the deadening spread of air currents and a creeping-dark in the periphery, is a spreading field of vantablack, little colored bits of metal and points of light like stars across the void of night. "Bluffs are -really- good in a fight." The field erupts, an inventory-emptying collection of keychain weapons and assorted - primarily handed implements. Kitchen knives and shearing scissors join fantastical blades and strangely-charged swords of every shape and make. Years of casual collection and constant generation means Xion has tchotchkie-swords to spare for saturation fire and never repeat a single one. Except steel pipes. She has so many pieces of pipe.
Kale Hearthward	"Tch-" Kale ends up in the middle of the sword storm. He can't dodge when there's just simply so many sharp things both all at once and in a continual stream. "That's - ow! That's a feint, not a bluff. There's a difference!" "And - you're not the only one with an inventory trick!" As soon as he gets a moment from fending off the incoming bladespam (and pipespam) he reaches into a pocket and flings a baseball-sized object at Xion. Hit or miss, the object comes to rest on the ground afterwards - it's a small model of a house. And then with a poof it suddenly expands outwards, becoming a full sized (but still small, relatively) house, sending tables and chairs everywhere as it expands to full size!
Xion	"There's a difference?" Xion asks, sprawled out in the map table booth casually as Kale is hugged by arms of reality that belch belch blades and inventory items. Scattered swordetritus litter around, discarded lengths of copper and steel and iron, spears of silver and axes of wood and chipped edges. With a whole house expanding in the center of the bar, Xion scoops up Kale's maps on the table and deposits them in a nearby collection of packs as the booth is encroached on, diving through a window rather than be smushed and rolling onto the kitchen table of the mini-maximualized house and sprinting past the fireplace on the tableclothed spread. "Do you keep throwing places with tables and chairs at people because society is kind and makes sense to you?" Throwing Starlight overhand at the brick fireplace at the back of the Happy Home, a soft lock-click splits the grout that holds each brick together. With a red sneaker booting and a further blast of magic purple force, Xion bursts through the new brick threshold. "So you DO feints, then?" Calls the grinning girl.
Kale Hearthward	"What - I mean, what kind of question is that!" Xion comes in through the fireplace. Or - through the fireplace, but not through the chimney. She unlocked the fireplace? "You're the one who wanted a bar fight, so-" calls Kale, getting cut off by the fireplace-shattering-blast slamming into him. It's a solid impact, and he's looking steadily more and more winded. "- So, so don't complain when I turn it into a HOUSE PARTY instead!" Talk of growth and experiences seems to be abandoned, at least temporarily, in favor of lame attempts to make puns. "And yeah I do feints - here's a fainting couch!" he yells, throwing out another ready bit of furniture he has at her. Except it's not actually a couch, it's a bed, a bouncy spring bed that might launch her at a wall!
Xion	Xion removes the locks on the fireplace, and then explodes through it with a power field. This is normal, at least, for bricks that encounter power fields. It is, likewise, normal for a brick to the face to hurt. "It's the kind of question I asked. Your places keep having societies there. You center your talent on what society did for it, and what you can do for society. Your try to be bigger, because there's a society behind it. It's an interesting way to become, leaving imprints of yourself on places, and then having people raise up in the depression." Even with the power of cutscene timing, being that chatty after an attack is a surefire tell for an open moment, and Kale capitalizes with his own gambit. "Wow, feint-ing couch is actually a really good p-" Xion gets out before her cheek meets the edge of the bed and she starts rotating in air, kinetic force transferred from the frame of the bed to the frame of her face. Smashed on the ground and bouncing, hard, onto her side, Xion exhales a deep belly 'oof' and stays downed for a moment, empty handed. Starlight remains buried in a pile of bricks a ways away. Grinning, the noirette elbows up and shifts a leg under herself, not yet rising. "I think I went too easy on you, Hearthward. Or maybe you're 'just that good'. Ahh, this is frustrating. I thought--" She shifts up to a kneeling crouch, a medallion-keychain twinkling into her grasp and expanding into a long purple broadsword of crystal with a blade-length etched with digital runes and gear patterns, with a broad golden guard and long hilt - a strong resemblance to Cantio's crystal blade, but with heavier gearwork. cogs and wheels are set within the crystal, gathering light in molten brass. "--I was really helping you out, but I guess I really was just saving you time. You can't be in two places at once." "Well. -You- can't, can you?" Xion asks, curious more than taunting, rising with the crystal sword to sweep it out. The light-trail from the sword lingers magenta on air, swept ready to her shoulder. Leaping up, shallow, she couches the sword against shoulder and disappears. Corridors open, yawning black, and some disgorge nothing. Others disgorge magenta-tinged drones that throb with musically themed beam attacks. At Kale's back-left, one disgorges Xion, still crouched, leading in with an unshallow rising -bludgeon-, swinging the long crystal blade for a tremendous air lift into Tom Nook's Unpaid For Second Floor.
Kale Hearthward	Oh, it's a serious question. "... Oh, the - societies, I see! Yes. The places I choose to concentrate my power here - places with people. Civilizations, towns, cities, businesses-" "I guess Wiremu and company like their wide open resource gathering sites, but - those are just..." "Lonely?" Kale says, slightly surprised, as if he just realized something. He immediately drops back on guard when Xion wonders aloud if she's been too easy on him. He's on guard again when Xion busts out that familiar looking blade. "Oh-" He starts moving, trying to evade the beams, and ends up dodging out of the way of Xion's attack, right into the other Xion's attack. "What-" WHAM "..." Kale staggers a bit, lifts his blade back to guard position, and then collapses into the nearest chair, dropping his sword so he can use both hands for rubbing his head. "... Ow." He doesn't seem inclined to continue the bar fight.
Xion	It's a serious question, meant genuinely. All of her comments and questions generally Are, from blank-eyed wonder to knowing-eyed and smirking light teasing -- meant to draw out something, the next link in a chain of knowing and seeing. Sometimes these happen during barfights. She's a multi-faceted person. Slamming Kale off into a collapsed heap, Xion drops back into her kneel from her raised and held geyser-shooting stance, bladetip falling to thunk against the ground. She releases it, standing, and as she does all of her weapons - Starlight, Corecalibur, her many pipes and scattered weapons - fade into black voxels of inventorying motes. She walks, pacing towards Kale's final resting spot, and resumes speaking. "You found the places with what interested you. The places you'd want to protect, you'd want to see, you'd want to explore, you'd want to build up. They found planes of... strange meat, and you found the Good Bar." Settling into the booth without quite the kinetic tumble, Xion waves to the barkeep-dwarf. "Two more of your stiffest drink, an onion rings with ranch dip, and... Ah, the bill." Xion turns to grin at Kale. "We'll split it." With her order placed, she closes her eyes and leans back on the booth-seat and exhales nasally. "You can see a lot from what people do -without- thinking. Their natural states. You expected me to fight right off - I was more thinking of trying the onion rings first. Natural states." "The miniatures were good." She adds, hehee-n'ing.
Kale Hearthward	The bill is delivered. There's repair bill or other surcharge for 'bar fight' because this is a dwarf bar. It's baked into the cost of the drinks. "... Mmm." Kale drinks a bit more eagerly now, since alcohol is a lot more appealing after a sound drubbing. "I leave imprints, and people - grow in them. You make it sound like they're plants, and I'm sort of - well, bird." "... Don't remind me of the strange meat. I don't want to think too hard about that." "And natural states - yeah, well, that's true." He drinks some more. "I think, though, I'm realizing - if I was just trying to protect a bunch of... meat planes, or marshes, or stuff like that, I'd not be thriving nearly as much here. I don't know if that's just my 'natural state' making me seek them out, or..." He shrugs, and downs his drink. "Thank you, Xion. You really were helping me out. Still are, I think."