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Cantio The coordinates to Cantio's home are easy enough to get to from the warpgates leading to Cadenza. It's a bright, sunny day at the clean-future looking City of Songs, and the ambient music of the day is upbeat and vaguely reminiscent of the sort of music that would play during a beach episode. Both signs and friendly-looking guards point the way towards the palace that is Cantio's home, the latter of whom look rather comfortable despite wearing thick uniforms in the intense summer heat.

The palace for the Drive Core Controller and Candidate, as always, is huge and... Big! As promised, the door to Cantio's ground-floor working garage is wide open while a curious sight greets those who arrive: There's three of her.

One, dressed in the stereotypical wrenchgirl outfit with an oil-stained t-shirt and a work apron, banging away at some kind of weird little robot that looks kind of like Cantio in her usual clothes.
One, dressed in a green version of Cantio's usual white and purple outfit with blonde hair, running ingredients for the ice cream makers into and out of the palace proper. The ice cream makers are more of those Cantio-colored drones with the freaky faces, but with spigots coming right out of their faces.
One, dressed in the stereotypical rogue or thief's outfit with the bandana and a pair of knives strapped to her waist to show how gritty she is, setting up beach umbrellas and more of those weird-looking robots on the front lawn. These robots are acting as strong outdoor AC units.
Kale Hearthward "Big place," comments Kale, as he arrives.

And then - three Cantios! Huh. He looks around, not sure which one to approach, and eventually settling on approaching the one working on the ice cream makers. "Hey there..."

"... Big place? Didn't realize you had a whole palace," he says, conversationally. "Or all these robots."
Meridian Thankfully the directions were more clear this time and the roads a lot more steady and smooth for driving. The weather was a bit warmer here than it was in Fortuna, not to mention the time of day where the sun was out. This meant having the A/C on for a good part of the trip. She had never been invited to a location with such a big house before, it was a little intimidating for one who has spent her adult living in a variety of hole-in-the-wall type living spaces.

She finds a spot to park her car before exiting the vehicle. She figured this would be a good time to get to know those she fought alongside in a much less hetic circumstance. She told herself it was important that she got out and got to know 'the neighbors', as it were, as she couldn't focus all of her time and energy on things only relating to her own neck of the woods.

She was a bit confuse about what she saw, when she noticed that there was more than one Cantio out and about, looking to each of them in return, "Hi there....thank you for inviting me to your place. First off, my name is Meridian, Meridian Bisultan." She said in a soft voice, giving a friendly, if slightly nervous smile.
Xion Since Xion was interested in the grander meanings of waffles and toppings, and had essentially voluntold Cantio to get to actually engineering on a wafflemaker, her arrival in Cadenza comes without fanfare.

One second, she's not there, and another, a sworling singularity of flat black is closing behind the black-haired girl.

Dressed in a grey short-sleeved t-shirt with a modernist sunset in yellow, purple, and orange and a pair of shorts, she approaches with the soft p-tak p-tak of her white foam beach sandals.

Kale gets elbow-leaned-on as Meridian introduces herself, the noirette grinning up at the bird general. "You didn't know Cantio had a palace? Or had ro-bots? Well, I guess Cantio shows a lot of faces now, doesn't she?"
James Bond      The City of Songs is easy enough for Bond to navigate. His daily driver is decidedly less modern than some of the 'company cars' he's driven--a silver Aston DB5. The contour lines of the two-door, superleggera chassis hearken back to a golden age of racing.

     It rumbles into the garage, pulling off to the side near Meridian's. Stepping out of the leather-trim cabin, the superspy pauses to fix the hem of his navy sweater. "Morning, Hearthward," he offers to Kale.

     The yellow dress shirt beneath it, the pressed slacks and penny loafers--'weekend breakfast' is probably a different look than most people familiar with Bond have seen, but he seems comfortable in it.

     "She certainly does, Xion." notes Bond with a small smirk. "We ought to be thankful she's deigned to show us three of them." His blue eyes flick towards the drones-turned ice cream machines, and he supposes to himself that it's good they should be doing this, and not out causing bedlam in the greater Multiverse.

     Meridian catches his attention next. "I don't believe we've met," says Bond. Offering a firm handshake, "Bond. James Bond."
Staren     Staren's at least visited the city, and knows where the palace *is*, but she's never been *inside*. She smiles and waves to the first Cantio, "Hi, Cantio!" And then there's a second one. And a third. "...Gosh, what is that like? So are you all of you at once, or do you live each of their experiences in sequence, or do you get all their memories when you recombine, or...?"

    Those she knows get nods, and hearing Meriden's introduction, she extends a hand herself. "Staren, Staren Wiremu, of the Concord. Nice to meet you."
Cantio Blonde Cantio looks over at Kale from the ice cream maker she's pouring ingredients into, sorta-waving with a bag of sugar before looking back at the machine to make sure she's not spilling it all over the place. "Hey, Kale! Yeah, this is where me and my sister live along with most of the other staff here." She replies, gesturing at Wrench Cantio and then the door leading into the palace proper. "The robots are just my thing, but the palace itself is usually open to the public. I just figured it'd be easier to have something a little more private for the people I know, you know?"

Thief Cantio is the one to greet Meridian and Xion, meanwhile, and the latter gets a somewhat longer look that could easily be dismissed as just a pause if not for the outfit potentially being recognizable. "Ah, welcome! It's good to meet you in a less violent place, Miss Meridian. And it's great seeing you again, too, Xion."

There's definitely a Recognition look there. She laughs lightly at Bond's comment and waves gently towards him, then  steps aside briefly to make sure those AC drones are pumping out a good amount of air. "I'm.. She..." She glances back at Wrench Cantio who's still hard at work on doing something with the scrap and tools all around her. "... We're getting more used to it. Er. Keeping a consistent face, I mean. Oh! I didn't really get to explain it that well yesterday, but... Okay. So! I'm the Drive Core Candidate of this place, basically the... Princess? Vice President? Whatever's easier to understand."

Blonde Cantio finishes filling up the ice cream makers, then focuses her time-distorting energy around the drones. They walk in place in unison, slowly at first, but steadily accelerate to the point that it looks like someone just hit fast-forward on a video tape from eons past. They ding all at once, and then she reopens her eyes with a relieved sigh before turning to the group. "Ice cream's ready! Plenty of flavors, mix ins, come on in and grab a cup!"

There's plenty of waffle cones, wafer bowls, toppings, and even assorted toppings laid out on the tables while the drones are ready to dispense ice-cold stuff from their faces. It's a little weird looking, but it's freshly made despite literally being mixed up seconds ago! Somehow.

Wrench Cantio, meanwhile, literally has a wrench in her hands as she tightens up the prototype waffle maker's arms, nodding at Staren without taking her eyes off the machine. "Yeah, something like that. It's a little confusing, but they're all... There eventually, even if I split up like this."
Kale Hearthward "Morning, Bond."

And then Kale gets leaned on, which he accepts with grace. "Didn't know she had a palace," he says. "Or - I guess shares one," he adds, after Cantio's explanation.

Meridian gets offered a handshake as well. "Kale Hearthward, Paladins. Conquest, Scouting, and Search and Rescue Operations." Along with the handshake, there's a bit of looking her up and down - not entirely in a friendly way. As if he's doing some quiet mental evaluations in some zero sum game contained within his mind. It's brief, though, and then he focuses on other things.

Other things being Staren, who only grabs his attention for one moment and zero words before moving on to something else.

"Ah, ice cream..." Cattle secretions, condensed and flavored, with a lot of food wastage and caloric efficiency reductions at every step of the process. Kale doesn't bring any of that up, though. He goes to get some vanilla.
Xion "Well, I've got a palace I share with people, too. It must not be that uncommon, really." Xion observes lightly, coming off of Kale and placing both hands clasped together behind her back, stepping about the inspecting bird and towards:

Thief Cantio! Placing hands on both of the Edgy Knives And Scarves version, looks up and down the copy of the host... And grins!

"Doing better, then? That's great!" Her hands come up and down, pat-pat, and then she sweeps about to stand besides Theif Cantio with an arm about the copy-girl's shoulders, her free hand spreading out to gesture at the world of ice cream and waffles. "So what're you gonna have on yours? What's your favorite ice cream flavor? Mine's definitey this blue sea-salt creamcicle flavor, but it's only sold in one place. Number two is definitely mint choco, but vanilla's good too! I like the really rich vanillas with lots of cream, so you can really taste the vanillabean."
James Bond      Bond lifts his wrist, glances down at an expensive-looking watch, following the chorus of dings. "A minute and change for ice cream," he says with an impressed frown. "Not bad, Cantio. It certainly beats a trip to the shops."

     Stepping up, he helps himself to a wafer bowl, holding it beneath the nearest drone's face (with a smirk on his own face). Usually more of a meat eater, his tastes here are fairly basic--vanilla, like Kale, with some bog standard sprinkles, and... "Strawberries?" That seems to have gotten his attention. He scoops a spoonful of slices in.

     Glancing over to his fellow Paladin, "You could be forgiven for not knowing that," he says conversationally. "She's a bit more hands-on than most people in her position." Bond idly prods a sliced strawberry, his eyes drifting towards Cantio. "Part of me wishes more of them were like that."

     With a dry chuckle, "If only because it'd save us a bit of trouble." Certainly, Bond quietly imagined, if the Soviet premier or the American president were out there in the field, they'd be done with this business in Afghanistan a lot more quickly.

     "I half-imagined it'd be the unpopular pick," says Bond to Xion of vanilla. "I'm a little surprised, honestly."
Meridian There was a lot of new faces here that Meridian had not seen at the battle, so far there was just Cantio herself, the rest were fresh faces whom she only knew from their voices this morning when she happened to turn on her radio this morning when she was just waking up. First things first, she shakes the Gentleman's hand who had addressed her, "Nope, Meridian Bisultan. A pleasure to meet you, Mister Bond."

She then turned her attention towards Staren, another new person, "Hello there, it's nice meeting you as well. I'm from a place known as Passerotto, on a world that goes by the name Kairos. Yesterday has probably been my first time having really been outside of my own home turf. There's certainly a lot I need to get used to. For starters, seeing robots of this caliber outside of Tech Expos shown on the telescreen."

She's only briefly heard of Concord at this point, mainly that they were a very big organization that had a lot of weight to throw around. She extends a hand out towards Kale next, giving a friendly smile to her. The Paladins were another major player, much like their namesake, shiny armor with polished reputations, as far as what she was told about them.
Staren     Tall. Staren looks over the new person briefly. Will people finally forget about her own cargo shorts phase, with this person around? Although, she has to hand it to Meridian, the cut and style with all those little strappy things surely makes them cooler than her own shorts ever were. Also: Messenger bag buddies! She smiles. "The Multiverse is a wonderful place full of opportunity people didn't have in only their own worlds. Robots, magic, the internet, there's all kinds of cool stuff. I like your bag." She nods at the item. "Easy access to all your stuff, right?" She slips her right hand under the flap of her own bag to demonstrate.

    While Meridian shakes hands with others, she goes to get some ice cream for herself. Hmm... today, vanilla and chocolate with lots of different candy toppings to try!
Cantio "Sharing places is pretty common around here. Me and my sister, the rulers of the other Cities... It's just more practical, you know?" Blonde Cantio replies to Kale and Xion, stepping aside to let the former get full access to the many machines.

The ice cream makers/dispensers are quite good at what they do, even if it looks a little weird coming out of things with a blocky interpretation of Cantio's face. The vanilla is just sweet enough without being overpoweringly so, and the consistency is almost like gelato. Also, a foodie might even realize that this stuff is closer to gelato than ice cream, especially with the lack of eggs used in any of it. Cantio probably doesn't know that.

Xion gets a relaxed grin in return from Thief Cantio along with a slight lean to just enjoy the company. "I think... I've always been a fan of custard, but I blame my sister for that one. I like those little... Um. Those little popping juice balls, too, although I haven't figured out a way to mix them in compared to just dumping them right on top." She replies, stroking her chin after a moment. "Sea-salt creamsicle, though... Well, we've got salt, and we've got plenty of that artificial orange syrup!"

Bond, meanwhile, gets a confused look from the Blonde Cantio. "Is it really that uncommon in your world? I mean, I've heard of figureheads before, but... " She trails off, looking confused and shaking her head after a moment. "It's a lot faster getting things done if I just... Do things. What are they doing with their time if they aren't?"

Meridian's mention of Cantio's robots has Wrench Cantio chuckling confidently as she gets up from her work station. "Oh, you'll be seeing plenty of these if you visit here more! I think this one's just about ready to test, too~" She announces proudly as she picks up her still-unpainted drone and turns it around to face the group outside the garage. She clears her throat, then speaks with enough volume that it sounds like she's doing it through some kind of speaker setup (because she totally is).

"Cross your fingers and hope nothing burns!" Like with the Blonde Cantio earlier, Wrench Cantio directs her time-fuckening energy into the machine as it marches in place, speeding up rapidly over the course of a few seconds while light smoke vents out of its ears. There's a loud ding, and then its head pops open from a hinge on the back, revealing...

WAFFLES. Thick, crispy waffles, some with cinnamon or chocolate or even fruit pieces baked right in. The flavor is pretty generic, but that can easily be chalked up to Cantio being more of a builder than a chef. "The first batch is ready!"

The bottom is a little more cooked than the top.
Xion "Is it because you hate yourself, James?" Xion asks, conversationally. "Have you ever wondered why vanilla, a flavor from a rare and delicate flower that drips beads of pungent dark oil, an ingredient wars have been fought over, is considered common? Why it's put into your wafers, and dappled on all the baking? You think it's common, but what's common is actually the incredible process that getting vanilla to you consumes."

"Also, I really think heavy cream is cut by vanilla really well. They're a good match! Strong partners." She giggles, bringing a hand up to hide her mouth, and then steps around Meridian to start serving from the weird dronefaces a blue (raspberry) flavor onto a fresh normal waffle as they become available.

"Are you royalty from where you're from? Your name has 'sultan' in it, so I was curious!"

Over her shoulder, she adds a quick: "You can't just pour salt on things and make it good! You've got to use... technique."
Staren     Also, 'didn't know she had a palace'? "She *is* a princess." Staren points out.

> Cross your fingers and hope nothing burns!

    Staren gets those goggles over her eyes and her coat closed awfully fast and stands behind any convenient, nearby cover if extant (not people. That would be rude.)

    Waffles. "Oh. Okay! Alright... oo, this one even has chocolate in it? Nice!" She'll take one! "...Do we put the ice cream on the waffles, or eat them seperately?
Kale Hearthward "It'd be really nice if more rulers got out more, yeah," agrees Kale wholeheartedly to Bond. "A lot of just... staying in palaces, ignoring their other obligations. It gets really frustrating."

"I never really thought about it like that," says Kale, to Xion.

"There is a lot to get used to," Kale comments to Meridian. "My advice, having lived through the experience myself recently, is to set your pre-conceptions aside, as much as you can, and roll with it. Get out there and explore, come to grips with as many new things as you can."

And then to Staren: "Do you really need to ask? I'm asking seriously," says Kale, as he grabs a cinnamon and a chocolate waffle on a plate, and then chops them into bits with some quick knife work.

"You do whatever you want. You're the one calling the shots. I thought that was the whole point of the Concord?" he continues, as he goes to put his waffle bits *on* his ice cream, like a true renegade.
Staren     Staren rolls her eyes and scoffs. "I am asking the chef's suggestion for the intended serving and best eating experience, that's all. If I try it the reccomended way and don't like it, I'll try it another way. It's like not pouring salt all over your food before you even taste it."
Meridian Looking about at the assembled group, she gets the feeling that most of these people know each other already, once again being the new kid in town. She does not have much to add to the conversation other than responding to others when they address her. It's a familiar feeling and she just rides it out in a true introverted style of being on semi-standby mode. The only reason she wears these Khaki shorts is due to them being the most comfortable thing she can wear and hasn't suffered any rips or tears with her merry-go-round weight. As for the bag...

"Yes, I keep all the things I usually use for work and other purposes in here. Never know what I need to get in touch with somebody or have a informal meeting about an uncoming assignment." She says towards Staren. She usually avoided eating Ice Cream until the evening. Dairy foods never agreed with her too much, but a little bit shouldn't hurt.

Taking a small cone and deciding with a fruit flavor of one kind or another. The fact that she's getting ice cream from the face of one of these robots is a little on the unsettling side. But this was also novel in a quirky kind of way, like something out of an animated sci-fi story. She turns her attention towards Cantio once more, "And you make these robots yourself?" She said as her voice trailed off into a tone of hesitancy when she hears about the potential of stuff burning.

"From somebody who almost never left the boundaries of the county line, that's a tall order, Miss." She said in a somewhat sad tone towards Kale.
James Bond      "This isn't quite ice cream," says Bond, after a few bites. "No eggs." He's apparently very particular about eggs. "More like a gelato, I should think--but still very good."

     Blonde Cantio gets a blunt answer. "Talking," he begins. Frowning, after savoring a bite, he nods in Xion's directions. "Doing whatever they can to convince their people that civilization itself will end," continues Bond, tapping his spoon against his waffle bowl, "If one day they should find there's no vanilla on the shelves, or bananas, or God knows what else from across the world."

     Spoon resting in the bowl, Bond pats his chest as if reaching for something that isn't there. A soft grunt, and he further opines, "Sending men like Hearthward into the woodchipper on the frontlines, burning men like me at both ends until there's nothing left. Either to keep that process going, or for lines on a map." He shrugs his shoulders.

     Does he hate himself? Bond is just about finished with his ice cream, toying with a single sliced strawberry, blue eyes meeting Xion's. "I'm working on it." Presented with thick, crispy waffles, Bond grabs a plate, drizzles his melted ice cream, and crushes the waffle bowl overtop with the spoon.

     "You don't have to do it all in a day," Bond offers to Meridian, setting his plate down on the nearest bit of unclaimed table to work at his waffle with a knife and fork. "And you don't have to know all the answers. What matters is trying to be a little better to-morrow than you were today."
Staren     Staren's ears perk and she looks at Bond. "Ice cream has eggs in it?" She stares into space in the way someone with cybernetics looking something up does.
Kale Hearthward "Excuse you," says Kale to Bond. "I was the woodchipper." He realizes, exactly one moment too late, that this clarification was neither needed nor in good taste. He coughs. "Ahem. But yes, you're right."

He looks at Meridian oddly after she speaks, then down at himself. "(Is it the eyeliner?)" he whispers to Xion.
Cantio "Ah, so Sultan is a word for royalty? And Bi... Are you a co-ruler, too?" Thief Cantio's eyes light up when she makes that connection between what Xion says and Meridian's name. "That explains a bit, then. I was like that when I first joined up with the Concord, too, and it's taken a while for me to get to... Like this."

Wrench Cantio, meanwhile, continues making adjustments on the waffle maker after seeing how the first batch came out. "You can put the ice cream on them, yeah. You'll want a bowl for it just in case, though, since... I mean, you /could/ eat it with your hands, but I wouldn't recommend it." She answers Staren with another chuckle and backs off when some of the heat vents out of the back of the machine's head.

Afterwards, she turns to Meridian with a bright smile and a quick nod. "That's right! It's not... Technically part of the job, but it's fun! And it's useful to leverage into other projects if it ever comes up on the field."

Bond comments about the gelato vs ice cream thing, and Blonde Cantio raises an eyebrow in curiosity. "Eh? Is it? I thought gelato was supposed to be fancier, though." She replies, showing off the depths of her cluelessness on the topic. She's not as clueless about the topic of useless leaders, though, and she even purses her lips after a while in vague disapproval. "But just keeping things going isn't... It's not good enough. Not by throwing their own people's lives into the... Woodchipper, as you said."

As Blonde Cantio maintains that frown while probably recalling something rather dark, Wrench Cantio claps her hands together to try and lighten the mood while approaching Meridian. "Er.. He's right about the answers thing, you know! As long as you're still trying and not giving up, you'll do fine. It's okay to be afraid since... The important thing is that we still act, you know? We have resources a lot of people could only hope to have, so... That's why it's our responsibility to make sure we do what nobody else can, even if it takes a while to really build up that confidence."
Meridian "Sounds a lot like how the history of my world was up until recently." She says towards Bond, "I sometimes wonder if the magical resurgance was the catalyst that pulled us into this greater region. People were obsessed over borders drawn on a two dimensional map in a three dimensional world, districts, county lines, national borders. Meanwhile your everyday in-the-mix people, who started feeling like nothing more than cards shuffled about in a deck, started putting their desperation and blind faith into things that they scarcely understood, things that probably should have been left sealed away like bottles of nitro gleceryn in an abandoned shed."

"But the fact that they knew little about them meant they were ripe for being labeled as Panacea for whatever woes they had being dogpiled on them. Not too long after, those two-dimensional borders were being redrawn in four dimensions by multi dimensional creatures that had been forgotten for centuries." She realizes she's rambling about things most people here probably can't relate to, "But yeah, I can't just remain static while things happen around me. I have to keep trying eveyr day, otherwise I'm just losing ground and being oblivious to everything happening around me." She says with a waning smile towards Cantio and Bond.
Xion Xion looks between Thief Cantio and Meridian, nodding slowly. "So you... used to be royalty, then?"

Standing on the outside of the specific conversation knot, she munches on her waffle and blue raspberry gelato dollop by tacoing the whole thing and munching, occupied for a thoughtful moment.

Then: "Woodpecker... Nope, that's worse. Well, I guess being covered in blood isn't that good in general, even if it's not yours. Which is weird, because people are covered in blood on their insides all the time."

"(I like the eyeliner, it highlights your eyes.)" Xion whispers back.

"Cantio," She turns to the Mechanic now. "You didn't do anything. . . weird, with these faces, did you?"
James Bond      "Alright, Xion," says Bond, after a few bites, looking over his shoulder from the table. "I don't know that I'd make it an every day thing. But it's not half bad."

     Working bit by bit, knife sawing away, he pushes the plate to the other side of the table and picks up the chair. Moving to the opposite side so as not to have to crane his neck, Bond takes another evenly-cut bite before continuing.

     He's about halfway done by the time he's got a response for Cantio, leaning in his chair. "That's the problem," he says. "It *is* good enough. Mathematically, lifelessly exactingly 'enough.' So that the loudest parts of the population are happy, and everyone else is too tired to say anything to the contrary."

     "Yours sounds a bit like Lilian's world," he offers for Meridian. "Had something like an invasion, or an outbreak, I suppose you might say, of things like that." After a pause, "Extra-dimensional things, that is. Even a magical 'resurgence,' too--but the magic was there all along. Just kept secret until it was choosing between the lid coming off and everything burning down."

     He chuckles. "Funny how that works, isn't it."
Cantio "Borders can be a pretty constant source of conflict, I'm afraid. There, here, over in that whole thing with Africa..." Wrench Cantio admits with a light sigh, doing that time-screwing thing again to the machine in order to get test batch #2 going. This time, the top and bottom are both evenly cooked, but the center is just shy of undercooked (until she closes it for a few more seconds).

"Four-dimensional borders, though... Uhh. That's a little beyond what I'm familiar with." She adds, chuckling lightly after a moment before nodding in approval at Meridian. "Budgeting and spreadsheets are fine, sure, but getting into weird spatial and dimensional stuff beyond what I can see and fight..."

She gestures towards Xion. "She's the expert here on that, I think!" The question about the weird faces, meanwhile, has Cantio shaking her head. "No, not at all. They're just as cute as usual!"

The drone's faces are indeed as weird as they usually are: Vacant, wide-eyed, and open-mouthed like they're in a constant state of screaming. The ice-cream dispensing spigot coming out of those mouths probably doesn't help.

"Being comfortable enough isn't bad in itself, but..." Cantio pauses as she considers Bond's words. "... Only the loudest parts of the population being comfortable isn't good enough. I need all of my people to have it good, so I've still got plenty of my work cut out for me."