Scene #9670:

Owner	Pose
Chuyao He	A carrier pigeon flitter-flutters its way to Mag, wearing a little clasp around its leg. The bird lands nearby and waddle-struts up to him, allowing the clasp to be undone (and holding it up expectantly if it isn't). Inside is a rolled strip of paper bearing a message in elegant script that seems somehow both painstaking and effortless. 'Brother Mag, I, Chuyao He, scholar of the late generation, would be honored to have you as a guest. To that end, this lowly scholar invites you to his home on the leeward slope bordering Lin'an City. From the warpgate, turn away from the city walls, cross the bridge and take a left at the stables. Follow the dirt road into the foothills; my home is the estate bordered by two Zhejiang maples.'
Mag	Finding Mag in his home garage, the shutters raised, the pigeon finds itself kindly intercepted by Linear before Mag can even set aside his tools. "What's that you've got there, Linear?" he asks, as she cradles the creature in both palms with utmost care. "Bird." she answers softly. Mag scoffs pleasantly. "Well I can see that. Oh, you've got something little fella? A- Oh wow, a letter! That's so cool... This Chuyao guy knows his stuff, huh?" Linear is more enthralled by holding and admiring the pigeon while Mag double-reads, but she still nods fondly in agreement. "Okay! Let's not leave him waiting! Pepper isn't around, but... Would you go give that bum Chain a kick, Linear? If she's so bored, she can come with. She'll be all about that 'knight-errant' stuff I bet." It doesn't take too long for the gang to head out. Linear gets changed, Chain straps into the Griffin, and Mag washes his face and hands before swapping his oily engine-work gloves for his preferred crisp-red shooting gloves, throws on his favorite jacket, and gives Gre a hug on the way out. "See you tonight Gre!" Even if it's a social visit, it's only natural for the team to come out of that gate dressed for work; Mag and Chain would never be seen without their Cyframes, and while Mag's can fold against his back into a strange but innocuous-looking shape almost more like a metal canister there's no such subtlety for Chain. Her bright red, jetpack-like Cyframe's primary blade juts above her head and curls forward like a horn, and her favorite full-mask is strapped atop her head and angled up to show her face despite it smooshing her wild hair backwards. They're in high spirits and soon following Chuyao's directions away from Lin'an's walls as intended despite Mag and Chain shouldering each other back and forth on the trail, arguing pleasantly about things of no consequence. "I'm just saying, you're totally gonna embarass yourself if you act all polite with this guy, dweeb!" "Aww shut your trap. I won't overdo it! It doesn't have to be weird!" Linear, familiar with the dynamic, smiles faintly and laughs softly behind her sleeve.
Chuyao He	Chuyao's home is in the foothills on the outskirts, as described, perhaps a walk of 30 minutes. It is surrounded by an exterior stone wall with tiled green shingles alike the ones on the roof of the main building. It's easy to tell this is his place, not only because of the maple trees on either side of the entrance (no gate, just a tasteful gap in the wall)--but because Chuyao himself is sweeping the entrance. He's in a casual solid yellow zhiduo robe, cross collar with black trim and loose at the back seam, fastened with a thin, elegant rope belt. His hair crown, and the carved orchid-motif coral pin, remain, holding his long black hair in a neat bun. Looking up at visitors, he smiles and sets the broom aside, greeting his guests with a fist-in-palm bow. "I, Chuyao He, greet the visitors respectfully. In fact, this lowly scholar is surprised to see such a party--may I know how to address brother Mag's companions?"
Mag	30 minutes is just long enough for Chain to impatiently doubt Mag's understanding of the directions, but that resolves itself after she flies a short way up off the ground, boosted into the air at a leisurely hover by the odd green energy-projections of the Griffin's thrusters. "Huh, I don't see any other path we could've missed... Alright, I guess." She's retorted by Mag, a little grumpily complaining, "Settle down. Unless you're gonna carry us, you might as well walk." They go back and forth a little more, but they don't have long enough to get into it much before arriving. The first things Chuyao are likely to observe are relief, a quietly appreciative whistle, and a distractable fidgety turn between Chuyao's trees. Mag clears his throat behind a fist and then gestures open-handed like he's going to introduce the others, but Chain jumps ahead of him, probably just to throw him off. "Chain Gun, Pannam's superstar adventurer!" is delivered with a theatrically self-satisfied grin and a smug thumb pressed into her own chest. Mag pauses only long enough to roll his eyes, which doesn't quite seem to be what Chain was hoping for, but she's polite enough to let Mag realign the tone. "Right, well, I'm Mag. And she's Linear." Linear had been squatted down beside one of the trees, holding her hair aside in one hand while touching the roots, for some reason. Still, she straightens back up when she hears her name and gives Chuyao a slow wave from behind one big billowing bell-sleeve. "Hello.... Do you raise birds..?" "It's uh, nice to meet you. We couldn't get Pepper this time, but she might just visit on her own sometime. She likes taking pictures, and stuff like that. Anyway, how are you today?"
Chuyao He	"So, it's sister Chain, and sister Linear. I, Chuyao He, welcome you both, and brother Mag, to my home." He turns aside and gestures for them to come through. The exterior wall opens to reveal a courtyard with a modestly sized pond--large enough to have a small covered dock extending halfway across its surface, with a circular arrangement of benches. It's easy to imagine him sitting there in contemplation on a temperate day like this one. Stones flank the edge of the pond, stacked and wreathed in places with clinging greens. Fish dart beneath the faintly emerald surface, clearly visible beneath reflections of the trees around the property. The main house, past the walkway which encircles the pond, is of the size one would expect to need at least one or two waitstaff to properly maintain, but none are forthcoming. If anything, without the chirping of birds or the occasional sound of the breeze rustling the boughs of the trees outside, it seems empty. Following behind, Chuyao briefly passes ahead to open the front door for his guests. "The walk here was not too troublesome, I hope?"
Chuyao He	"Sister Chain is kind to say so. In fact, brother Mag..." Chuyao frowns. "This home was given to me as a gift for my service at court. I have offered to host my parents here, but they have grown attached to their own home. It is good that I am able to visit them, all the same." "Are you all unaccustomed to mountain air, or... is there another reason that smoke should be more familiar?" Compared to the asymmetry of the garden, the main house is symmetrical. It expands east and west into halls, with lacquered hardwood floors in a rich dark brown, overlaid with finely woven red rugs in places. Display tables boast porcelain in various patterns, small sculptures or (presumably) family curios, and in places, calligraphy or paintings hang on the walls. The windows are open, propped up by built-in stands to allow air to flow in this warmer season. Chuyao leads the group to a sitting room, where five simple but elegant huanghali rosewood yoke-backed chairs surround a central table. In a glass case atop a polished sandstone tripod, there sits a porcelain ding ware vase of apparent high regard, bearing a plum blossom design. "If my guests would make themselves comfortable, it would please me to prepare some tea."
Mag	"Court? Like, lawyering, or did you work with kings and queens..?" Mag asks slowly, like he's worried both things he can think of will be wrong. Whatever the case, he seems sympathetic about Chuyao's parents not living with him after being invited, a soft little smile on his face. "I see... I'm glad you can visit, too. I'm lucky Gre still lives with us even after he retired, he's basically been my second dad so I'd really miss him." Chain, meanwhile, answers about the air and smoke. "Well, Pannam is a frontier town, and there's the airfield right next to it, trains running right beside it all the time... And for work, we're usually exploring in ruins with lots of busted up machines. So there's always oil around, the smell of gasoline and coal and all that. It's lucky Cyframes don't run on that stuff too, or I'd stink like it all the time." Each of them takes their varying amounts of time to just look around, take in the interior of the home and get acquainted with the space while being led through. In the sitting room, Mag adjusts his Cyframe to rest beside his right arm instead of against his back, and Chain reluctantly disengages a few straps to slip out of the Griffin and carefully set it aside upright rather than risk sitting down in a chair with it. Without her in it, it naturally seems to fold into itself to save space, but it's still about as big as a chair in its own right. Everyone seats themselves, and Linear's eyes are drawn to the display case while Mag gratefully says, "Tea would be great, thanks. I was actually wondering, did you go to... Like, a school for stuff like this? Gre says he took lessons on manners and conduct before he started working as dad's butler years ago, and I always wondered if that was real or if he was just messing with me."
Chuyao He	"Ah, the imperial court," he says. "It is common for scholars to be officials--bureaucrats of various functions, clerks, ministers of various levels of responsibility, and so on. I... did not hold the position for long, before resigning due to a conflict of interest. Thankfully, I may still serve the public good as a Paladin." Chuyao's experience with trains and other such machines has run a fairly wide gamut; on one end, there are starships like Hikaru and Lala's, and on the other, there are menaces like the train which Merelisa stopped--not to mention the superweapon Merelisa herself commands. "Ruins... so, not even the marvels of sophisticated machinery are wholly free from the forward march of time or the will of history..." He departs, and, a few minutes later, returns with a dark celadon tea set. Each of his guests is given a warm tea bowl with a tortoise shell pattern--it seems noteworthy that the cups themselves are warm, as well as the water within. He makes a little circuit with a stirring whisk, dispensing finely powdered matcha into each bowl and whisking it with practiced skill. The bright green powder is stirred into pleasing patterns, with a white froth striking a contrast against the dark bowls. A flick of the whisk as he lifts it creates suggestions of images--a flower for Mag, a fish like in the lake for Linnear, and a bird for Chain. Asked about his manners, "Somewhat. The Five Virtues School teaches the martial arts as well as the pursuits and habits of a <gentleman \| superior person>. There, I studied divination, literature, music, poetry, strategy, the Five Virtues Style, calligraphy, and, of course, <tea>. Etiquette, however, is ideally taught by one's parents, and that foundation built upon by proper observance of the rites, as laid out by one's society and, in the case of a scholar, the Book of Rites."
Mag	The word 'imperial' does give Mag a better understanding of a few things all at once, and he lightly taps one closed fist into the other hand's palm. "Oh! So it's like that, here... I'm sorry to hear you ended up resigning, it sounds like it was a big deal for you. The Paladins though... I guess when you got the opportunity, it must've made sense pretty quickly, right?" Mag has latched onto what he can glean of Chuyao's feelings on the matter pretty quickly. Chain carries on the matter of ruins, humming more thoughtfully than she truly is being. "Yeah, I guess so. The world basically ended once before, apparently. Or, well, humans' place in it did. But nobody really knew about that when people started making a comeback, and ever since before I was born there've been folks digging up old machines, tools, bits of art from the Prehistoric Civilization. Turns out a lot of it's similar to stuff in other worlds, too. Except the Cyframes, haven't seen those anywhere else yet." Mag, inclined toward silver linings, follows Chain's summary by observing, "It kinda just means that as long as someone's still around and doing their best, nothing's ever really 'over' though, right? The people who came before left as many records and useful things behind as they could, even when their lives were falling apart. And now, everybody's picking up the pieces. Even if the ruins are, well, ruined, there's all kinds of amazing stuff to find." Chuyao vanishes for a bit to prepare the tea, and when he returns it seems like each of Team Launcher's members as their own thing to notice first out of preference. Linear makes a small sound when she sees the images in each bowl, smiling at Chuyao about how cute they are. Chain seems more focused on the fact that each is personalized to the best of his ability, and notes with some amount of burgeoning respect, "Dang, you know all kinds of little things huh..?". Mag seems to particularly notice the warmed bowl, inclined as he is to pay attention to his sense of touch in particular, such that even his gloves leave some of his fingertips bare. Rather than make a big deal of it though, he just grins up at Chuyao knowingly, before sampling the tea around the same time Linear does. He's not a huge tea drinker, but he's still the type to try new things on their own terms, so he makes an intrigued little sound from his chest after the first sip. The matter of education on manners, raised again, draws immediate curiosity. "Wow. That's so different from back home! Learning all of those things at once sounds really overwhelming... But obviously if you can manage it, it's really impressive. Even when it comes to ettiquette stuff, there's some things your parents teach you and other things most people just don't really... Need, I guess? So I wouldn't even know where to learn any of it. Mostly it's like... You learn your parent's trade growing up, and then you can pick up other stuff by apprenticing later... Maybe it's just because my home's not in a big city with lots of collegiate-type people, I guess? Other than the professors at the Society anyway."
Chuyao He	Once everyone else has been served, Chuyao pours and whisks his own tea, taking a seat opposite Mag, and placing the whisk and powdered matcha on a tray set atop the table. "Sister Chain and brother Mag are very kind to say so," he says with a little nod of his head. "It pleases this unrefined scholar to think that his education has not gone to waste." "When it comes to learning," he says, taking a sip, "It helps if one loves to do so. That aside, what this lowly scholar has learned, he has learned over many years, setting foundations, building upon those foundations, and, indeed, even re-examining those very foundations, after the benefit of further study, to determine if they are as sound as once they were believed to be. This--the revisiting of old knowledge--is a vital part of learning, just as a carpenter must tear up old and worn planks." "Conversely," he adds with a smile, "One's elders may often be a valuable source of information, for if they have retained their curiosity, they have had more time to indulge it. Although you do not live in any great center of learning, one need not necessarily live in such a place to develop a love of learning. Perhaps Gre could share the benefits of his schooling, his experience, or both, with brother Mag." He falls into a thoughtful silence for a few moments afterwards, following Linnear's gaze towards the vase. "A family heirloom," he says, with a smile that's just a little sad. "A housewarming gift from my parents. May this unrefined scholar ask--what is meant by 'Cyframes?'"
Mag	Mag in particular soaks up Chuyao's words with the sort of attention that must have been learned from years of listening to important lectures and meaningful anecdotes. He has a naturally searching gaze, and doesn't get distracted even while he sips tea. Chain's attention wanders a fair bit more, but her eyes land back on Chuyao often enough to prove she's still listening. Linear... Well, she seems to naturally assume she's not really part of the conversation until proven otherwise, but still looks happy to just be here. "That's true... I used to get annoyed when Gre would lecture me, but eventually it just felt like he was always doing so much for me that... I didn't wanna only listen when he was saying stuff I liked, right? And after I started trying to take the things he said more seriously, he didn't have to be so stern with me anymore, so we communicate a lot better! Like you said, he's been teaching me all kinds of stuff ever since, though I don't really click with everything immediately." Mag seems happy to fondly muse about Gre, appreciative as he is of his more present father-figure these days. Chain, more briefly, does throw in a question. "So obviously you've learned a lot of stuff, but you said martial arts, too? I know some people learn those for exercise reasons, or to work off stress, or whatever. But you seem uh..." Tangibly, she has to fish for phrasing that won't sound like she's taking a jab at Chuyao. "... Highbrow? You do cute tea stuff, and you keep a really nice home, and you talked about poetry and music. Strategy I kinda get if you're building yourself up as an important leader-type, but what's the martial arts stuff for, for you?" Fortunately, asking about Cyframes is simple since there are two in the room now. Mag gestures over his shoulder at the folded-up Magnus, and shimmies his shoulder a little as the third-arm unfolds indicatively. Mounted somewhere underneath his clothing on his back, a plain metal arm connects to the folding-knife-like green casing, which briefly kachunks apart as a white hand close to the size of Mag's head emerges from within, and waves. Chain, meanwhile, just gestures at where she removed her bladed-jetpack device and placed it on the floor nearby. "They're tools from the Prehistoric Civilization, and kinda weapons. They connect to our bodies, and we've been using ours long enough that they're basically a part of us! I actually inherited mine from my dad, but Chain got hers from the Society. We've both had them since we were just becoming teenagers. Each one's pretty unique, I've never seen a duplicate anyway." About the vase, though, Linear looks back Chuyao's way when it comes up. It takes her a moment to make her mind up to just ask what's on her mind, despite it seeming like a tender subject. "... Are you lonely here..?"
Chuyao He	"There are as many reasons to study the martial arts as there are grains of sand. Here, we call the martial world 'the rivers and lakes,'" he says, leaning over to retrieve the whisk, and tracing the characters for 'martial world' into the froth of his tea, and leaning over to show Chain his work. "Because the characters also mean 'river' and 'lake,' but also because of the ebb and flow of the varied <vigilantes \| wandering heroes \| knights-errant>; how they gather in some places, and are pushed between others." Taking another sip, "It is said, 'kung fu has no upper limit,' and in this regard, it is like knowledge and wisdom. One other way in which it is much like knowledge or wisdom, is the importance of what one chooses to do with it. Many in the rivers and lakes use it as a means to pursue what they want; fame, glory, wealth, influence--though there are those who pursue it merely for the value of self-cultivation. This last reason is partly why I have studied it." "The larger part is tied to the rest of my education. Among the Five Virtues are benevolence and righteousness; knowledge of the martial arts is beneficial to the pursuit of both, especially in such tumultuous times as these, and all the moreso in the Multiverse." His gaze follows Mag's direction, and his brow lifts in interest. Lowering his tea, he exclaims, "Ah! A masterwork, one of a kind, of such quality as to have survived for generations beyond its maker." He nods fervently. "This unrefined scholar is familiar with such things. The vase which sister Linear observed is one such thing--and I carry a similar such thing on my own person, though it does not connect to my body so much as serve as an extension." "Such a thing exists..." Holding his bowl in one hand, he strokes his chin and nods. "It would be most interesting to learn more of them, another time. This lowly scholar suspects that a whole afternoon could be spent discussing them." With a smile, he adds, "And he could easily do just that." Linear's question, then, takes him off guard. He struggles to answer it--because the answer is yes--and she can see the debate on his face in the few seconds for which it lasts. "Ah... another of the virtues is sincerity, so, in truth, yes." He takes his last sip, then sets the empty bowl on the table before him. "However... that is not without its benefits. To be completely truthful, though this house was gifted to me, I had as little right to accept it as the minister who gave it to me had to offer it. Not that it was stolen, but, rather..." "I did not speak out, when righteousness would dictate that I should--and a petty man who benefited from my silence bequeathed this place to me, thinking that I was his ally." He closes his eyes, tightly as if he'd swallowed something bitter. After a sigh through his nose, "To invite my parents is filial, and I would gladly have them here. I would just as gladly stay in an empty monument to my mistake that makes a burden of itself." "Perhaps, one morning, I will wake up, and decide that enough time has been spent on maintaining such a monument--that the lesson has been learned, and that it may return to being a home; a burden endured lovingly rather than solemnly. Until then, it serves a purpose--reflection is an important part of bettering one's self." He rises from his seat, then. "This unrefined scholar shall take some time to do exactly that--please make yourselves at home, and stay as long as you like."