Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Tetra     The Castle Town alehouse known as *The Charging Steer* is not really a milk bar, of course, but--what with the illustrated grazing heifer on the bar's street placard--it's gained an affectionate nickname among the neighborhood regulars nonetheless. The wooden sign sways placidly in the chilly evening breeze, its incongruity presented entirely straight.

    Inside, it's on the quiet side; it may be a weekend evening, but the 'Milk Bar' doesn't seem to be the target of Sunday carousers. The nickname, perhaps, turns away the boisterous and troublemaking type.

    Even so, the clientele seems quite diverse; it's mostly Hylian and human, from many walks of life, with a few Gorons stressing the seating here and there. Off in one corner, at a table of five, sits a long-nosed, dark-skinned woman with vibrant red hair and a blue jewel on her forehead.

    Tetra sits on her own, clad in a simple, lace-collared red blouse and a black skirt, reading what looks to be a small, cheap, leather-bound book, a tall mug in front of her. She looks up now and then, glancing over at the door. She'll wave Strawberry over when she spies her.
Strawberry Princess      Tetra's seen Strawberry in costume by now- frilly pink-and-yellow pastels, colorful fruit motifs, the whole nine yards. Out of costume, she's practically a different person: she looks like she rolled out of bed an hour ago, tied her hair up with a scrunchy, threw on a hoodie, and walked out the door. Her imposing height is muffled by a habitual slouch; an ugly scar runs up the side of her face and deep into her scalp, ordinarily hidden by the visor.

     The anachronistically-dressed human takes a look around, her gaze lingering on the stranger species for a moment longer than the rest. It's not until she spots Tetra, walks over, and opens her mouth that her identity becomes unmistakable. "Great to see you here, Tetra. Sorry, I- had to get cleaned up after work today." That hoarse, hesitating voice is recognizable anywhere. There are signs, too, on closer examination: the way her hands are 'sunburned' pink by radiation; her eyes, a little distant and unfocused in that way soldiers' sometimes are.

     "What's that you're reading? If it's... alright to ask." She tries to get a look at the cover as she sits down. For some reason, that piques her curiosity more than the drink.
Tetra     Tetra gives a small, warm smile as she spies Strawberry, waving the girl over.She shakes her head at the apology.

    "No, no, it's all right. I wasn't waiting long," she reassures, tucking a bookmark into the volume and setting it down. The book is entitled 'Rendezvous at Pocari', and there's an imprint beneath the title of two men clashing swords.

    "It's just a novel I picked up yesterday. Knightly intrigue and combat..." She gestures dismissively at it, shaking her head with a grin. "It's shlock. But... well, I suppose I can't even call it a /guilty/ pleasure, now. I really just love these." A laugh, and she takes a drink while she looks over her companion. "What would you like to drink?" she asks, waving over the barman. "I'll pay. It's me who invited you out, after all!"
Strawberry Princess      "Oh, thank you, Tetra! I'll..." She falters, having no idea what is or isn't burdensomely expensive in this world- or what they even have. "I usually get whatever's on sale at the ABC store," Strawberry finishes with a sheepish smile. "Whatever you're having. I'd like one of those, I think."

     Her eyes drift down to the book. She purses her lips at the mention of intrigue and combat, but then brushes it off with a little laugh! "There's nothing wrong with... liking what you like, I think. I'd die if people knew the stuff I watch. As long as it makes you happy. But..."

     She trails off for a second, looking around the room at all the strange faces again, before finding her train of thought once more. "But aren't you an adventurer, Tetra? I'd have thought you'd, you know, get enough of that. I can't stand magical girl shows, you know? Don't you have an exciting life?"
Tetra     Tetra laughs a little. "I can relate. I get tired of fancy drinks, after a while..." The barman comes over, and Tetra asks him to bring a pitcher of beer and a second mug.

    She follows Strawberry's eyes as she scans the room, lifting an eyebrow at the girl's question. "Well, yes, I do. But..." She purses her lips in thought, touching a finger to her cheek. "I suppose things wouldn't have gone this way for you... but... for me, the stories came first. I found a stack of chivalric romance and sword-and-sorcery stories when I was ten, and... I decided I wanted to be like the heroes from those." She smiles warmly, a quiet laugh on her lips.

    "My favorite is 'Dame Althea, Knight of Farore'. It's a romance, about a hundred years old. It's about a knight-errant who traveled Hyrule to prove her virtue and right wrongs in the name of the Goddess of Courage." She bites her lip. "... Probably should stop before I start telling you the whole book. I've damn near got it memorized, I think."

    She leans back again, taking a gulp of her beer. The barman arrives with a glass pitcher and a mug, as asked. Tetra thanks him. "What about you?" Her smile returns to that slight, vaguely mischevious grin. "Did you have anything like that, as a child? Something that grabbed you, latched onto your imagination and didn't let go?"
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry takes a little sip of the beer, but evidently it meets her approval- pretty soon she's swigging it with a little bit more enthusiasm than you're supposed to, though it isn't hitting her yet. "And that's why you started doing... this. All of this. That's- I think that's good, Tetra. Most people sort of... let go, of those dreams. When life happens, and things get difficult. Holding onto them, living them, becoming... important- you're brave for that, I think. You're a brave person."

     Her eyes get a little more distant when Tetra hits her with the question, though. She reciprocates the grin with a feeble smile, but answers with that near-painful earnestness of hers anyway. "Sort of," she says. "I... My family, we were always poor. Most kids, they think about- about being an astronaut, or a doctor. But even when I was little, I knew- people like me don't turn out to be special. Even before you can... put words to it. You know."

     Her voice gets a little more hoarse, but she continues. "And when I was twelve, I turned out to be 'special' anyway. Sometimes that's just how it is. You know? It was hard. But it... it was the dream I didn't know I had." Strawberry does her best to smile, but the muscles in her face don't quite cooperate with making it convincing. "Once you've been important... it's hard to let go of responsibility again. You feel that weight, don't you?"
Tetra     Tetra nods lightly, and that smile grows. Her cheeks and ears flush pink. "Yeah. It's..." She exhales through her nose. "It's made things difficult, sometimes. But it's been worth it. Especially since Ganondorf showed up."

    She listens silently, hands in her lap, nodding in understanding. For a princess, growing up in the lap of luxury, these things are a bit foreign. She doesn't understand, quite, where Strawberry comes from... but she's seen it. She gets it.

    "Yeah. You get used to being the pillar... knowing you can do something, right? Something big, something palpable. Change lives for the better..." Her eyebrows drop, and she frowns, glancing into her beer. "I've never, um... lost power, the way you did. But... I know what it's like to feel trapped, like that." She looks back up at Strawberry. "When you have the power to change things, to *do* things, and solve problems... but suddenly, nothing in your toolbox works. You're in a situation where you know you should have the answer, but you don't."

    The adventurer takes a gulp, and sets down her mug. "Nobody likes feeling helpless... especially when we're used to being the ones who can help." She flashes a small, bittersweet smile.
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry meets Tetra's eyes again, over her mug. Her face settles back into a slight grimace after the swig. If she picks up on the fact that Tetra can't quite relate, it doesn't show. "Yeah," she says, finally. "'Trapped' is... a word. It was the only way I knew how to be special. When that went away, I wasn't anybody. So..." She lifts her shoulders in a tight, chagrined shrug. The fact that she still goes by Strawberry Princess in lieu of a 'real' name says volumes in itself. "You know."

     There's a short pause while she finishes her beer, then refills the mug. "But. That's enough about that, I think." She straightens up in her chair, takes a deep breath as if to expunge lingering ghosts, and slumps back forwards to rest her chin on her hand casually. "You're changing things, aren't you? 'Adventurer' is a word for... someone with a certain kind of ambition."

     "You want to change the world, or protect something. Otherwise, you wouldn't care about... this. Not with enough passion to really chase it, I think. What's your dream world look like, Tetra? What do you want to change?"
Tetra     Tetra refills her mug in kind, thinking for a moment. "I'm guessing you've heard at least a bit about the crisis here, with Ganondorf. It's been... hard to miss, on the radio." She looks at the table, picking at a sliver at the edge a couple of times. "I want to fix our ancestors' mistakes. I want a world where the Gerudo have a place to live that isn't horrifyingly cursed, and so they aren't considered thieves and liars."

    "But for all its problems, all the things we did wrong and still do wrong... I want Hyrule here to be safe, too. We're under attack by someone with legitimate grievances, but someone who wants to conquer us and destroy us for them. And I hope we can bring him back from where he is, but..."

    She shakes her head, laughing awkwardly. "Sorry. I don't know how much of this you've even been following. It's... I'm sure you don't need a history lesson tonight." She takes a drink. "Bottom line is... things are fucked here. And I want to make up for my people's wrongs, and keep them safe."
Strawberry Princess      "I've heard a little bit," Strawberry replies hesitantly, nodding along with a kind of sympathetic grimace. "That's okay. It sounds... I don't want to say 'familiar'. But my Earth, it's- we've had problems too. Nations exploit each other. Mostly... mostly my nation, doing the exploiting. And then there were magical girls, so- a rebalancing. Reckoning. Probably only the need to band together against monsters stopped us from tearing each other apart. I... it's hard to say they'd have been wrong, if they had."

     "There's a lot of weight on you," she adds, straightening up more seriously and folding her hands in her lap. "There isn't an easy solution. Not from the spot you're in. But you want to find the least bad one, instead of despairing, or... or just sweeping it under the rug, and pretending like they deserve it. You're a good person, I think."

     She gives that statement space by taking another few gulps from her beer, setting it back down on the table with a heavy thunk. She smiles again, insofar as she can. "Thank you, Tetra. For trying your best. If everyone did that, we'd... we might be okay."
Tetra     Tetra lets out a sigh, and nods. "... I still can't figure out whether it's encouraging or depressing to find out the rest of the multiverse has the same problems." A wry, half-cocked grin at that. "Thank you, too. Truly. Seeing you out there... doing what you're doing, keeping your attitude as well as you can... it's heartening. After all you've been through... well, it gives me a bit of hope for myself."

    "I suspect it's difficult from any spot... I've discussed solutions to the problem of the Gerudo, and none of them seem like they'd be any easier with the power of the crown. Though I suppose they wouldn't call it a crisis if the solutions were easy." She laughs at that.

    Tetra then raises her mug, still grinning. "To our best, then. May it always be enough when it matters most."
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry raises hers back, laughing a little- well, it's probably a laugh. Some kind of sharp, soundless exhalation. "To our best," she replies, her voice cracking a little, not used to the hopeful tone she's putting it through. "May we..." Strawberry struggles, for just a moment, to find suitable words. "... Live up to the hope others place in us."

     "Conquest, exploitation, scarcity. If anything's a constant evil, out in the Multiverse... it's probably those. Hard to see a way to be free of them. Harder, to... to make it happen. That's not something I can just... shoot, or banish, or overcome. I used to think that meant it wasn't my problem. Now I don't think that's true. I don't have the answers. You don't, either. But if we don't try..."

     She trails off, looking down at her beer again. Then she laughs a laugh that almost seems sincere and knocks it back. What's unspoken is: 'Who will?'