[F4-PP] A heart in a jar (Feeding the Enemy) Yui's Grace #2

[Setsuna 0]

With the inkling that she needed to do more than constant training with her katana alone to gain strength as she had always done, she had become painfully aware of those around her that needed her not to be so brash. She knew what she had to do but had little to go on as to how. A flourished clip of her blade in a glowing trail cuts another falling snowflake in twain. "What should I be doing now?" the girl quarries to the sky as if it would answer her back, it was as if her whole perspective had been changed in one afternoon. The entire world had seemingly opened in front of her as if closed eyes were suddenly forced to see through consuming darkness. Despite how different it felt, the snow on the floor she lived and thrived continued to fall endlessly as if nothing had changed.

Setsuna Consumes: Spyglass Charge [1/3] Remaining, Lemon Berry Palmiers (+3 Loot Dice), Familiar Sight (+2 LD for Familiar Taming), Pheromone (+1 CD for Familiar Taming), Yui's Grace 2/2

Effective Familiar LD Mod: +8

Setsuna | HP:520/520 | EN:52/52 | DMG:8 | EVA:3 | LD:6

Spoiler

Setsuna, Creature in the Mist
Level: 26
HP: 520/520
EN: 52/52

Stats:
Damage: 8
Evasion: 3
LD:6

Equipped Gear:
Weapon: Silver Covetous Serpent T1/Rare/Trinket [+2 Loot Dice]
Armor: Cold Fabric Kunoichi Wear T1/Perfect/L.A [+3 Evasion]
Misc: Web Retrieving Gloves (T1/Uncommon/Clothing) +1 Loot Dice

Skills:
One-Handed Curved Sword [Rank 1]
Katana [Rank 5]

Extra Skills:
Disguise

Battle Ready Inventory:
Starter Healing Potions (Heals 50 HP)*3
Teleport Crystal*1

Housing Buffs:
Working: +2 EXP per crafting attempt

Guild Hall Buffs:
Lucrative: Reduce LD needed for Salvage by 5 (10+ for Alchemist crystals, 6+ for everything else). +2 EXP per craft. Rank 9 crafters receive +1 crafting attempt per day. Rank 10 crafters receive +2 crafting attempts per day.
Col Deposit: +5% bonus col from last-hit monster kills and +10% bonus col from treasure chests.

 

Edited August 10, 2020 by Setsuna

[Freyd 0]

"Ah!  Good, Setsuna, you're here.  Let's get started then, shall we?"  Freyd made no introductions, no banter or small talk. Pulling on his gloves and connecting the last of the buckles on his boots, his dark cowl was still draped around his neck so that she could see who he was.  "This familiar won't find itself."   He pulled up the wayward hood into proper position and quickly scanned the surrounding landscape.  "What type were you looking for again?"  

It was all staged, of course.  He'd been tipped off that Setsuna had been delinquent in completing this particular task and thought it might make a suitably unorthodox introduction for a member of the O&I division.  Firm Anima relied on them, and he needed to be able to rely on her, which meant understanding who and what he had to work with.    His own experience finding Persi had been extremely lengthy.  Hopefully, this would wrap up faster, but quality could not be rushed.

Spoiler

Name: Freyd, The Whisper in Shadows
Level: 40
HP: 820/820
EN: 80/80

Stats:
Damage: 15
Mitigation: 48
Evasion: 1
Accuracy: 4
KEEN:1
HLY:2
BLD:12

Equipped Gear:
Weapon: Forgiven Disobedience (T1-2HSS, ACC 1, HOLY 1, BLD 1)
Armor: Skirmisher's Garb (T2-LA, MIT 2, EVA 1)
Misc: Assassin's Cowl (T2-Trinket, ACC 2, KEEN 1)

Skills:
2H Straight Sword [Rank 5]
Light Armor [Rank 4]
Searching [Rank 1]

Extra Skills:
Disguise
Familiar Mastery: Fighter 3
Survival

Mods:
Precision
Finesse - Rank 3
LA Athletics

Battle Ready Inventory:
Starter Healing Potion (50 hp)*3
Teleport Crystals*2
Turkish March *2
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik*5
Super-Duper Snake Sauce*2

Housing Buffs:
Rested: -1 energy cost for the first two expenditures of each combat
Clean: The first time you would suffer DoT damage in a thread, reduce damage taken from DoT each turn by 20% (rounded down)
Hard Working: +2 EXP per crafting attempt and +1 crafting attempt per day
Filling: Increase the effectiveness of a single food item consumed in a thread by +1 T1 slot.
Item Stash: +1 Battle Ready Inventory Slot
Relaxed: Increases out of combat HP regen by (5 * Tier HP) and decreases full energy regen to 2 Out of Combat Posts.
Col Stash: +5% bonus col from monster kills and treasure chests
Multipurpose: Gain +1 to LD, Stealth Rating, Stealth Detection, or Prosperity to one post in a thread. Can be applied after a roll

Guild Hall Buffs:
Lucrative: Reduce LD needed for Salvage by 5 (10+ for Alchemist crystals, 6+ for everything else). +2 EXP per craft. Rank 9 crafters receive +1 crafting attempt per day. Rank 10 crafters receive +2 crafting attempts per day.
Col Deposit: +5% bonus col from last-hit monster kills and +10% bonus col from treasure chests.

Scents of the Wild:

Wedding Ring:

 

[Setsuna 0]

The face seemed to glide in out of nowhere, but she wasn't one to spook. Flipping the katana in her grasp and dragging it into its sheath as the blade slides across its opening. "I have no idea what you are talking about." she comments to the sound of grinding metal, having little to go on who this was but seemed to know her by name. "What is it you want from me?" she spoke with a cold bite to her words, a rather plain demeanor painted on her face. As it turned out she was not as connected in guild matters as of late and as such knew little about the changes in command. A small child with snow easily up to almost her knees, with a glare that was older than she was. Her posture was limp but threatening, her left hand still wrapped around the weapons container holding it at an angle. If she needed it, with no fear she would fight back until the end.

[Freyd 0]

Freyd stilled, his hands still tugging at his left boot, the supple leather slipping slowly through his gloved hands.  His hooded head turned slowly towards her, with his features remaining cloaked in darkness underneath.  She could nearly hear the creasing of his forehead in the accompanying silence.

"I would have thought that obvious: I want you to go get a familiar."

Righting himself slowly, he stood steady yet relaxed as he watched her.

"We haven't met, have we? I would have remembered."  His head tilted like a curious hound confronted with a new potential plaything.  "I'm Freyd, the new captain for Operations & Intelligence division.  They sent the previous guy down to make sandwiches, or something."  His shoulders shrugged, though it was true that Kil had been working on his cooking skill.  "I'm told that you're assigned to that group, AND that you don't yet have a familiar.  So, as my first official act should be to help you correct that oversight."  His tone was completely deadpan, making it impossible tell whether he was serious or poking fun.  It actually seemed like it might be the former.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Freyd - The Whisper in Shadows

[Setsuna 0]

She waited for his complete explanation and it was not until he mentioned his position that her stature seemed to drop from defensive. "I see, then I suppose I need no introduction." Like his despite her inability to see it, her face became absent like a mannequin. "Names are not important, try and keep up..." she spoke with that same bite on the phrase as the frost around her with a pause before a reminder brought the last couple words "my master". Reaching for her throat, she peels up the cloth mask from the folds and covers the lower half of her face with her eyes fixated on the male. As the sleet moved from her skills activation, thickening in obscurity at her back creating a dismal mist of white that started to blot out what little sun was here she took a step against it and her body fades into it. A test to see how capable he was for the position he was given, for she'd follow no weakling.

[Freyd 0]

Ah, so that's how it's going to be.  Good.  We can work with this.

Sword instantly in hand, Freyd slapped the flat of the two-handed white blade against its stout trunk, empowered by a mild sword art.  Its roots protested loudly as every branch shook, dumping a large quantity of snow and ice across a wide area surrounding where Setsuna had disappeared.  While he hoped to reveal her location and at least partially spoil her challenge, the movement was a feint in and of itself.  Persi darted out from his back, her presence equally obscured by the same falling snow the would hopefully upstage Setsuna while placing another piece on the field for future use.

"Names are very important," he replied, "especially depending on whether they were given, chosen, or taken."

Without waiting to see whether her cover was blown, Freyd walked out into the wilderness and let the haze envelop him as well.  The cold troubling him not at all.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Freyd - The Whisper in Shadows

[Setsuna 0]

Like his shadow she followed behind him, she could not shake the sense that perhaps he knew she was there but chose to believe she was concealed. To her surprise, he seemed to force the same sort of haze from a nearby spire of wood long dead. Clever the single word thought rung through her head as she was beginning to have trouble picking him out of his surroundings. This was going to be interesting as the two of them, her slinking behind him as he moved further through the flurry of the floor that was being thickened by her own cardinal given disguise. Seemingly unfazed by the cold, she could already see the possibilities if he was capable of exploiting its presence as he had. The movement however was aimless at least for her, she had little idea what she was after and it made more sense for her to follow Freyd's lead on the matter.

[Freyd 0]

Ice.  More ice.  Oh look, even more ice.  How novel...

He'd already spotted a half dozen elemental creatures wandering aimlessly in the frozen wastes through which they traveled, but all were too large.  During their limited interaction, Freyd had pegged her as cold and calculating, disciplined yet harsh, occasionally to the point of cruelty.  A woman after his own heart, some might say.  Truly, he wasn't so different himself, though she likely came at it for different reasons.  Her whispered reference to him as 'master' had caught his attention.  There was a taunt there, he suspected: an opportunity to earn the title.  It seemed a worthwhile game to play, and the potential benefits were plentiful.  

He'd hardly forgotten their brief interaction when he first attended Firm Anima's guild hall.  Though he didn't know her name, at the time, there was a hardness and severity to the girl which immediately struck him.  She judged people, by strict measures and standards.  It meant that there was a way to earn that trust, albeit likely with constant repetition.  That likely meant that she held herself to the same strict standards.  What familiar would appeal to such a person?  He looked around.  A hard one, and also cold as ice.

[Setsuna 0]

Keeping an eye peeled to the captain that was supposed to be hers, the unsettling mists continued to billow out from her endlessly casting thick obscurity to keep her concealed. Freyd seemed lost in deep thought, the memory of the brief words they had exchanged in the guild hall before she set out to complete her given tasks. Like a predator, only the blue in her eyes continued to glow, the same iced blue as her sword arts when cast. It was a show of the gemini given skill continuing to cast unending, a gift from her jailor that gave her an edge to slay her foes. From a high rise perch with her frame low, squatting on a deadened black wood branch she was pressed into it for maximum coverage she simply watched this captain look into the horizon without a lick of an idea of what he was hoping to gleam from it.

[Freyd 0]

Freyd stood at the very edge of the sheer drop atop the exposed face of an ice ridge, surveying the frozen landscape below.  A long, broad valley lay exposed before him, most of it filled with  translucent crystalline trees made entirely of ice and glittering in the endless play of light reflecting off their infinite surfaces.  Their canopy made a deadly ice-shard briar patch that would shred anyone foolish enough to try falling through it.  "That's where I'd hide something good," he said to himself just loudly enough to carry in the crisp cold air.

Turning to face away from the cliff's edge, he surveyed the terrain from whence he'd come, suspecting that his wayward companion was not far behind.  Persi remained where she would be most useful, cleverly disguised in the shadows.  Closing his eyes, he took a blind step backward and fell as silently as a snowflake down the face of the ridge into the razor woods below.

Except that he didn't.  Freyd had plenty of tricks up his sleeve as well and had taken the time required to study the size of the narrow shelf about ten feet below the top of the ridge.  Using his own doppleganger's trick, he made it appear that he had foolishly stepped to his demise, while, in truth, he now stood concealed on that ledge, watching and waiting patiently for her next move.  He could see movement below the trees.  So there is something down there...

[Setsuna 0]

An obvious call to her, Freyd spoke up loud enough for the forest to hear him clearly. Looking out into the manifested forest of frost, not wood or stone but simply mimicry of such through permafrost with the rays from above cast a glimmer against the water. From above she looked down to Freyd, watching him turn his back to the cliff.

What are you...

Then with a flicker, he begins to fall. The girl's heart sinks for the first time it had in ages, unsure why she cared but had. On instinct alone, she leaps and twirls to the ground causing snow to spray as her legs slide apart to break her fall. A spring toward the ledge as she pirouettes to right her direction for the edge of the cliff unsure the depth, the blizzard of fog around her frame thickens as she barrels through an image of Freyd that convinced even her. Passing through as it swells and returns to shape.

What in the hell?

She turns with her momentum putting her feet first, they fold under her as she connects with one of the spires of ice. Using her arms she slides around it to a branch, looking upward to the cliff as the image plummets into the field of jagged edges below it.

ID# 163978 results: Loot: 4+8=12, Failed to Locate Familiar!

Edited August 7, 2020 by Setsuna

[Freyd 0]

He watched her slide over the ledge with a look of confusion on her face, then land with unsurpassed grace on the limb of one of the crystalline trees below.  Ah, so the frozen heart still beats, does it?  Good.  It needs to be able to do so, when logic fails.  Stepping forward off of his hidden ledge, Freyd had calculated his safe path to grade through the razor-like mesh of icy knives by watching her movements.  He dove feet-first through the narrow opening, landing with a small impact cloud in the fluffy powder below, crouching so soften the blow, his palm hovering an inch above the surface to help maintain his balance.

A void beneath his cowl looked up at her as his hand pointed towards the darkness of the deeper wood, and waited.  She would find what she sought reflected in the wood's frozen heart, whatever that might be.  Billy might have been a bit more literal when he put Freyd onto his mongoose theme, but he'd since come to appreciate that she was so much more about attitude than about form.  Setsuna needed to find the same.  At best, as he discovered more about her, he was learning more about whatever traits their final quarry would need to possess.

[Setsuna 0]

She lands and drops following the sound of Freyd's descent looking to him a bit distraught shown upon her face but there were no words but a sharpened glare. He had not called her actions so she could hardly hold them against him as she peered into the shadowed mask he wore as if seeking his face. He ushered with a raised finger into the false canopies darkened confines, she looks into it and then back to the captain. Setsuna was starting to find an ounce of respect, paying him a nod before she began to descend into its maw. As she turns the silver hair on top of her head sways, the snow beneath her as deep as ever threatening to claim her legs. A soft inhale before she vaults into the treeline to maintain her mobility, not allowing the deep frost from slowing her movements was the ideal.

[Freyd 0]

Interesting tactical choice. 

The crystalline branches offered a less trackable path, but the resonance of her footfalls, however slight, still left a perceptible trail.  Choosing another method of travel would only leave a second means by which they could be tracked, so he followed her chosen course, matching her step for step.  Her speed and agility were impressive, and admittedly better than his own - a strength worthy of note.  

She was better suited to this arena, her pale skin and silver hair blending in with her surroundings.  He could have used the available shadows, but only at a slower pace.  This was a test, not an escape.  In a way, she was asking to dance a most unusual dance to prove his merit for his assigned post.  It was something he might do himself, were their roles reverse, and so could give no objection.  He admired her efficiency, though something more lurked inside that he couldn't quite figure out yet; something fierce.

[Setsuna 0]

She could catch glimpses of Freyd as she lept from tree to tree, keeping pace with her rather well. Perhaps the role he was given was not too farfetched, and she was met with a recall of how careful the master's plans were. He'd not be in the position he was given if he was deemed unfit, but it was a fact she'd still like to confirm for herself. The path continues to darken further and further the deeper they traveled until it revealed a brightly lit glacier in its nexus. A break in the treeline above allowed the sun through, and across the frozen water, it reflected like a mirror. "Strange." Setsuna mutters as she twirls a branch and takes to the floor to obtain a closer look. It was colder then the lake she frequented, noticing that falling flakes from the sky above seemed to freeze solid the moment they made contact with it.

[Freyd 0]

Keeping a watchful while perched on a high, thin sliver of a branch, he looked like a stray raven on the glistening arm of ice swaying slightly in the breeze.  Freyd kept a keen eye out for trouble while he also monitoring Setsuna's progress.  Grateful to be a part of her search, he also knew that it truly needed to be her experience.  Her investment in the process would be essential for success, and she couldn't do that if he was in the way.

"What do you see?"  His voice barely carried on the wind as it reached her ears.  She was crouching to examine something on the surface that had clearly captivated her attention.  

Hopping down through a series of branches, less gracefully than she had, but still managing to avoid a fall or breaking any limbs, he landed nearby and wandered over to investigate.  The cold winds and drifting snow passed over his without registering, as if they had a mutual agreement to ignore each other.

[Setsuna 0]

Setsuna turns to her bag and pulls out a slip of fabric, a bit of leftover material from her work as a tailor. Kneeling into the snow to get a better inspection of what was to happen she holds it above and releases it. It flutters through the air like a leaf until it touches the surface, instantly becoming solid ice as it touches the surface "It's dangerous, it's freezing all it touches." Setsuna comments to Freyd over her shoulder as the clump of frozen cloth lists across the surface like an air hockey puck. It was clearly a threat, but what was bringing about such an oddity remained to be seen. Pulling herself to her feet, Setsuna begins to rim the almost water like surface that looked to be about as lethal as stepping into a pit of magma. She'd do her best to understand it, simply for Firm Anima's sake as it was her job as an Intel agent.

[Freyd 0]

"It might explain how these woods were created."  Freyd replied.  "I don't think I've seen crystals grow like this anywhere else in Aincrad."  Admiring Setsuna's analytical approach, he remained content to stand back and watch her work.  "It can't just be something in the water, or whatever that is, or it would have frozen the pool itself. Therefore, that liquid must be the source of this unusual property.  I wonder what would happen if we poured another liquid into it?"  Looking at the surrounding foliage of frost, he already had a pretty good notion of what the results would likely be.  

"We may need to prod it for a reaction.  Consider attempting to separate a sample."  If it was aware, it could interpret that as an attack.  If it was some sort of reactive goo, they might be able to harness it as a usable weapon.  It was really her call.  

[Setsuna 0]

Taking out an empty potion bottle from some of the numerous she had consumed when working with Firm Anima they had a way of piling up in her inventory. Kneeling down into the snow, she packs it half full of snow with her hands before adding the stopper back into it. "Heat." she comments, simply as a call to what it was she needed looking about the grove.A flash of insight beckons an idea, she clasps her hands together. The girl begins to breath heavily into her palms with it trapped in the pocket she had made. Setsuna seems to do this repeatedly seeming fixated on the attempt of answering Freyd's quarry, but as it turned out it was rather difficult to build enough warmth to get it to melt down into water. A bit frustrated she keeps trying, removing the scarf around her neck and using it as a buffer to trap it in.

[Freyd 0]

Freyd moved to her side, catching the corner of her eye as he kneeled at her side.  Summoning a spy glass from his inventory, he holds it up angling the sunlight through it and into her jar and the collected snow slowly begins to melt.  "Teamwork," he said, by way of explanation.  "This was a good idea.  Let's see if it will provide us with any clues."  

Holding the spy glass still for several minutes, they exercised mutual patience while the dim power of the sun provided them with a small quantity of water.  Setsuna had to add several more handfuls of snow to obtain a suitable quantity.  Dismissing the tool back to storage, he crouched and moved several steps back to give her the space she needed and deserved, and also as a courtesy.  Finding a familiar was an intensely personal moment.  If, indeed there was one to be found here, he would be humbled to witness it, and would not risk interfering.