solnet | ~♥TWO♥~

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~♥TWO♥~

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Hey there, ho there! This is you big, bad neighborhood ladykilling master, Masaomi Kida, reporting in ver the airwaves to give you some smooth beats. And by beats, I of course mean how infallible my advice is in the first place! [ Even if that joke isn't at all good, the man laughs at it anyway, the laugh trailing off so he can go on to ] Anyway, anyway, you're not listening to Kida Radio, and the topic on hand today is going to be one important to as any as long as we're locked away in this castle. Namely, staying in shape! It's not just about looking good for your dates, folks! With food wobbling wildly last month and shadows creeping around ready to pick a fight with us, you might've almost thought that was the last thing!

[ He snaps his fingers and, ] Weeell, unless you got connected to someone else this month and found that you're embarrassed you put on a kilogram or two and they could suddenly feel it. Or maybe you're having a hard time climbing the huge amount of stairs we've got here, or swinging on the chains out here deeper in the castle! Or you got stuck in a door this month and you're like "wow, my muscles can't really have just paused on me like that, right?

Take it from me, there's a lot of reasons to try to keep nourished, and also to be ready for a fight if that's your style! But me? Glad you asked! I've not found any good way to keep up the weight routine I used to do in the absence of a proper gym, but keeping up a schedule of a long log around the alter room, some personal crunches and stretching, and a fair bit of sparring with my best girl, I'm working up a real sweat these days. And I don't just mean because I'm rooming with a pretty young thing! [ Cue the laugh track. Or rather, him laughing at his own joke again ]

So come on, while I've still got a big head [ And despite this being a "radio" broadcast, he briefly flips on the video so people can get the joke - he's been glitched into Big Head Mode and looks throughly ridiculous right now. He waves once, clearly somewhere up by the garden, and then clicks off the video ] let's make good on my own ego! Anyone looking for a new sparring partner? Or maybe some other gorgeous gals want to help me work up a sweat - [ a distinct pause, and then a punchline ] by running with me, of course!

[ He doesn't laugh at this joke, but he does clap his hands at it ]

But okay, okay, I'll be here until the Queen's defeated, so you can expect some more Kida Radio segments, maybe next time with some special guests or it being recorded in a replay-happy format. For now though, listeners, let's get some call ins! How do you guys keep in shape? Have you had any particularly special experiences of your own in the last few weeks? Come and tell you old friend, the loyal righteous vassal, Masaomi Kida, and we can make you a new rising star here on Kiiiiida Radio!

Over and out.

[ ... So he knew he was being silly, sue him. It seemed like a good way to pass the time while his head was too big to not really go through the door back down the residential floors without rubbing against the walls. ]

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I believe I'm allowed to be proud of those accomplishments.

Only if you can tell a story about them!

[Talking about Mordremoth so soon after it happened...

That was still a raw feeling in her chest, an ache over the people that were lost during that. Losses happened no matter what and Zhiatan was absolutely no exception, but there was at least a level of distance from that mess now.]

Which one would you like to hear about then? The dragon of the undead or the dragon of the jungle?

Oh, if you give a man options, it's got to be the jungle, right? It sounds like the more harrowing [ And less painful, less reminiscent of Vaskoth ] adventure!

[Less painful for him maybe.

But she knows she'll never move forward if she keeps pretending that didn't happen.]

Harrowing is one way of putting it, yes. For all the destruction and death Zhiatan caused, Mordremoth certainly kept us on our toes far more. We were on his home terf, though, and not by choice.

[She hums softly to herself for a moment, wondering where to start.]

We knew he was a problem a few years ago, when he was woken far sooner than anyone expected him to be.

[Thanks for that, Scarlet.]

Vines started popping up all over Tyria, going after the magical energy in Waypoints and basically trashing whatever they could get their spikes on. It was a mess...

[A pause, a hard swallow. Jory's sister, Belinda... that was an expression Ana never wanted to see on the woman's face ever again. It was so painful to watch her mourn mere minutes after seeing her sister again.]

The Pact tried to go in to the jungle to deal with the problem at it's source, but that wound up being an awful idea. The Sylvari, they were actually minions of Modremoth, but we didn't know it. Not until hundreds of them suddenly turned on their own allies on the airships and caused them to crash in to the very jungle they were trying to get it.

[Another pause, then softly:]

We lost a lot of friends that day...

[ Hey man, there is no one in any world who hears jungle or zombie and assumes that the jungle one is worse than the zombie one. That's just some basic logic. That said, despite his irreverent tone this whole time, he does allow himself to quiet down and listen to her story with the seriousness it probably deserves.

Because, after all.

It's something real to her. ]

Aaaah. That's a rough way for things to start out.

[ He can only barely follow it though. After all, there's a lot of names and terms he had no way to be familiar with. Still his tone sounds sincere. He did want to pay attention to it all. ]

[They would be here all day if she had to give a disclaimer for every single word that's foreign to him, but she's hoping at least that the context around it gets some of the point across.

That said, she'll answer any questions he has, too.]

"Rough way to start out" tends to be the status quo where I'm from...

[She says it with a sigh, knowing that for every threat they bring down, another one is going to rise in it's place.]

In any case, we eventually had to go in to the jungle to find our friends, alive or dead, and decide what to do. It wasn't as if we could just retreat and regroup - the longer we waited the more danger the rest of the world was going to be in.

We found more alive than we were expecting, at least. It helped with establishing camps. The further in to the jungle we pushed, though, the worse it got. One of the people with us, Braham, his mother was on one of the airships that crashed. We found her, but... she was killed shortly after. That was...

[Horrible. A scene that still played in her nightmares.]

I wish I'd known what to do to help him after that, but all he could to do was take her body back home. The rest of us had to go on without him, and we finally did find what we needed to take Mordremoth down.

We had to go in to his mind.

Like in the spiritual sense, or some literal brain stomping?

[ Still, that's... quite the way to defeat a dragon.

He keeps up his trying to be attentive thing. It's odd. Her story is disjointed - maybe she's still processing it. ]

Mostly spiritual?

[She is. It's still relatively fresh in her mind, which is saying something given that she's been through two Elder Dragons in less than five years.]

We still... felt everything. If I hadn't known what I was going in to it could have easily tricked me in to thinking I was really there. It doesn't help that he was just as easily able to see what was in our minds in turn - he used that against us, trying to turn us against one another and even bringing out memories of those we've lost.

[That's a reminder she didn't really need, but here we are. She pauses to swallow hard, trying to pretend like she didn't still hear Tybalt and Eir's voices saying things they never would have in life.

Okay maybe she should just... skip the rest of the story, because breaking down in to tears over how it really ended is not ideal right now.]

A-anyway, we won, though he certainly left us one colossal mess to clean up.

[ Ha...h.

He frowned a little, but then put a smile back onto his lips. He's not ignorant, and he's not overly lacking in tact. And so he hums a bit on his end before he grins that much wider and makes a joke- ]

Spiritual dragon brain matter must really stain everything! My deepest sympathies!

. . .

[Oh Gods.

That should not have made her laugh.

But it did, and she can't help but snort into her hand before breaking out into raucous laughter. There's a thud on her end of things, the woman nearly toppling out of her chair before she's able to compose herself.]

Haa... i-it does... it really does.

I'd bet! I've never had the experience, buuuut I can say that it's pretty messy when you fight a zombie horde!

[ He'll be fair. He can talk about Vaskoth. ... Maybe. ]

They're just so gross! I'd rather face a thousand Etins than have to deal with getting zombie gunk out of my armor again.

Wahahaha!! I don't even know what an Ettin is, but I might even agree! The cultists are often a better foe than those damned souls! And, if anything, these Shadows seem even better in this field.

Think a large, green skinned troll with two heads. They're not pleasant to look at or deal with.

[A beat, then:]

You've had to deal with cultists?

[ Honestly, he's not 100% sure what a troll for her looks like given how many different trolls there are around, but he doesn't comment on it. Instead, ]

A whole army of winged cultists, you got it.

[Well, there are actual trolls, and ettins, aside from having two heads, are more like fat green ones than the cave dwelling ones she's used to seeing, but that's just splitting hairs at this point.]

Cultists are the absolute worst. The White Mantle was responsible for the death of my birth parents, and even though I was really no threat to them they decided to come after me and my brother when we were older. It was the dumbest thing ever.

[ . . . That feels like a strangely intimate detail to be thrown out so flippantly. For a brief moment, he hesitates. But then he pushes past it, a lazy grin coming back across his features a he does. And finally, he leans his chin against his palm. ]

Maaah, mah, sounds like it. In my case, it's more that I got mixed up in someone else's conflict, but the cultists did want to kill everyone, so I can't help it.

[Actually in Tyria it's... sort of just a day that ends in Y. If it's not cultists, it's dragons, if it's not dragons, it's ... you get the picture.]

Oh, gross. It's even worse when it's not even your battle. Sorry to hear you had to deal with that.

In a way, it became ours when we got stuck there, buuut, well, yeah.

Not the best.

That's to be expected, I think. When it's right there on your doorstep it's difficult to just ignore.

[Basically the entirety of Tyrian history right there. Not at all easy to ignore a giant elder dragon coming to wreak havoc on your world when it's right there.]

I... guess this isn't much better, is it? I don't blame Ozuma for asking for help but it is making this world's problems ours.

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~♥TWO♥~

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