She Blinded Me With Science [Jin/Mentor]

[Capsule]

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741

♪ ♫♪:
She Blinded Me With Science

✏:
Gonna school ya in potions, boyo.

@:
Jin

Capsule was unsure of how she got roped into this crafting workshop in St. Pancras Station, but it was not like she had anything better to do with her time. She also had no clue how to escape from this newfound "responsibility," either. Her owl, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had returned two weeks ago with an important looking letter and official seal. The letter was written in impressively neat and fancy lettering, the gist being that she was a "valued member of the community," and it was her duty to share her expertise and knowledge with the lower levelled Pharmacists. How the person who commissioned the Scribe to write the letter to her knew where she lived was rather horrifying. She did not shy away from the requested (read: ordered) meeting that was scheduled the following day, and was too chicken shit to contest her involvement. The idea of teaching made the young woman incredibly nervous, so nervous that-

"Capsule!" A tinny voice sounded from miles away. It was easy enough to ignore, if one were to close their eyes and - "CAPSULE!" Something dug into her shoulder and nipped at the side of her head. "Wake up!"

"Ungh… What? What's going on?" Wasn't she just fretting over today? Why was she on the floor? "Ah!" Fiver, her Frenmic Rabbit, squealed in alarm as he went sailing off of Capsule's chest. The redheaded Enchanter quickly scrambled to her feet, using her shoddy little booth for stabilization. Did she seriously just faint?! Now?! Here?! Capsule groaned and clasped her hands to her face. She hoped that no one saw that embarrassing little moment. What should concern her more, however, was how dinky her booth was in comparison to her neighbor's, a fruity little man with an obnoxious… everything about him was obnoxious - from the way he talked, to his incessant need to cover everything in doilies. Capsule glanced behind her, checking for any signs of a small cushion with an embroidered doily. Pierre was weird enough tuck such a monstrosity under someone's dozing head.

"Capsule! Come on!" Fiver was nudging her leg. Whatever it was, it must be urgent. "The event starts in an hour, and your table isn't set up yet." Okay, now it was time to panic - "Now's not the time to panic!"

Despite the rabbit's concerns, Capsule wasted two minutes blankly in space. They were located in one of the better areas of the St. Pancras Station, in a large building commandeered by Adventurers that shared her crafting class. The building itself was abuzz with activity. Pharmacists of various levels, classes and races strolled about, setting up tables and equipment. Some of the tables held decorated signs to entice those who liked shiny things. This did nothing to help Capsule's self-consciousness. Her table was such crap, and the sign she had spent the better part of last night making was no better. She could not think of a slogan that was not cheesy or cringe worthy, so hers read "CAPSULE'S STAND." It was simple and clean, keyword being "was." Someone, likely that tubby asshole Pierre, had scribbled the word "SCRUB" in between CAPSULE and STAND. "CAPSULE'S SCRUB STAND" was the title that everyone would see when they approached her booth.

Oh, it was on. If Chibi Maya-chan was equipped right now (and she wasn't because she would taint the air around her), she would be spewing venomous threats and tips into Capsule's ear. Capsule decided to be a pest and use Inversion on the man while he was carrying a cauldron loaded with supplies. The girl behind him shrieked as man and pot combined barreled into her. There was a satisfying clang as Pierre fell on top of his own cauldron, which was no doubt dented in the process. While people swarmed around to stare or help the man up, Capsule chuckled. Inversion by itself caused no damage; the most it did was change a person's trajectory, and possibly even trip them. It was perfect for pulling pranks or confusing enemies.

Now that she had achieved some small scaled revenge, Capsule went back to work on her booth. Key ingredients, like herbs, went to the left in a neat pile, and beakers and vials, etc., went to the right. Fiver shuffled around in front, a doily perched atop his head as he struggled to grab passerby's attention. Pierre's not-so-crummy little stand did not have that going for it.

coded by benetnasch of ET

[Jin]

She Blinded Him With Science
- - - - - - - - - -

Jin was wondering how he’d gotten roped into joining in on this particular event anyways. He had never been one for giant crowds to begin with, and the letter he’d received detailing the appearance of the mentorship festival had definitely not been part of mailing order he’d set up. Hell, he didn’t even have a house yet and somehow word had gotten around to him. Most nights he just slept inside Londinium, but outside any of the buildings. It wasn’t like it was hard to find any sort of covering to protect him from the hazards presented by the weather. Wind and rain were the least of his worries, anyways. He was still on the path to gathering as much experience in the areas allotted to him as possible.

Maybe not everyone would be completely intolerable in this crowd, anyways. He’d just need to find a pharmacist – not anyone particularly special, just someone to get him started. He couldn’t deal with anyone particularly boisterous, and he wasn’t going to meet up with anyone who was so far beyond his level that they’d just brush him off as some nobody who wasn’t going to get anywhere with the trade if they weren’t already at a high level or something.

Glancing at the small map he’d been given upon entering the grounds where the event would be taking place, Jin noted that all the pharmacists would be gathered in St. Pancras Station. Heading there was the obvious choice, as he wasn’t going to suddenly develop a new crafting subclass all of a sudden. How bad could this mentoring thing be? The worst that could happen would be rejection, and that wasn’t all that hard to deal with for a guy that played on his own more often than not.

Wait, scratch that, the worst that could happen would be them forcing him to work on his detox skill by cramming poisons down his throat for the rest of the day. He didn’t know if he wanted to deal with that, or even if he could stop is seeing as they could probably paralyze him without much issue if they were there to be a mentor for the lower leveled players. Jin was suddenly influenced with the thought that it might be best to just turn around and head back home. He could figure out the basics of alchemy from the player’s guide, after all. He really didn’t need anyone to help him grind his levels up high enough to be respectable.

Still, finding someone who wasn’t crazy or just intolerable shouldn’t have been too hard. Someone who knew what they knew and appreciated the fact that other people didn’t need to be insulted for lack of experience in a specific area had to be around here somewhere.

His eyes glanced to and fro around the area, looking from booth to booth of people with concoctions and brews attempting to draw in the inexperienced and the easily impressed. He didn’t want something like that. They were all gussied up with glitter and bubbling flasks and…doilies? To hell with that, he just wanted something simple.

Something like Capsule’s Scrub Stand. The “Scrub” part was very obviously tacked on in the middle by someone, probably one of the neighboring stands. It was the sort of things people did to joke around and poke fun at those who didn’t feel the need to show off their talents or waste their time on things like being social, and if the more or less neutral expression on the redhead’s – presumably Capsule’s – face was anything to go off of, they were none too thrilled about partaking in this whole affair.

She was perfect.

“Hey,” Jin said in a level tone as he approached. “You looking for a mentee? I haven’t really flexed the ol’ pharmacist muscle yet, and I’m looking into trying it out and getting it to be useful. Mind teaching me a thing or two?”

At Jin’s choice, he heard the plump man off to his side snort in conceit. A small smirk appeared on Jin’s face, and if he were one for starting a commotion, he would have looked over at the man. However, the best course of action for Jin, who didn’t want anything too stupid happening to him today, was to simply ignore him save for a slight tilt of the head in Pierre’s direction and the mouthing of the word “doilies” with a questioning quirk of this brow.

The small chuckle was hopefully inaudible to the man.

- - - - - - - - - -

Words (post): 754
Words (quest): 754

Credit to Jin of Elder Tale.

[Capsule]

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∝:
760

♪ ♫♪:
Don't Move

✏:
Managed to post before I had to skedaddle.

@:
Jin

Okay, so Fiver's patented rain dance was not drawing in the crowd like she'd expected. The people that stopped by were mostly interested in Fiver's antics, and aside from sideways glances at his owner, Capsule was ignored. Choosing uniformity over flashiness may have screwed her over, but there was bound to be someone with Spartan tastes. It was just the potion making and learning experience that mattered, right? At any rate, it was far too soon to throw in the towel, and seeing Pierre alone at his table made her feel better about the situation.

Mr. Doily stiffened up when a redheaded boy strayed near their tables. Pierre gave her a look. She shot him one back. Fiver stood to attention, whiskers twitching. Unless the redheaded Sorcerer (and possibly of the Ritual race?) was a curious and sensitive lad looking for someone to come out to, he would approach Capsule's table and avoid Pierre's like the plague. She was a girl, and even she didn't like… 'Bleh, doilies.' If Jin wasn't gazing in her direction, she would have made a face at Pierre, which turned out to be completely unnecessary.

Jin picked her table.

Capsule resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at her portly and oddly feminine neighbor, who was busy muttering something in French. "Why yes, I am looking for someone to mentor." It was so hard not to make a jab at Pierre, and his little huff of disgust. Almost. "Some people have weird hobbies," she said when Jin mentioned the doilies, not caring if Pierre overheard. Judging from the redness of his face, he probably did… and began knitting another doily to vent his frustrations. Capsule glanced at Jin and shrugged. Moving on now.

His job done, Fiver shuffled around the other side of the table to curl up beside Capsule's feet. Capsule herself wasn't entirely too sure how this mentoring thing was supposed to go, so she was going to wing it and hope for the best. How to segue…? "So, Jin!" That was a horrible freaking segue. "We could start with the basics, like medicinal formulas or medicinal tablets, but everyone and their mother will be making those today. I think it would be fun to make something a little unorthodox, like my patented sleeping potion-" There was a little scoff from Pierre's table. Capsule chose to ignore him and carry on. "Weak Goblin Scouts are actually weak to the sleep debuff, so this potion will come in handy if you ever find yourself dealing with them." It was good for other things as well, being liquid ruffies and all, but Capsule kept mum on that part.

Pierre was wearing a slight sneer when she chanced a look in his direction, which grew bigger when he spotted the flower pots in Capsule's hands. These were her… portable fire hazards "firing pits". She placed one in front of her, and the other in front of Jin. Inside the ceramic pots were pieces of kindling, arranged in a way to easily hold the beakers they would be using. Sure they were odd, but preferable to lugging around cauldrons or pots. "These are for the last few steps, of course. You'll have to chop up one of these -" she slid a (valerian) root over to Jin. "And these." An impure solvent and tablet were placed beside the powerfully sedative root. She also lent the boy one of her old chopping knives, and unsheathed her kukri for her personal use.

"The first step is really simple. You just need to finely chop up your root and add it to your -" Capsule slapped an open palm to her face. Mortar and pestle were going to be her next few words, but she had forgotten to hand them out. The set she shoved over to Jin was her old one, and the one she kept for herself the newer one gained from a crafting quest in Sarum. "Anyway. Once you chop that up, you grind it into powder." That step was fairly easy, as well.

To demonstrate these first two steps, Capsule dismantled her root, careful not to cut towards herself with the large blade. A smaller knife may have been preferable, but the Enchanter was the sort to make things difficult (plus, it was sharper than the dull knife she gave Jin), and weeks of practice ensured that she was less likely to nick herself. She only took her eyes off of her work to gauge how Jin was faring, or if he had any questions.

coded by benetnasch of ET

[Jin]

She Blinded him with Science
- - - - - - - - - -

Jin stared curiously at the man who had applied himself to hastily crafting another doily. It was…how would Jin put this in a way that seemed at least a little delicate? Kind of pathetic. What was he trying to do, anyways? Snare little girls into some kind of complicated trap you’d only find in the pages of a doujinshi? If that was the kind of character he could expect from a lander, he’d have to find some way of dealing with them more…decisively.

Of course, a big spree of murders all originating from the center of town and killing every NPC wouldn’t probably make the best name for the orange haired sorcerer. He’d probably be better off finding someone who could take advantage of any sort of flaw in the AI that was present and bend the landers to their whim. Though, the ethics of that were just as questionable – if not more so – than the plan to slaughter them all. Either way, the doily maker was probably just a strange character obsessed with handicrafts of sorts. What he thought looked nice was none of Jin’s business.

Jin knew pharmacists would be the primary sources for medicines and the like in Elder Tale, but he wasn’t all that interested in being a healer or a medicine man. Actually, he was more interested in the combat mechanics to the drugs that could be made, and that’s exactly what Capsule went for first. It looked like he made the right choice after all.

Pierre’s scoff was completely ignored as Jin continued to listen to the pharmacist across from him. He’d known that weaker goblins were weak to certain debuffs, but seeing as he’d never dabbled much in non-combat oriented classes, he’d missed out on exactly who was weak to what. This was already proving to be helpful seeing as assembling an arsenal of drugs to use rather than throwing himself into the heat of a battle he might not be able to win without some kind of advantage. If he could slip a drug on an enemy or craft some sort of poison or other, he’d have a better lot in most any encounter.

”I’d say a sleeping potion is acceptable. Preferable, even,” Jin responded, flashing a lopsided grin in Capsule’s direction just as she pulled out the ceramic pots. He’d thought that all pharmacists were stuck using cauldrons and the like, but these almost seemed closer to Bunsen burners, sort of like what he’d used in Chemistry last year in high school. So far, Jin liked this one’s style.

Taking the knife, Jin began to quite literally hack away at his task. The fact that the knife wasn’t the sharpest of tools frustrated Jin a little bit frustrated, but he made up for the lack of quality by forcing the small blade through the somewhat brittle root. He was going to grind everything into powder once the pieces got at all small enough anyways. Hopefully he’d be able to finish within enough time that Capsule wasn’t kept waiting on him, and more hopefully he’d avoid nicking himself with the knife too many times with the knife.

She noticed that Capsule was paying more attention to him than to her own work, and the sudden observation made him redouble his efforts into quickly dicing up the root. His fingers be damned, the odd cut or two he obtained in picking up the pace would heal with time. He’d find some sort of bandage somewhere, and he was being careful not to let his work suffer for his mistakes.

”Always was a butterfingers. I suppose that’s why the baseball and football lessons dropped after the first month,” Jin muttered under his breath, sweeping his less than happy memories under the rug where they belonged after that momentary slip. He had to remember that in this world John Smith had never existed. There was only Jin.

Picking up the mortar and pestle, Jin began to scoop the pieces up and prepare to grind them into the required powder, but stopped himself at the last second. There wouldn’t be as much room for error in this sort of a system. If the grinding wasn’t done correctly, the end product might not even be useful. There was no telling how many chances that Capsule would give him another chance either, and he wasn’t going to waste her materials anyways.

”This look about ready to head to the second step?” the boy asked, holding up the bowl up for her to look at the pieces which measured about a quarter centimeter in diameter each.

- - - - - - - - - -

Words (post): 767
Words (quest): 1521

Credit to Jin of Elder Tale.

[Capsule]

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∝:
752

♪ ♫♪:
Somewhere Only We Know

✏:
So much grinding.

@:
Jin

Capsule winced when her mentee cut himself with the crummy little knife. She had fallen prey to the same thing in her early days, though the worse was with her kukri. Cutting yourself with a level ten blade as a squishier class was… it was downright painful. She considered giving him a few pointers, but that would probably unnerve him even more. They were only small cuts, anyway. "It gets better," she simply said. Her ears did not miss the comment on sports - something about baseball and football. 'An American?' Other than what she saw on tv, the mention of America most often brought up the image of a bipedal eagle, decked out in Daisy Dukes, sporting the country's flag as a cape, a pitcher's cap in one hand, an apple pie in another, and a maple syrup chugging beaver as a "hat". Oh, and the eagle was fat, too. America was apparently a rather fat country, despite all the rail thin runway models and celebrities. Stereotypes are weird.

She flicked a suspicious chunk of root away from her pile, which Fiver abandoned his spot by her feet to inspect. The rabbit stood up on its hind legs to squint up at the table, where the questionable morsel rested just out of his reach. She was pretty sure that he would not want to eat that, but knocked it over regardless. The rabbit sniffed and nipped at the piece of root, and scooped it up between its teeth. ’…There’s no accounting for taste, I guess.’

The rabbit wrinkled his nose at her, and slightly turned his head towards Pierre’s table. The man had somehow managed to snag a mentee, a sinewy older woman with oversized spectacles, tattoos and two much jewelry. She seemed like the sort that would be best described as a hippie, and possibly taught yoga classes and reeked of patchouli. If Pierre did not look like he had something disgusting permanently placed above his upper lip, Capsule would have assumed the latter was true.

Fiver, being the naughty little rabbit he was, hopped towards and under the neighboring table. He dropped the piece of root on the floor, seized a discard doily, wrapped it around the root, and tucked the lot into the hippie’s satchel. She didn’t even to pretend to understand what the rabbit was up to, but any teasing directed at the man was fine with her. Fiver hopped back unseen, and flopped back onto Capsule’s feet.

Using the dull side of her knife, Capsule pushed the chopped bits together and collected them, stashing them in the center of her mortar. Watching over Fiver’s antics left her a little behind, but before she could pick up her pestle and get to grinding, Jin offered his mortar for observation. She poked at the roots with a finger. ”Hm… That ought to be good enough. Valerian isn’t as thick as ginger.” That and the knife he was using made finely cutting anything a hassle. Had it been ginger, though, she may have had him cut it a little thinner.
”For grinding, you just…” She firmly held the mortar in her left hand, and wielded the pestle in her dominant right hand. ”Roll the pestle around like this, but try to work more from your elbow and shoulder than your wrist.”

She demonstrated by rolling the pestle around the sides of the mortar, crushing the herbs along the way. ”If the pieces you’re working with are too big, though, you can pound them directly, in gentle but firm bursts. That’s good for larger herbs or nuts and seeds. Once they’re broken down sufficiently, you can go back to rolling.” She paused a few times to show Jin the process of her grinding. ”You should get a thick powder like this when you’re done, and dump it into your beaker.” She tapped hers with the tip of a finger. ”And then we can get started on the fun part!”

As if sensing his impending fate, Fiver shivered and burrowed himself between Capsule’s feet. Whether Tongue of Nature was toggled on or off, the rabbit knew what was expected of him; Capsule did not have any boopable rats or mice on her person. ”Our unwilling test subject isn’t too thrilled, though.” Fiver growled softly and muttered something that sounded like embleer (stinking). It was times like these that made her regret teaching the Frenmic Rabbit the Lapine language used by the rabbits of Watership Down. Hopefully Jin couldn’t speak “rabbit.”

coded by benetnasch of ET