Seaside 6: Six at the Beach

[Deathkeeper]

Codebreaker's Home

"Knowing everything around you, from every angle and every little minute piece of data. It's more than a brain made of meat is meant to handle." CB says, shaking his head. He lays his glasses on the table. They already know so there's no sense in hiding his glowing eyes.
"She says she doesn't have one Knight because she has more than one." he adds with a snort. His math powers don't actually help with the pictures. He's just taking note of her wording.

[Ironsmith]

[Codebreaker's Home]

"Ah. Sensory overload." Owena nods. "That makes a little more sense. Also, damn."

"Language." Kyrie rumbles.

"Oh, right. Damn it." Owena corrects.

"Hm." Kyrie frowns. "And I have more trump cards than Codebreaker."

flip go the cards.

Owena:
Seven of Wands
Knight of Cups
Knight of Swords
"I don't have any trump cards." (True)
"Codebreaker has more Swords than Wands." (?)
"I don't have one Knight." (True)

Kyrie:
Six of Wands
Ace of Pentacles
V: The Hierophant
"Codebreaker has more face cards than I do." (?)
"One of Owena's cards is a Knight." (False)
"I have more trump cards than Codebreaker." (?)

Codebreaker:
???
???
???
"The sum of the numbers on Kyrie's cards is twelve." (True)
"Owena has two face cards." (True)
"Owena doesn't have one Knight because she has two." (True)

"...Dammit." Kyrie mutters.

"Language." Owena chides playfully.

[Deathkeeper]

Codebreaker's Home

"It's like sensory overload and sensory deprivation at the same time." CB tries to explain.
CB's hand was:
3 of Swords
4 of Cups
I: The Magician

CB shuffles a bit in his seat. "I admit I'm still hazy on what a trump card is." he admits as they're trying to tally cards.

[Ironsmith]

[Codebreaker's Home]

"That'll be the ones without a suit." Owena replies quickly. "Like the Heirophant in my uncle's hand or the Magician in yours."

"Or the Fool, if that one had turned up in this round."

"Exactly."

Kyrie sighs and looks over the cards on the table. "Well, since you and Owena both got three truths, now we have to figure out which was more likely..."

"No contest." Owena shoves the assembled chips toward Codebreaker. "Guessing two knights alone would have put him ahead. Getting fancy with the numbers in your hand just sealed it."

"Hmph." Kyrie shrugs. "In any case, it seems apparent we should move on to something else..."

"You're just mad you got smoked so thoroughly."

"No! ...Well, yes, a little, but it's clear this game does not meet the stated goal of not giving Codebreaker an advantage."

"...I don't suppose there's any way we could trick those sense of yours?" Owena asks Codebreaker. "Have you ever known them to be wrong? Gotten information that wasn't quite right, or maybe that you were too distracted to take in properly?"

[bc56]

Elster
Diablo resists the urge to repeat his "backwater" comment. "It's not hard, if you have money. They're expensive to maintain over long periods. If this hadn't been such a personal job for the boss, I probably wouldn't have been allowed to use it in a million years." He's not about to elaborate further.

[Deathkeeper]

Codebreaker's Home

Codebreaker shrugs.
"They're best at numbers. I can turn down the supernatural sense and then it's only really giving me numbers. So maybe a game with just pictures or something?" he suggests. There's got to be some games without numbered cards.

[Ironsmith]

Elster
Diablo resists the urge to repeat his "backwater" comment. "It's not hard, if you have money. They're expensive to maintain over long periods. If this hadn't been such a personal job for the boss, I probably wouldn't have been allowed to use it in a million years." He's not about to elaborate further.

[Elster]

"A personal job, eh?" Duffle shrugs. "Well, I might just have to get in touch with that boss of yours. We've been needing a jump drive something awful down here. Like to be able to get home at some point, you know what I mean?" Without really waiting for an answer, Duffle taps the side of his head and mutters to himself. "Set a course for Butterfly Bay."

Codebreaker's Home

Codebreaker shrugs.
"They're best at numbers. I can turn down the supernatural sense and then it's only really giving me numbers. So maybe a game with just pictures or something?" he suggests. There's got to be some games without numbered cards.

[Codebreaker's Home]

Owena shrugs. "I guess I could look into Hanafuda."

Kyrie frowns and scratches at his ear. "What in the world is that?"

"Hm? Oh. It's a style of playing card popularized in someplace called Japan, and convergently developed in a few other places throughout the Nexus. Mina's butler showed it to me."

"And this doesn't use any numbers?"

"Nope. The cards are divided by the images depicted; the closest thing to numbers on them are that they'rw supposed to correlate with the twelve months of the year." She turns to Codebreaker. "Would that be enough dissonance to impede your powers?"

[Deathkeeper]

Codebreaker's Home

"Is that the one with the show? No that's the one with the poems..." Codebreaker ponders, stroking his chin. He hasn't had time to go through all the anime DVDs his predecessor had lying around. He just threw out a bunch that he thought looked suspect.
"I guess it would work. Otherwise we could just resort to the game system." Owena actually has something of an advantage there. Younger reflexes and hands closer to the shape intended for the controllers.

[Ironsmith]

Codebreaker's Home

"Is that the one with the show? No that's the one with the poems..." Codebreaker ponders, stroking his chin. He hasn't had time to go through all the anime DVDs his predecessor had lying around. He just threw out a bunch that he thought looked suspect.
"I guess it would work. Otherwise we could just resort to the game system." Owena actually has something of an advantage there. Younger reflexes and hands closer to the shape intended for the controllers.

[Codebreaker's Home]

"Alternatively... maybe we could go straight there."

Owena raises an eyebrow at her uncle and smiles. "Oh? Why's that?"

"I, ah... well, not that... you see, eh..." Kyrie stumbles, not entirely sure how to phrase this.

"You think it'll be more fun."

"Yes! I mean no! I mean... not that this isn't entertaining, but there's a sort of... appeal to the system the cards can't replicate."

Owena smirks and stands up, picking up the snack tray to bring to the den. "Congratulations, boss, I think you've helped my uncle develop a rudimentary sense of taste." She jokes.

[Deathkeeper]

[Codebreaker's Home]

"Alternatively... maybe we could go straight there."

Owena raises an eyebrow at her uncle and smiles. "Oh? Why's that?"

"I, ah... well, not that... you see, eh..." Kyrie stumbles, not entirely sure how to phrase this.

"You think it'll be more fun."

"Yes! I mean no! I mean... not that this isn't entertaining, but there's a sort of... appeal to the system the cards can't replicate."

Owena smirks and stands up, picking up the snack tray to bring to the den. "Congratulations, boss, I think you've helped my uncle develop a rudimentary sense of taste." She jokes.

Codebreaker's Home

Codebreaker begins the laborious process of hauling himself off the couch.
"Well, that's no problem. We have a lot of controllers for a reason."
He was surprised that his predecessor did seem to plan ahead in that regard. Less surprised that all but one were pretty dusty. That probably says something. He's had enough time to figure some things out.
"Anything in particular you're craving?" he asks Kyrie.

[Ironsmith]

[Codebreaker's Home]

"Well... I do quite like the one you showed me last time I was here..." Kyrie begins.

"Really? I thought you hated that one. Too much like home, you said."

"No, not that one, the other one."

"What other o- oh." Owena watches as Kyrie picks up the guitar-shaped controller and gives a little sigh. "I take it back. No taste at all."

[bc56]

Elster
"You're stranded? No contact with any other planets? I guess not even ComStar has influence this far from the core. But about the boss," Diablo muses, "He doesn't run a charity, and there's enough people out to kill him that it's hard to trust anyone even if they come asking for help, if you catch my drift."

[Ironsmith]

[Elster]

"Pal, I've been in business with that type since I was knee-high to a nematode." Duffle chuckles and yells something to a passing crewman; as the order isn't intended for Diablo, he won't get the translated version. "But yes, we are sort of stranded out here. Our homeworld is just next door, but that's in a direction we can't travel. It's been maddening, trying to get back."

[Deathkeeper]

Codebreaker's Home

CB forgot that Owena knew about that incident. He decides not to comment on the fact he told her.
"Oh shush and be supportive!
No problem, Kyrie. Pick a song! I should lend you one of these for you when you get home. I'm sure Arthfael would enjoy it." Arthfael does like musical instruments and loud music.

[Ironsmith]

[Codebreaker's Home]

"...You know, actually not a bad idea." Owena smiles. "Those two could use a bonding opportunity."

It doesn't take long for Kyrie to pick out a tune, down near the bottom of the "Hard" section. It appears he's not any less stubborn this time than he was the first time he sat down with Codebreaker.

[Deathkeeper]

Codebreaker's Home

Codebreaker happily goes along with whatever Kyrie wants. Even though he was never good at this game before his hands got changed into big furry mitts. He is unequivocally terrible. Which is why he always turns the P2 difficulty down.
"I think it's good that you like things, Kyrie. You don't have to mumble and hide it." he assures his friend, clapping him on the back as the sit on the couch together with their hunks of plastic.

[Ironsmith]

[Codebreaker's Home]

"Hide?" Kyrie shrugs and shakes his head. "Nothing of the sort. I have no qualms about telling you what I do and do not like. I would simply rather not impose more than you're willing to accommodate me... such things are just rude, you see."

brrrrrrrring

And speaking of impositions, who could be calling at this hour?

"I'll take care of that." Owena stands and gives a little bow. "You boys have fun. This should only be a minute or so."

Kyrie shuffles uncomfortably but says nothing, turning his gaze back to the screen amd scrolling all the way down to the hardest difficulty before the song starts.

[bc56]

Elster
"Then you know not to push too hard. When I'm done here, I can see about getting you in contact with my boss." Diablo isn't going to promise, nor can he do it now. He's out of communication range with his boss himself.

[Deathkeeper]

[Codebreaker's Home]

"Hide?" Kyrie shrugs and shakes his head. "Nothing of the sort. I have no qualms about telling you what I do and do not like. I would simply rather not impose more than you're willing to accommodate me... such things are just rude, you see."

brrrrrrrring

And speaking of impositions, who could be calling at this hour?

"I'll take care of that." Owena stands and gives a little bow. "You boys have fun. This should only be a minute or so."

Kyrie shuffles uncomfortably but says nothing, turning his gaze back to the screen amd scrolling all the way down to the hardest difficulty before the song starts.

Codebreaker's Home

"Kyrie, your preferences for Game Night are not imposing on me. You're literally half the event." Codebreaker insists, even as he turns his own difficulty down.
Just because Kyrie is does not make up half the wolf currently occupying the game couch doesn't mean he isn't half of this friendship!
Though CB does wonder who's calling. His powers don't give him caller ID. He could probably turn off his ears and get info through INFO-VISION but he'd rather not do that.

[Ironsmith]

Elster
"Then you know not to push too hard. When I'm done here, I can see about getting you in contact with my boss." Diablo isn't going to promise, nor can he do it now. He's out of communication range with his boss himself.

[Elster]

"That'd be greatly appreciated." Duffle smiles and begins the walk back to his cabin. "We'll be at Butterfly Bay within a few hours. Feel free to look around in the meantime, and bring that music by whenever."

What happens next is up to Diablo. If he wants to get to know any of the identical-looking crewmates or to explore the ship, he has some time to kill. If not, they'll pull into Butterfly Bay at the promised time, no funny business included.

Codebreaker's Home

"Kyrie, your preferences for Game Night are not imposing on me. You're literally half the event." Codebreaker insists, even as he turns his own difficulty down.
Just because Kyrie is does not make up half the wolf currently occupying the game couch doesn't mean he isn't half of this friendship!
Though CB does wonder who's calling. His powers don't give him caller ID. He could probably turn off his ears and get info through INFO-VISION but he'd rather not do that.

[Codebreaker's Home]

Kyrie gives off a little chuff that sounds vaguely like it might have wanted to be a laugh when it grew up. "Fair enough." He concedes, with a rare smile.

As the song starts, the discrepancy between the two settings makes itself very apparent; Codebreaker gets a reasonably-paced, if busy-looking, series of multicolored studs scrolling down his section of the screen, whereas Kyrie doesn't get a second to breathe. Thankfully, it looks like Kyrie learned a lot from his insistence on tackling the game's harder songs; his timing markers aren't anything impressive, but he gets through the first section without actually missing any notes.

Meanwhile, in the other room, Owena is mumbling into the phone; with the music going on, Kyrie might not be able to make out what she's saying, but there's a decent chance Codebreaker can.

"...clear as I could that he didn't want to be involved.

...Yes.

...Yes, I know that.

Well it's just not fair to him. I know he could be of a lot of use to you, but you have to let the guy live his life. He's not involved in your-

That's different. I did agree to help you.

...Fine. I'll have a look at it myself. Go ahead."

[Deathkeeper]

Codebreaker’s Home

Codebreaker leans back to face the door and holler across the room,
”Owena is futuresight lady bothering you again? I swear I can only tell them to keep their politics out of this town so many times!”
He’s actually memorized this song well enough to not immediately get knocked out despite looking away. Kyrie likes it a lot.

[Ironsmith]

[Codebreaker's Home]

"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. I think I- yeah. I'll call you back."

There's the sound of the phone receiver being put back on its handle, followed by Owena stepping back into the room, folding a piece of copy paper in her hands. "Yeah, it was her." She replied nonchalantly. "She brought the usual excuses. Stuff about the politics bringing themselves to town and all of that. Nominally, she just wanted to give us a heads-up about some suspicious activity she's picked up in the area." She sets the paper near Codebreaker's armrest and sinks into the chair next to him. "Apparently 'tagging' qualifies. She told me to keep an eye out for a certain set of symbols and call back when they turn up."

Kyrie frowns intently, vaguely disapproving of this turn of events, but is too focused on the screen to offer commentary himself.

[Deathkeeper]

Codebreaker's Home

"Well if you see any and they look particularly arcane make sure you scratch through them instead of leaving them there."
Ha, who would do that? Get a look at obviously ritualistic magic symbols vandalized onto buildings and do nothing about it? Haaaa.
"And you can tell her that anyone who shows up to recruit me in person might end up fitting in around here." he adds, grumbling.
Could Codebreaker rewrite someone's 'geometry' like his patron did to him? Probably. Maybe. If they tried to kidnap him he wouldn't really hold back his attempts to use his power.
Though perhaps it says a lot about him that his brain thinks of the very real possibility of someone trying to kidnap him again and his response is immediately to make them as ridiculous as he is instead of turning them to dust or something.

[Ironsmith]

[Codebreaker's Home]

"I'm pretty sure she's not interested in recruiting you anymore." Owena replies with a dismissive wave. "I don't think she's stupid enough to keep trying when you're so clearly opposed to the idea." She shuffles nervously and unfolds the paper, so that Codebreaker and Kyrie can both see the symbols carefully drawn into it.

"Now, granted, this is just based on what she told me, but... I don't think these are arcane." Owena shakes her head slightly. "I mean, I couldn't tell for sure anyway, but... I've seen over fifty different runic languages that are used for booby-trapped inscriptions and curses and such, and this doesn't resemble any of them. You can tell, right? There's no power in these symbols. They're just scribbles... that apparently mean something to someone. Just not us."

She's not wrong. But she also doesn't seem to be grasping the half of it. Codebreaker will be able to tell the moment he sees that they're not just random scrawling; they're numbers, in some kind of alternate counting system. Base 256. Though the specifics of how it works aren't likely to come to him quite that readily.

[Deathkeeper]

Codebreaker's Home

"Hm. This is a mathematical code of some kind."

Codebreaker stares at the symbols a little harder. He even reaches into his pocket and pulls out his reading glasses. "I might need other examples to cross-reference. Probably some robot code language thing." he suggests, rubbing his chin.

[Ironsmith]

[Codebreaker's Home]

"Ah, sorry, she only gave me these four." Owena replies with a shrug.

Five. Codebreaker's insticts will internally correct.

"So it looks like we're going to have to just go back to game night for n- oh, dammit."

That last part is in response to the doorbell going off. Owena sighs and goes to the door, already suspecting what's happening here.

Yup.

She comes back holding a cardboard box, the kind used to carry around large amounts of copy paper, and sets it down on the table. There's a sticky note on the side that reads "Courtesy of futuresight lady".

[Deathkeeper]

Codebreaker's Home

CB groans, eyeing the box before flicking it open with his claws.
"She's got twenty minutes of my time, just so I can make sure these aren't targets being painted on my town." he grumbles, as he doubtlessly finds more samples inside.

[Ironsmith]

[Codebreaker's Home]

The box does indeed contain more samples.

...A lot more samples.

The box contains several reams of papers to draw from, ranging from plain-typed transcripts of more squarish glyphs to photos of their rounded counterparts painted on walls in alleys. The four/five Owena drew seem to be among the most common; they show up repeatedly in these photos, sometimes more than once.

Codebreaker's instincts soon nudge him in the right direction; his first guess that it might be some form of machine language steadily draws more evidence, and it won't take him long to find out how the numbering system works, with each glyph representing a complete byte through the use of drawn and undrawn lines. Unfortunately, that's where he'll hit a wall; he may know the numbers that correlate to these symbols, but not the significance of those numbers. They're assigned arbitrarily, which makes logicing through them rather difficult.
Yes he does. It's nagging at the back of his head now.
He'll also note that the second symbol, the three lines with the dots on either side, keep showing up independent of that... mantra? Catchphrase? Callsign? Whatever it is. It seems to have particular significance beyond the graffiti itself.
THE PEOPLE
It keeps showing up in these pictures as a marker or brand of some kind. In one photo, it appears on the hips of three identical-looking women, who don't seem to have noticed the photographer. In another, on the back of a stoic-looking middle eastern woman's shoulder. And in yet another, it's on a large computer screen overlooking a crowd, behind an empty podium.

Whatever futuresight lady just dropped in his lap, it clearly goes beyond mere tagging.

[Deathkeeper]

Codebreaker's Home

Codebreaker will helpfully scrawl down the details into a report.
He doesn't...do anything with it. He just kind of assumes she'll see it.
"Well, there. That's as much as I got. She wants to find the killer robots she's going to need to do some legwork. I don't have context to do more." he says with a shrug.

[Ironsmith]

[Codebreaker's Home]

Rather predictably, nothing happens when the report is finished. Futuresight lady either isn't planning on sending him confirmation, or else chose a method that's too subtle.

In any case, the matter seems to be momentarily settled. She might get in touch with him again later, but probably not ton-

brrrrrrrrring

Owena sighs and stands up to go answer the phone again, but stops by the door and looks back at Codebreaker, checking for a sign that he might prefer to answer this one. If not, she'll go and handle it herself, leaving Codebreaker and Kyrie alone with the chips, dips, and video games.

Kyrie seems remarkably unperturbed by all of this. He's spent most of the time Codebreaker's been writing just sitting on the couch, crunching on chips covered in the wriggly red dip. He'll politely wait for game night to continue as planned.