The Svin Bin

I had a lot of fun with you guys and my case files cast mates are especially wonderful!! You guys kept him around longer than I planned.

I’m dropping Svin and just making this post so my current thread partners know!

The following weeks/month or two will show me irl wise if I will rejoin isola because I have some higher energy/more sociable options rattling around in my brain, so we’ll just have to see.

Thanks for the fun and all your time with me!

Badou chuckles– yup, he’s got that bright, vivid, too candid picture of it all. 

He’d never admit feeling stagnant. Stagnant is death, is no future, nothing comes from it. But here he is. Badou doesn’t want to change the world, he just wants to live…find a reason to keep going. 

The redhead watches Svin look down at his hands, contemplating something incredibly important. He wonders what he sees when he looks at his hands. Badou doesn’t need to look at his hands to see the guilt there. 

“Sometimes it is– until things just sort of snap– like a rubberband.”

Like a rubberband. “The spell breaks us all out of this daydream on a whim.” Sometimes things did shift, sometimes there was real danger, and then, like a rubberband, it reverted back to quasi-normalcy.

“Work helps, I suppose. The one constant is trouble.” Svin sighed. “I mostly spend my time studying. Without most of my abilities, it’s all theoretical. 

Isola Event: Optimization

Location: Golden Ward, near Netwalk

Data collecting wasn’t as one sided as the Ofiuclones thought. Participation was optional, but to be able to pick away at the cold case that was Spirale’s existence was something Svin couldn’t pass up. Those who watched over them, who he deemed neutral at best, often were too distant for this. While he jumped through hoops, maybe he could discover something up close.

His best guess was that they were dealing with a mass of illusions— the initial duplications of the Ofiuclones could support that. This wasn’t Magecraft, no sacred mystery behind it to preserve. It was all something like twisted elaborate enrichment because of a threat he personally hadn’t witnessed. Perhaps he should ask someone about the NULL sometime.

The Golden Ward was always rather peaceful in regular times, but decidedly less so when swarming with Databugs. Svin couldn’t even make it properly into Netwalk Park before encountering one in his path, a seemingly harmless, large nuisance. He charged toward it, missing the full strength of his magic, but still utilizing the recent boon he’d gotten back. It was diluted Strengthening Magic, enough to just affect his speed and agility.

Svin landed a kick against a Databug’s shell but didn’t stop there, the natural flow of mana he’d missed surging back into him as he kicked with all the force of a normal human but at a fluttering speed, raining down blows before gravity brought him back down to the sidewalk. It was unfortunate he could only take one at a time, but it seemed to be enough to disintegrate the shelled creature into code, vanishing before his eyes.

He sniffed out of habit. Nothing. No... something like static in the air, a faint energy he couldn’t place. Hm. Not much help. That wasn’t all he sensed, though.

{ 👑 } ❝AYE, IT’S NOTHIN’. TRUTH BE TOLD, I probably deserve the grief I get —-❞ he responds with a toss of the head and hands falling at his side. This STRANGE kid isn’t anything like Chrom in the sense that Gangrel doesn’t find his features to be particularly punchable, that he’d not judge out of the sheer ignorance of his nation. And how could the son of a subjugator properly judge him? But someone else speaking his mind, lacking that social grace, why, it is VERGING on intriguing. Lips pull into a grin as sharp as a knife’s edge. ❝Truth be told, I’m a bit of a pain in the ass. Did plenty of horrible shit! You got some CORRECT intuition, some good sense!❞

SUCH A DECISIVE STATEMENT, GANGREL FINDS his voice falling flat afterwards. As much as he wishes to add that he’s a changed man, Gangrel can’t in good conscience say those words, can’t carry upon his shoulders the conviction of someone kind and soft. Shoulders shrug, cape tossed over one shoulder. ❝–Well, I suppose I still have good in me yet. That advice of mine was COMPLETELY sound.❞

Whether or not Svin’s intuition was sharp, the man he was speaking with still had surprises left in him. People were like that, more than the first impression or even the last they gave. A snapshot of an ever changing being was barely a full sense of a person.

“You’d admit it freely, meaning I suppose you’ve no fear of incoming consequences, so I gather it truly was deep in the past, or as far as Spirale goes, nothing present day should be concerned with.” Svin idly brushed himself off. Turning into a hedhehog made him tingle all over with psuedo-itchiness.

“Perhaps there is.”

He sniffed again. It was much the same as before, but if he had to draw a picture of the rusted or red scent, it would be tangled, muddled, a texture he couldn’t describe but could taste.

//At long last, Svin is officially subgiant rank! I was asked to update his Application regarding Magecraft he has access to, and I tweaked his Stats page too to be more accurate in case anyone wanted a better look at him! I also need to get him moved, so it’s a big bookkeeping day here for me :D

aloe :   how does your muse handle grief ?

He doesn’t know how to handle much, emotionally speaking, other than to keep it internal. At least, that’s how it starts. Svin would be a little more high strung than normal, easier to wind up or snap before he really pinpointed that it was grief, and that he needs time. Then he would try to understand it and how to move on without letting it eat at him, processing it on his own unil he found peace.

holly :   how strong is your muse’s sense of intuition ?  are they aware of it ?   do they ever fear that it is only paranoia ?  

It’s very strong! It’s some of the root of his trust issues, especially regarding Flat. Svin doesn’t only smell “colors” but energy. He gets a sense of a person upon first impression and subsequent meetings, reading their mood, their kind of Magecraft, and just things about him that feed into his intuition.

It’s no scientific method, but he doesn’t usually stop to consider he may be wrong. It can do a lot to his perception of someone. Even though he knows he may be off the mark sometimes, he still typically stands by what he senses. Without really being raised around other people in a normal environment and allowed to fit in seamlessly with others socially, it’s the longest standing method he has to rely on.

amaryllis :   what is something or someone that your muse takes pride in ?   how do they express that pride ?  

Svin is proud of his abilities, even if they come with the double edged sword of him feeling that sometimes he is his abilities. He’s always been a human being, but after not being treated like one, and being unable to see himself fully as one for much of his life, it’s a complex thing.

However, he reaches Pride at such a young age because of his diligence and having a teacher like El-Melloi II. Flat too, is powerful, but Flat is something of an abnormality. Svin had to manually dedicate himself to be in the top two students of the El-Melloi classroom.

“I’ve grown on him like a hemorrhoid right on his bootyhole.” Confirmed! Svin looks like he’s really pondering on the impossibly big picture– or at least to Badou it’s still missing pieces to the entire story. 

He’s met a couple of the other students, including this one, and each piece makes more and more sense. 

But he never considered the old man wanted to change the world…had he ever wanted to do that?? Had he ever mentioned it?

“I’m not sure if he’s looking to change it all…he does get caught up on the little things, the little people, you know how he is. He gets distracted.” How can you not in this place? “But all you can do is your best….hold on to what you can with your own hands. Cause if you pick up too much you’ll drop all of it instead.”

“How vivid.” Svin’s resting face wasn’t sunny to begin with, but he did get a small crease between his brows. Otherwise, he was passive. People really did say anything.

Svin thought about it. He’d always seemed dissatisfied with himself, with the position he was in, yet it was difficult to not be like that when in a place like the Clock Tower. “Maybe, even if you can’t change something, you still wish it was different, is all.”

He looked down at his hands. His goal to master his own abilities, to be the owner of them rather than vice versa, was such a personal one. Certainly he’d assist people who needed him, but that didn’t drive him. Some days, he himself was all he could handle, refining and figuring out how to exist within the lines drawn on his own cast shadow. 

“Perhaps ask those who were summoned as casters. We servants are after all, only phantoms of stories and history. The original Li Shuwen had not known about magic, how could he. Living in a modern city such as hongkong and others.” He had such real history, but magic hardly came into his life if at all. He is only blessed with those who harm others with their own bodies, but magic now…

“I suppose being made of magic, prana, chakra is what opens my eyes slightly. But for now I am only interested in testing my fists.” He admits, the bloody side of him never truly disappearing.

He gives a small smirk.

“ As long as these fists can test themselves again, the source of magic can remain a mystery.”

Svin supposed it was true, Heroic Sprits weren’t perfect copies, or even the originals of themselves. If he ever found himself back home, Li Shuwen would be a name he’d remember when going to a library.

He nodded to the smirk, not the type to smirk himself, but still approving.

“ … “

Really for all he knew this kid could be from far away future where they no longer cared of the years he lived in. That was the sort of place the island was. Still, there was no telling if he didn’t say so he thought he might just say it outright.

“ …. “

“ 1907s. Russo-Japanese War ended couple of years ago…. if that says anything. “

“Wow!” Svin couldn’t help himself. It was like talking to a Servant from another era— a concept he was familiar with, but actually meeting someone from another time face to face was astounding. “I’m from about a hundred years later. England.”