milliways_bar | (no subject)

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After spending the morning carefully cleaning the memorial plaques and making sure the offerings were kept up, Wei Wuxian has taken over one of the tables in the bar with a pile of paper, a pile of books, and quite a lot of tea.

His baba is determined to build a training ground where all and sundry can come and fling each other around, fine. Wei Wuxian would like to ensure it doesn't somehow get collapsed into a pile of matchsticks by the first overpowered patron that wanders by. He feels that isn't an unreasonable ask. So he's working on strengthening arrays, trying to design something that can be carved into the floor (and won't that be something to explain?) that won't also make the structure back-breakingly rigid if there is an accident.

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Gaster is walking by when he spots Wei Wuxian, the human he'd chatted with a bit, the one who could make paper move.

The construction and piles of research grab his interest, however, and he wanders a bit closer.

"Pardon me, are you building something here?"

"Well, my baba is, I'm just trying to keep it from falling down around his ears on accident." Wei Wuxian grins, pausing in his perusal of his current text. "With all the work he's putting into it, that'd just be tragic."

Frankly, they've all had enough of tragedy.

"That's thoughtful of you." Gaster smiles.

"Would you like some help? I was an engineer back home."

"The build of it is fine, as I'm sure my baba would be glad to tell you enthusiastically and loudly if you ask him." Wei Wuxian declares with undisguised fondness. Zenigata really ought to have been a Jiang, after all. "This is, or will be a spiritual array to help deal with some of the more... unexpectedly strong patrons that may choose to use baba's dojo."

"A spiritual array? What does that entail, exactly?"

Wei Wuxian clears a space in his scattered notes and books for a fresh piece of paper, and sketches a basic net array in quick, confident strokes.

"It is something like a ritual, something like a ward. They can do different things, but are generally meant to be a more permanent thing than a quick talisman. I had one carved into the cave floor in the Burial Mounds to provide a place of protection." He explains as he writes. His calligraphy, usually abysmally bad, is perfectly neat here.

After a few more strokes, he sets his brush aside, and flicks a spark of qi into the array. A small, shimmering, golden net springs into existence, barely big enough to cage a teacup.

"How very interesting." Gaster stares intently at the net that appears within the array.

"I remember that you mentioned some sort of spiritual magic when we last spoke. Is that what this is?"

"A small part of it." Wei Wuxian shrugs, smudging one of the characters and letting the net collapse. "I don't tend to get involved with a lot of construction projects, so this isn't exactly my wheelhouse."

"It does seem structurally sound so far," Gaster observes, turning his attention back to the in-progress training ground. "Is there anything in particular you're struggling with?"

"I'm trying to figure out how to provide enough support that the more... vigorous patrons can come without turning the building to rubble, but not make it so rigid that someone can get snapped in half hitting a support wrong." Wei Wuxian points out wryly. "There has to be a happy middle ground somewhere, but I'm not sure how to specify that."

"Strength and flexibility," Gaster nods thoughtfully. "What sort of material is being used for the supports?"

From above--where she has been particularly quiet, even for her--Sinthia is watching Wei Wuxian and the designs he's making. She's sitting safely astride (ish, her knees are pulled tight to her chest) one of the roof joists, her back firmly nestled against the long tension web that comes down from the peak of the ceiling.

She understands absolutely none of the details of the papers on the table below, but she can figure out by context that he is trying to do something he feels is necessary, or at least important. The strengthening arrays and calligraphies and talismans mean nothing to her as art forms, nothing more than a collection of lines and strokes.

"What are those?" she asks, very softly--but verbally, to her credit.

Someone speaking very softly from above him really isn't what Wei Wuxian is expecting. Thus, he doesn't really track it as speech - he has a moment of ingrained alarm, then a moment of confusion, before he belated realizes there were words and probably an expected response.

Ah well.

"I'm sorry?" He offers for the ceiling-voice, pausing in his writing.

She waits patiently for him to cycle through the reactions; not that she knows where exactly the endpoint is, but he at least speaks, and Sinthia leans her head out from behind her knees to his vantage point.

"What are the patterns meant to be?" she repeats, just as soft-voiced, but notably curious. "The things you are drawing," she clarifies belatedly, though she makes no move to come down, or to draw attention to herself above him.

"Protection array for my baba's project, if I can figure it out." Wei Wuxian offers as he turns back to his notes. He knows there's one carved into the supports of Lotus Pier now, but... that was ages ago, and he wasn't the originator of that particular pattern. He doesn't quite remember how it goes.

And that one was more aimed at preventing fire.

Unsurprisingly.

"Baba, what does that mean?" she asks, head cocked curiously.

"Is it...supposed to make it stronger?" The drawing, to the project, respectively, but to be fair if Wei Wuxian doesn't get that, he's not the only one that oesn't tranlate Sinthia's very stilted language well, sometimes.

"Baba means, ah..." he glances over to the Bar to let it do its translation thing, because as far as he is concerned, he's saying the same word. He just usually says it around people who have seen him and Zenigata together, and have gotten the (very loud) memo.

"Father."

The rest he doesn't how to parse, so he leaves it alone.

"Oh. You didn't have one already?"

She has no real...concrete or positive insight on what having an adoptive father would mean, and she knows exactly what her biological one did to her. She hopes his is not the same type, but short of that, Sinthia has very little opinion on it: she doesn't get it much at all.

"May I see the things you're drawing?" She'd have to come down, but it's a graceful enough drop, and she lands on her feet, knees bending and sinking into a low crouch before straightening up by the farthest chair at his table. "Can I help you?" Not that she knows exactly how she'd go about such a thing, if she even could, but she's trying to get a grasp on this 'being social' thing. It's very slow going.

"Wei Changze, my father, died when I was very young. Koichi Zenigata has taken it on himself to fill that role, a thankless job indeed." Wei Wuxian still isn't clear on why Zenigata is so determined to provide that much support, but he's learned to let it happen.

"Ah... you can certainly see it, it is no secret, but I doubt it will make much practical sense if you're not a cultivator." He shrugs, offering the top sheet of his notes, covered in very sloppy, close-written Chinese.

She just nods to the explanation, though it's a half-forgotten-about gesture, really. She's scanning the sheet he offered out, able to parse and translate some of the words, but not many; enough to understand this is something she has no basis of understanding for, and though she gets 'strengthening' in many forms, she doesn't quite grasp the fuller meaning. One thing that might be of interest, though, is the way she holds the note sheet; not with her hands, but steadily with telekinesis, turning the page this way and that as if to make sure she's not mistaking any directions. (She doesn't think she is, but Sinthia learned all the Chinese script she knows from printed books, and Wei Wuxian's hanwriting is not anywhere close to that.)

"My father died when I was little too. I was nine," she says, and makes no further mention of adopting, or getting any other singular adult taking her into care, because there wasn't one.

Wei Wuxian watches, head tilted. While he hasn't seen this particular skill before, it's not too dissimilar to some cultivation techniques. He just doesn't often see such things displayed in the bar.

"My condolences."

She shrugs--an odd response to the loss of a parent, sure--but seems to accept the sentiment just the same. The notes page is far more interesting right now.

"It was a long time ago. We were at war." Casualties happen.

"I don't undertand much of this. But if I can help you, I would."

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