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Shuri's made a few changes to the last version she'd had him test, and has sent him back out with instructions to try smaller things with the new arm this time, as she is looking for fine nuance and haptic feedback results.

As a result, Bucky's decided to settle in the bar at the ends of the worlds for a bit with a good cup of coffee and see what he can figure out to test next.

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'When I can', Wei Wuxian feels, is an important qualifier. He feels the same! It's just that there's so many circumstances where there's no option but stabbing. Tragic, really.

Bucky earns a little bit of a smirking side-eye for that one though.

"Well, I did get you out of this one stab-free, so far. Slashing, on the other hand, is a favorite amongst bunny-yao, it turns out." Look, we can't have everything in life.

"So far," he agrees. "Be nice if we could keep it that way. And what the hell turns a perfectly nice rabbit into something like that, anyway?"

"Resentful energy - you have heard of qi, yes? When someone dies, but dies... poorly, unfulfilled somehow, angry, wronged, that energy... eeeeh, rots, for lack of a better term. Becomes malignant. It contaminates the one that has died, as well as things in its surroundings, things that were important, or are particularly susceptible to it. It is like any other energy - spread a little over a wide space, and most likely no one will ever notice the difference. Concentrate it - bind it to one thing in particular, or make sure a lot of people die poorly in one space, and you have a big problem. I don't know if the bunny was wronged, somehow, or it was just living in an area that became charged with resentful energy, but..." He waves a hand, a 'there you go' sort of gesture. "Doesn't tend to lead to good things. Hell of a weapon though."

...

Wei Wuxian will happily ramble about his work when given half a chance, even moreso now that he's not hiding a big horrible secret where his core should be.

"You're not kidding," Bucky says, tapping his chest where the bandages lie hidden under the scrub top. "No idea how you'd wrong a rabbit enough to make it that mad. Poor fuzzy guy."

Right answer! Wei Wuxian knew he liked this guy.

"Well, something got to the bunnies here - I mean, have you seen them? They like Lan Zhan, but all animals like Lan Zhan, so."

Could also have something to do with the bribery. And the petting. Something like that. Or maybe it's magic, Lan magic.

"The ones that spit fire sometimes? Yeah. I figured they were just here from some other world. Like everything in Thedas seems to spit poison, from what little I've seen anyway," Bucky tells him, with a small shrug. He seems remarkably calm about this, too.

"... Please tell me the bunnies here don't spit poison." Wei Wuxian asks, seriously. He'll have to tell Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan would be sad, and he hates making Lan Zhan sad, he's done that so often in his lives already. Just let the man hold some bizarrely carnivorous bunnies, okay?

Edited 2021-10-17 02:00 (UTC)

"Not that I've ever heard or seen," Bucky reassures him. "And I'm pretty sure someone would have mentioned it if they did."

"For that matter I don't know if Thedas rabbits do. Their spiders do, that's for sure, especially the giant ones. And the wyverns."

"What is a wyvern?" Wei Wuxian asks, though his eyes gleam dangerously at the idea of giant spiders. He'd be good against giant spiders, he feels. It'd be a fun challenge.

"Kind of like a really mean cross between a giant salamander and a giant snake," Bucky tells him. "It's got fins here--"

He shifts the bowl for a second so he can use his hand to indicate the right points behind the jaw. "--and some along the edge of its tail. Scaled, more like a snake. The damn things leap, bite, claw, spit venom, and use their tails like a whip. Big, too - maybe 10 to 12 feet tall and at least twice that in length, plus the tail."

Bucky shakes his head. "Some people say they're related to dragons, and maybe, I guess, but if so it's really distant. They're pretty stupid, not intelligent at all, not like a real dragon. At least not where I come from."

Almost as an afterthought, he adds, "Wyvern scale makes good armor, though."

Edited 2021-10-17 03:18 (UTC)

"Aiya aiya aiya wait go back a moment... there are real dragons where you come from?" Wei Wuxian demands, because Bucky! You're supposed to lead with that! Now he needs to figure out how to get up so he can go see a dragon!

Bucky blinks at him.

"Well, not where I am right now," he says.

"Well no, you can't live on top of the dragon... I guess? Bucky, have you seen the dragons?" Look, all of the really good heroic stories as a child involved dragons - you can't just casually mention live dragons now and not give more details.

He shakes his head. "Not personally. Mostly you just hear stories. Legends, that kind of thing. Mostly."

"Mostly? Bucky-xiong!" Wei Wuxian protests, his expression pitiable. Or at least he likes to imagine it is.

"Let's just say that given some of the places I've spent time, and some of the other things I've seen and heard about ... some of the stories I believe," Bucky tells him.

"Ugh, you are the worst, teasing me so." Wei Wuxian huffs, "While I am languishing."

"Don't worry, no one who yells as loud as you do can be in any danger," Bucky informs him, dryly. "You'll be back on your feet in no time."

"Rude!" Wei Wuxian gasps, clutching his chest, "I was Yunmeng Jiang, this is just how we talk, eh? It is of no consequence."

"Didn't say I minded," Bucky points out, unruffled.

"Good thing. You wouldn't leave me here, would you Bucky-xiong? Wen Qing will return and use all of her needles on me, for sure." Wouldn't that just be a horrible fate?

Actually being treated for one's problems?

What a nightmare.

"Let's see if we can avoid that," he says. Bucky looks Wei Wuxian over with a critical eye. "How are you feeling?"

"This one is much improved with your tender care." Wei Wuxian swears, with another (somewhat more accurate) three-fingered salute. "And, of course, your very good soup."

"Uh-huh." He can't help but feel a little skeptical about that, but at least Wei Wuxian doesn't look like he's going to keel right over if he breathes wrong.

"Okay. Do you have a room upstairs or do you need to go back to - what'd you call it? Cloud Recesses?"

"I have a room upstairs - the food here is much better than at Cloud Recesses, so Lan Zhan and I are staying here until we decide what to do next." What Wei Wuxian wants to do next is crawl under a blanket and sleep for the next week. It's all a bit frustrating - he's been working so hard to gain some kind of strength, and to find it so limited still... eh. He should be thankful he has any at all.

Should be. He'll work on that too.