so fragile yet so devious

ISLA

"I can't help it!" Isla laughs back at Remi, feeling really quite silly even if she's managed to somewhat right herself in time or them to fly into the thick of the clouds. His hands slip out of hers and the medic bites her lip and holds her breath even if it's entirely unnecessary, and she lets out a whoop of delight to find that she can stay airborne even without Remi holding onto her. "Well, I thought with how worldly you are, you'd know how to--"

They are both cut off by the blinding flash of light, and Isla is grinning again as she urges herself higher. "Sounds like a great idea," she says, digging in her pocket for the seaglass. As for getting struck by lightning? She shrugs and pulls a face. "I imagine it could be really good, or really bad?" she guesses. Probably the latter. "I'm guessing I should avoid it."

she's a runner
rebel, and a stunner

and my heart ran away with me

With a look that's as playful as it is skeptical, Remi surges higher, invigorated by the sudden briskness of the air. "How then are you going to get that struck by lightning without letting it hit you as well? I do not know if you know this, seeing as you are not so worldly as I—" His grin is utterly shit-eating. "—but lightning is not small. It also does not stay put."

He doesn't have the words for current and grounding and such, but what he does have are comically overdramatized gestures. Miming a bolt of lightning striking the tip of his finger, he warbles and shakes in midair, indicating that the lightning would travel through him and out the bottom of his feet.

"But what do I know. I am sure they went over all of this in duchess school." Shooting her a teasing smile, Remi flies higher still. Whatever their plan, they likely still aren't high enough.

remi

Styling stolen from Sky (obviously)

ISLA

"Well," Isla says haughtily, a playful grin on her face even as they surge higher. Her systems register the cold, the briskness of the gale as it whips her hair around her head, but of course she doesn't entirely need to worry about it. "I suppose I will just have to hold the stone and be struck by lightning then, won't I?" She raises her eyebrows, of course not meaning it, though she does giggle at his antics.

Reaching back into her pockets, she draws out a roll of metal wire, spending a moment hovering to wrap it about the sea glass. "They also taught us hand eye coordination in duchess school," she informs Remi with a sly grin, and a beat of her wings takes them higher still. "Want to play catch, and hope lightning strikes midair?"

she's a runner
rebel, and a stunner

and my heart ran away with me

"Far be it for me to tell you what to do...but out of those I know who can heal...one is a witch whose magic does not work on you, one is now a demigoddess and I have no idea where she is, one has openly threatened my life, and the last one is stunningly beautiful but prone to making very bad decisions." Grinning, Remi can only shrug, allowing the medic to take her life into her own hands for the purpose of this quest. "What is all this for, anyway?" He wonders, shivering slightly but not minding the cold.

"Oh, did they." Following her higher, Remi tilts his head skeptically to the side. "As we both know, I did not go to duchess school and so have not had the benefit of such training. And we both know how clumsy I can be." He's about to say something to the effect of but you know I can be good with my hands, before caging the reply in the back of his throat and instead waggling his fingers in her direction.

"Alright then. This plan seems so ridiculous that it will likely work."

remi

Styling stolen from Sky (obviously)

ISLA

Isla only really pays attention to the last one on Remi's descriptive list, and even then he does little more than wave him off with a smirk. "It will be fine," she tells him airily. This might be out of character, if anything, for the medic; grounded and unflappable, it is probably only with Remi that she might contemplate something such as this. As for what it's all for? "It's to fulfil a quest for the voice," she explains. "I asked if she might make me something to help my diagnoses with Ascended."

And that is what has led them here, to a stormy sky over Torchline, risking electrocution. "You may be clumsy, but you also have godlike reflexes," Isla tuts him, flapping back a few feet and finally pausing once they are all but swathed in stormclouds. "That's the spirit!" she calls, tying off the sea glass before tossing it up in the air experimentally. Then, with a fanged grin flashed his way, Isla throws it towards him.

she's a runner
rebel, and a stunner

and my heart ran away with me

'Don't you just...run scans of yourselves?" Isla had tried to explain it to him once, but it absolutely seemed to be the sort of thing you had to experience to understand.

Remi's eyes darken as he lets them partially shift to those of a hawk. The seaglass is small and not un-easy to see, but the alchemist wouldn't risk dropping it, even if the ocean was literally filled with precisely this sort of stone. If it was important to Isla, it was important to him. With his eyes trained on the stone, he loses it briefly for a moment as an unexpected flash of lightning snarls from the clouds above, striking it mid-arch. Shut up, we rolled for it. We fully expected someone to get struck by lightning. If it wasn't for the fact that the wire wrapped around it began to glow red-hot with heat, Remi might have missed it altogether thanks for the stars suddenly streaking across his field of view thanks to the lightning.

As Remi's hands close around the stone, he immediately tosses it into the air again and again, as if juggling. "Ow, gods, fuck." He complains under his breath as the wire and the stone both blaze with extreme heat.

Looking skeptically across at Isla, Remi raises a brow. "Do you have a lightning upgrade you did not tell me about?" He wonders, not believing for a moment that this ridiculous plan had actually worked all on its own.

remi

Styling stolen from Sky (obviously)

ISLA

Well. Both of their eyes light up - literally - as the fork of lightning arcs down and strikes the seaglass, and Isla's jaw drops to see it work so phenomenally well. Indeed, she almost expects Remi to drop it given just how flawlessly the plan has gone off, and when the stars finally start to fade from her vision, she adopts the smuggest look she can conjure and folds her arms triumphantly across her chest.

"Mm... it's a surge upgrade, but it doesn't conjure lightning," she informs him, a shit-eating grin creeping across her lips. "Tell me again about how worldly you are, Remi. I really want to hear." Giggling to him, Isla begins to let herself descend.

"Oh, yes, of course," Isla says about the Ascended scans. "But having them scan themselves doesn't help me to understand what's wrong on an intuitive level. So the Voice is going to make me something which will allow me to access other Ascendeds' scans."

she's a runner
rebel, and a stunner

and my heart ran away with me

"Hey! You said that. I did not say that." Remi protests boyishly, looking flabbergasted and impressed and not believing for one second that Isla had nothing to do with the lucky lightning.

Following after her, Remi cocks his head to catch her words amidst the rising ocean thermals. "A bit like what I can do." He mumbles more to himself than to her. Scans were not like emotions, but they were both the sorts of things not normally accessible to others, which could be used to explain and understand things not easily articulated. " What else do you need to get this upgrade?" He asks as he touches back down upon the edge of the cliff where they'd started their journey from.

remi

Styling stolen from Sky (obviously)

ISLA

"Mm - a bit, yes," Isla agrees, her keen hearing picking up on his words however mumbled they might be. "It'll allow me to see if anything is going on that shouldn't be, or if something is interfering with the systems." She falls quiet to concentrate on landing and not toppling off the side of the cliff, wobbling a bit with the weight of the wings but managing it well enough, at least.

"Hmm...? Oh, this was the last thing!" she announces brightly, stepping up towards him so she might see if the lightning had done anything exceptional to the seaglass. "I had to collect this, and also some water from the Sea of Glass in Halo. Well... ice that melted into water. I think I'm done now. I thought I'd ask you to join me for the most exciting bit." She winks, glancing up as thunder purrs overhead again.

she's a runner
rebel, and a stunner

and my heart ran away with me

"Great." He means it too, as he flashes his friend a congratulatory smile. Remi knows well how difficult it can be to finish quests in a timely manner, though for all the things he and Isla have in common, procrastinating is not something the medic normally does.

Handing over the wire-wrapped glass, Remi looks down at his hands noting where blisters have already appeared. He can suffer through the pain easily enough, but given how often he uses his hands, he'll be forced to beg and plead for Ronin to heal him. "Oh I don't know. Think of the damage we might have done with claws against ice." Grinning, he tilts his head to the side. "I wonder if two kraken...krakens?..would have been enough to break through the surface." Remi hadn't been out that far in Halo, but he did know how thick the ice supposedly was.

"Most exciting bit..most dangerous bit.." Letting his head shift from side to side to indicate that those things weren't quite equivalent, Remi reaches down for his shirt, tucked under a rock to keep it from being blown away.

remi

Styling stolen from Sky (obviously)

ISLA

Accepting the sea glass, Isla spends a little time carefully unwinding the wire from around it and making sure no damage has been done to it, before she slips it back in her pocket. As she does so, her wings draping around her shoulders, she can't miss the blisters on Remi's palms, the medic wincing her apology. "Oh, I didn't consider that. How foolish of me," she murmurs. "Would you like to head into Torchline? If we go to the Wren Society I can take a look at them for you," she suggests.

He does have a point, and Isla's crooked smile says as much. Claws and krakens versus the Sea of Glass? He's right, that may well be just as exciting as what they'd just finished here. Or dangerous, if he insists. Giving him a gentle nudge with her elbow, Isla's smile softens. "I had fun," she says. "Flying with you, as well as the whole lightning thing."

she's a runner
rebel, and a stunner

and my heart ran away with me

Narrowing one eye and tilting his chin, the alchemist shakes his head a firm no. "That is alright." Doctor's might have vows to do no harm, but Remi was fairly certain that Nate was Sunjata's husband and a demigod for the Voice before he was a healer. "Is it already...all back together?" Remi wonders, having heard of the fire there as well.

"Mmmm, me too." The alchemist agrees, trying for a casual smile that doesn't belie his inner lingering confusion about what it is to just be Isla's friend. "I have a quest to turn in as well though. I..." Rubbing at the back of his neck with sudden awkwardness, Remi realizes that what he was about to suggest might not be possible. "...has the shrine in Torchline been repaired, or..?" They couldn't quite head back to the main part of the island to hand in their quests if Isla's shrine was still destroyed.

remi

Styling stolen from Sky (obviously)

ISLA

"Are you sure? I could... oh, wait. Of course. Never mind." Isla smiles gently to him, reaching out to give his arm a gentle pat in a silent apology. It seems obvious that he wouldn't want to go anywhere run by Nate, and the medic forces herself not to press the issue or try to insist on examining his hands. Remi isn't the only one trying to figure out the line between friendship and not. "Hm? Yes, it seems as though the fire was put out soon after it started, at the Wren Society. They were very lucky."

Unike her own place of work, it seemed.

Then Remi speaks about the shrine and her head shakes softly, Isla tucking a wind tossed curl behind her ears and offering him a gentle smile. "No, not yet," she murmurs. "It seems as though everyone is very anti Ascended at the moment, doesn't it?" her sigh is a sad one. "I will bring everything to the shrine in the Hollowed Grounds, it's alright." Unless someone has set that on fire too.

she's a runner
rebel, and a stunner

and my heart ran away with me

Remi's smile is polite in a way that's reminiscent of the kind-hearted man he once was. His palms will be fine until he gets home, where he's sure a blast from Sugar and a few well-placed kisses from Ronin will set everything right. "Well that is good." For the people of Torchline, if not for Nate.

'Mmmm.' He hums with a frown, his teeth pressing together silently as he nods. "...I destroyed that shrine." Remi admits in a low voice as colour simultaneously drains from his face while blooming in his cheeks. Swallowing hard, he pulls in a breath and holds it, as if that might alleviate his guilt. "If...there is anything I can do to help fix it..." The words rush out on his exhale as he apologetically seeks out Isla's gaze. "It was...during when Ronin and I were separated. I was angry. Furious and alone, and when Gideon and Amalia said they needed help..." He shakes his head, knowing none of it was an excuse for cutting off the ascended in Torchline from a convenient access point to the Voice. "..I just destroyed, without thinking. It was all I could do at the time."

remi

Styling stolen from Sky (obviously)