Sky City is very homey, very pretty, and absolutely terrifying, all at the same time.
The homey and pretty part comes from how most of the ground is just wood or paved stone or neat gray or light brown, which makes everything look a bit barren except for the potted plants dotting the place periodically, but the houses are made of wood or white material that Jesse can't quite place, a rather large and somewhat-egg shaped palace towering at the very top of the city, dominating the houses in size easily. There are wooden bridges and platforms connecting all of the houses, and all the wood somehow manages to make the more elegant materials look more homey.
Which brings it to why Sky City is terrifying; the entire city is on floating wooden platforms and islands above what looks like a bottomless chasm. Swirls of colorful smoke swim through the air through the areas connected by bridges or platforms, sending a rather large rainbow smoke ring wafting right into Jesse's face periodically.
It smells like blueberries, although occasionally it does also just smell like their dad (not their dad, not quite, legal guardian?) legal guardian just coughed in their face.
"Sky City is the only city that hovers quite this way," Reginald boasts proudly to them as Jesse peers over one bridge railing into the darkness below the city. They're fairly certainly they can see something seething just out of sight, but they don't really want to know what it is. "Most of the other cities do have something unique about it, but this is the only capital city that floats this smoothly or this well."
Jesse peeps into the chasm; the darkness stares back at them. "I see..."
Aiden is drumming his fingers almost impatiently on his arm, although he still does seem more mild than he usually is. "Hey, Reg," he calls to the guard, "can we see Isa and Mevia and Harper now? It's a bit urgent."
Reginald's mustache bristles in a smile. "You're in luck. You caught them on the one day they don't have a meeting this week. They should all be in the palace."
"So we'll be searching for three hours, then," Maya replies rather drily.
Reginald chuckles and continues towards the palace, Jesse clinging to Petra's sleeve with one hand and hugging Reuben with the other to avoid the possibility of falling into the bottomless chasm. The bridge they are on is solid, but Jesse can't express the level of horror they felt a few minutes before when they began walking across a bridge and it started swaying and swinging beneath their feet.
They'd ended up with Lukas picking them up and carrying them across, since they'd just frozen in place out of fear that they were going to trip, fall, and then die. In that exact order.
"It shouldn't take too long to find them. They're just in their usual places."
The palace is less homey than the city, but it's still gorgeous. If anything, it's even prettier than the city.
Most of the walls are made with quartz, like Romeo's spire, but unlike the palace, it's lined with wood and not gold. The floor is a warm acacia, and most of the doors are just plain doors that swing open. There's still many plants and flowers inside, and one room that Jesse tries has a tree that they nearly walk into because of lack of attention.
Jesse spots Aiden looking at the flowers at one point. He notices them watching and turns away, cheeks pinking slightly.
They resolve to find him some flowers that don't try to eat people or poison them sometime.
Reginald swings the door open and checks inside of them periodically, but it isn't until about the thirteenth door that they find anyone inside.
(Jesse wonders why the palace is so big if only a few people live inside. It seems like a waste. And doesn't that just mean more rooms to clean?)
A woman with dark skin and white hair looks up from where she's leaning over some kind of metal contraption. She blinks red-and-gray irises from where her black gloves and her hair and her plain brown clothing are covered with glittering red (and after a moment of panic, Jesse realizes it is only red dust) as she shifts back orange-lensed goggles to look at them. There is a moment of a lack of comprehension as she stares at them.
And then she smiles.
"October Children."
She stands and goes over, dusting her hands uselessly; the dust just floats and sticks to another part of her clothing. She clasps Lukas's hand and gives it a squeeze, covering it with red dust, before releasing it and turning to Petra. "Petra."
Petra gives a polite bow. "Hello, Harper. It's good to see you."
Harper nods, still smiling, before she comes to the very-tiny Jesse. She just continues smiling, but cocks her head rather quizzically to one side as she looks at them.
"This is Jesse." Aiden sounds even shorter than usual, although still courteous. He must not like Harper too much.
Then again, Gill did say that she was weird.
And then
"Romeo assigned them to the... you know, that matter." Jesse briefly wonders why he's talking about this so vaguely until they spot one of the guards walking by briskly and almost officially, marching down the hall and shooting only a momentary quizzical look in their direction.
Harper nods vaguely, still regarding Jesse. A moment later, her brow raises.
"Human?"
Jesse nods back, giving her a little smile. "Yep, I'm human." They lift Reuben, who's snuffling. "This is Reuben. Romeo made him my vessel creature."
Reuben gives Harper a cheery oink, so Jesse figures she's alright.
Harper regards Jesse a moment longer, before her smile returns fully and she reaches out to shake Jesse's hand.
Jesse can't help but smile a little at Harper pausing and glancing at the dust covering her hand before pulling the glove off and extending fingers with tiny scars on the tips, although rather than looking like Romeo's, which look like he's gained them in a bar fight, these just seem to be from rubbing them incessantly on the red dust to the point where they get scratched.
Jesse reaches up and takes it, giving it a squeeze and a little shake.
There is a moment where static electricity shoots through their hands, and Harper freezes.
That is to say, she's still smiling, but her expression is quite blank in her eyes, and she's still regarding Jesse but now her eyes are practically frozen solid as she gazes at Jesse.
Not in a cold way, not as if she's looking at Jesse as if she hates them or she thinks they're disgusting.
It's almost as if the static electricity zipped through her brain for a moment.
"... um... Miss Harper?"
This snaps her out of it, and the woman takes her hand back, tugging the red-dust-covered glove back on and giving Jesse a stern shake of the head. "No miss."
"No... oh. Um... Harper?"
Harper nods, a smile coming back over her face at that. She gives Jesse a pat on the shoulder, which gets a rather large amount of dust on Jesse and gets it stuck to their jacket.
There's a moment of pause as the two look at the handprint-shaped dust mark on their shoulder, before she gives Jesse a mischievous little smile and then ruffles their hair with her gloves.
"Aaaaah, nooooo..." Jesse dissolves into giggles as they try to avoid getting the glittery dust in their hair and fail miserably.
Lukas laughs at that, Gill going over and doing his best to try and swat some of it off with Jesse giggling. He really just gets it on himself, but he doesn't seem to mind so much. "Well, you two get along fine, so that's good. D'you know where Isa and Mevia are, Harper?"
Harper's smiling faintly, still absentmindedly getting some glittery dust in Jesse's hair, which now looks like a fairy's hair. She thinks about it for a minute, before lifting her arm and pointing off in the other direction. "Throne room." She then shifts her arm and points in the other. "Garden."
"Isa's in the throne room, Mevia's in the garden?" Lukas translates, and receives an affirming nod. "Cool. Aiden, you go with Jess and Petra to get Mevia, Gill, Maya and I'll go catch Isa."
He looks to Harper and gives her a pleasant smile, adjusting the corner of his blindfold slightly. "Do you want to come with us, Harper? We need to talk to all three of you."
Harper considers this for a moment, before shaking her head. "I have to resize an observer and connect it to a redstone comparator to boost the signal and make this effectively connect to the daylight sensor better because it doesn't work inside. I also need to find a repeater and hope that it'll react to light rather than simply only daylight."
Jesse blinks at this while Lukas just nods, apparently not perturbed by the amount of words and techno-jargon that just came out of Harper's mouth. "Alright. We'll meet you at the throne room, okay?"
Harper nods and lifts her hand in a wave. "See you."
"Bye!" Jesse calls, before they pop after Petra and Aiden, who are already halfway down the hall if rapidly fading footsteps are any indication.
Harper waits until everyone's left the room before her mild smile falls into an almost heartbroken stare in the direction Jesse ran off in, the door slowly beginning to swing back shut.
"Who did that to you?"
And then there's a click as the wooden door swings back shut.
Isa looks up when the door to the throne room swings open. She seems to be sitting cross-legged on the floor and rubbing a chicken with a crown lopsided on their head.
Reginald gives Isa a grin. "Look who showed up on the doorstep."
Her eyes light up, and she springs up with surprising ease and makes it to the door in only a few steps, wrapping the three of them in a hug. "Oh, it's lovely to see you! Is Aiden with you? I'm surprised, you four are usually inseparable."
She pauses, shooting them a scolding look. "You know, I do recall telling you all to write more often."
Lukas has the grace to look sheepish. "You know Romeo, he keeps us busy..."
She rolls her eyes. "Of course he does." Her face breaks into a huge smile as Maya chuckles, running a hand through walnut-brown hair. "Did Aiden decide not to come?"
"No, he's here, he just... needed to go get Mevia as well," Gill murmurs, scratching his cheek.
Isa probably notices his apprehensive look, because she gives him a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Aiden knows better than to try to sneak up on her. He'll be fine."
When he relaxes, she clasps her hands together and gives them a radiant smile. "Well, it's lovely to see you, anyhow. What brings you back to Sky City?" She pauses a moment later. "You haven't had any water since you've come, right?"
"No, no, Reginald warned us about it," Maya reassures her, making the woman relax slightly , "we wouldn't be so stupid to just drink the water again after such a long time."
"But, uh," Lukas adjusts his blindfold, "we actually do need to ask you three a favor."
"All three of us?" When the three of them nod, Isa's face becomes a little more sober. Benedict, apparently picking up on Isa's mood, clucks with slight concern. "It has to do with the keys, doesn't it?"
When the three of them nod again, Isa folds her hands slightly and gives a firm nod. "Yes... alright. Hopefully Harper and Mevia'll get here soon and we can discuss that, then."
Jesse likes the garden.
Aiden seems to like it too, looking at several of the blossoms and vines with incredible interest, although he does point out to Jesse to not touch any of the flowers; they are probably carnivorous or poisonous.
Petra helps by mentioning that once she went to look at some black roses and the roses tried to eat her.
So beyond the fact that Jesse has entrusted Reuben to Petra and is now practically on Aiden's heels to avoid getting eaten, they like the garden.
Aiden makes a frustrated sound moments later. "Damn, Mevia wanders off and then she's just goddamn impossible to find."
A moment later, he proceeds to literally run into someone.
There's a moment of a stunned gasp, Aiden stepping back a step while clutching at his forehead with a pained sound, the other person catching their own balance before-
Something heavy and sharp whips over Aiden's shoulder and misses it by half an inch, Petra yelling a swear as she drops Reuben and dives out of the way. Jesse turns in time to see an axe thud into a tree, the blade sinking in practically up to the hilt.
Aiden yells his own swear a second later, and Jesse turns back to see a woman with pale blue hair gritting her teeth and glaring at them with red eyes, the pupil looking rather large as she pulls another axe out of her inventory, raising it and preparing to throw another one-
Jesse realizes that it's not her pupil. There's a ring of black around her pupil.
Red eye with a ring of black iris around her pupil and pale blue hair, which means-
"Wait!"
The axe is about to leave the woman's hand when she tightens her grip again to avoid hurling it at them, which means that the gleaming blade is following through along with her arm, which further means it slams into the stone path and bounces slightly, sending a spray of sparks everywhere as Mevia jolts, gritting her teeth.
Jesse hops out in front of Aiden, hands up in surrender. "We're not bad! We promise!"
She blinks a few times at them, looking comically tiny compared to Aiden and Petra, before looking up at the other two.
Her glare fades into simply raised eyebrows at the two familiar faces. "Aiden? Petra?" She straightens back up, lifting the axe and putting it away as she regards the two with faint surprise. "What are you two doing here?" She pauses, before glancing at Jesse. "Are they new?"
"Well, yes and no, this is Jesse-"
"Oh, that human that went into Narvid, yes," Mevia cuts Aiden off before he can finish, thumbing her lip as she regards them. "Hmm, looks like Romeo didn't eat their heart. Surprising; he's got less resolve than that usually."
Jesse decides not to comment on that, although Reuben does and he gives her a rather offended oink.
She keeps looking at Jesse. Her gaze is rather even, but Jesse doesn't seem to mind and just smiles brightly, sticking out their hand to shake. "Hi. I'm Jesse," they say cheerfully. "You're Mevia, right?"
She nods almost grudgingly, taking their hand and giving it a squeeze. "Yes... sorry about attacking you." The second part seems to be as a second thought.
Jesse gives her a sheepish little smile. "It's fine... I'm starting to get used to it, unfortunately."
Petra gives a laugh at that, and even Aiden cracks a tiny smile. Mevia's lips momentarily quirk up, but the smile is gone before Jesse can really place it being there.
"Fine. Come on, then," and Mevia begins to lead the way out of the almost labyrinthian maze of flowers and plants. "Let's meet up with the other two."
A/N: So if all that redstone jargon is wrong, I apologize; I literally just found components and b-sed it xD
I hope you guys had a great holiday! School is both... kicking into gear and doing nothing, and I've got a different project to work on (actually a lot of them) so... yeah.
Pain xD
Responses to reviews!
Princess of Muffins: I'm impressed that you managed to somehow comment on chapter 22 when there aren't 22 chapters to comment on xD / Hehehe xD / They arreeeee xD / Nah, Reginald's great. / It's not so wonderful xD / You too!
LegendEmpress: Even so, that's not immediately off the bat xD
TheAmberShadow: Hehe, it's a funny look. xD / Yes, Reginald is great x3 / It's not necessarily WRONG, but it's not great.
ThinMintE06: Hehe, that's fun to write. They swear a lot, though xD / They are! / I hope you had a lovely New Years as well!
Darkbeast Dend: There is a reason xD
A-Problematic-Writer: Ahhh, thank you!
That's all! See ya, so long, and g'bye!
x.X. A.L. X.x
