Ita Shad 2

[20:09] Arlo Waters says, "C'mon then, Juri. Let's see where this special hunting is happenin'. If it's boars, I'm gonna be disappointed as hell."
[20:10] Cicero cos Morneau asks, "Do you know him, Asphira?"
[20:10] Juri says, "Hold that thought. I'll give a reply to it."
[20:10] Juri asks, "If not boars do you want something more dangerous?"
[20:11] Juri asks, "Do you want something more dangerous than boars, Ita?"
[20:11] Arlo Waters says, "It ain't matter. Just... if we're out just gettin' meat, that ain't seem very special."
[20:12] Ita asks, "Wait, uh...What?"
[20:12] Ita asks, "I...guess? What's all this about?"
[20:14] Arlo Waters says, "Well, basics is that he wants to teach ya magic. Assumin' it's illusion magic, it's nothin' I ain't already taught ya."
[20:14] Arlo Waters says, "Already told 'em if he wants to hang out with ya, he can just say so."
[20:16] Ita says, "Oh...you were wanting to show me illusion magic?..."
[20:16] Ita says, "Cuz uh. Arlo's already been doing that."
[20:16] Juri says, "I WAS."
[20:16] Juri voices frustration.
(Juri)
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[20:16] Ita flinches.
(Ita)
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[20:16] Ita asks, "S...Sorry?"
[20:16] Juri says, "Now I'm going to teach you something better."
[20:16] Arlo Waters says, "Calm down. I'm just sayin' ya can hang out with her if ya wanna."
[20:16] Ita says, "Uh...O-okay. Sure."
[20:17] Arlo Waters says, "It ain't like ya need an excuse to be around her or somethin'."
[20:17] Juri says, "I was going to teach her, not-"
[20:17] Juri exclaims, "I was going to teach her!"
[20:17] Arlo Waters asks, "What's with this insistin' anyway? Ya just get an urge to teach people at random?"
[20:17] Juri says, "It's about mood Arlo."
[20:18] Juri says, "The next hour or day I may not be in the mood for it."
[20:18] Arlo Waters says, "Huh. Never pegged ya as someone to follow up on whims."
[20:18] Juri says, "Boredom creates whims."
[20:19] Juri asks, "Now, Ita, do you want to hunt boars?"
[20:19] Ita asks, "....Are we going to have to sneak up on them like last time?"
[20:19] Juri says, "No."
[20:19] Juri says, "You're not hunting boars."
[20:19] Ita says, "...Wh-..."
[20:19] Ita says, "Okay..."
[20:25] Beneath the city there's a jungle. A wild plain filled with trees of all variety, a land for nature and the beasts that live by the rules of nature. In the night they stalk, they run when the sun comes up. With their lives on the line.

Alive! For a while with no choice. They have to follow the laws of the wild.

Juri took the two to the jungle for training. Not to hunt boars. What beasts would there be to follow the rules of nature?

"You're hunting-" Juri turns around, point at Arlo. "You're hunting Arlo, and Arlo is hunting you. In this training you're going to further mask your presence, you illusion and the darkness to help you. Focus on masking yourself in this night. Failure is the sun rising. Use your magic to blend with the night."

"Hunt Arlo, or be hunted by him. And I of course want him to use the magic for best suited for this- in the darkness. Get a feel for it, for the shadows, then try to make it your own. Once you do I'll help you progress more."
(Juri)
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[20:26] Juri says, "And remember. Out here only the strong survive."
[20:28] Ita's tugged along on whatever this errand is, led far from the (relative) safety of the city. When Juri gives the objective she, as is likely expected, doesn't seem too pleased about it.

"...Wait. 'Hunt' how?"

There's a lot of vague meaning in the simple word.

"Are there any rules? Is it like...hide and seek with bigger stakes?"

The connotation of hunting, or more so the 'being hunted' part makes her uneasy. It readily shows.
(Ita)
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[20:33] "Oi, oi..." Arlo put his hand over his face, coming to grips with the whole exercise in itself. "I guess if ya think it helps, it helps. Itty, remember ya can use any tools at your disposal - Illusion magic's great, but ya know I got a nose for it at this point. I'll trust ya to have a good idea of how to mask that signature of yours - I sniff it out, and you're probably toast." With that, Arlo's figure suddenly becomes silhoutted against the shade of some tree.

That figure then vanishes outright, disappearing somewhere in a broad-leafed thicket in the forest. Luckily for him, he knew that magic well - quite well. Unluckily for him, melding into shadow was limited by your breathing. He didn't quite take a deep one before he coated himself in shadow, and to make matters worse, he forgot about his torch.

So, when Arlo went dark, he went dark and could have been anywhere for about three seconds. Then alight just crops up in the middle of the thicket, exposing the general location of his reappearance.
(Arlo Waters)
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[20:40] And so it'd be a hunt for a friend. Hunt for growth so that maybe Ita could grow.

Juri gestured to the woman. "Standing here, you'll realize that you're just like everyone else. You will be your own judge for growth. How you use it for right and wrong. If you're guard is down you'll end up defeated by Arlo." And the male was already gone.

"This violence will help you grow. It's that way for every magi." Juri waved his hand dismissively.

"Use whatever it takes to hunt down Arlo. Do not end up hunted. Do what you must to survive to see another day. In life do not become the prey. There's no guarantee that you'll be able to do it, but prove that you're strong and not weak."

"This is nature. It has it's own rules. Follow those rules to hunt down Arlo. Become hidden, become one with the night, become one with the shadows to become the most capable predator. Survive." He says in a harsh voice, a drill instructor.

Speaking philosophical words from somewhere, some place, maybe from a different reality.
(Juri)
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[20:48] Ita gnaws furiously on her lip. She looks back and Arlo's already gone. He's got a leg up on her, already hidden and probably making plans. There's enough pause given to lend an ear to the wisdom Juri offers.

And what he offers is cold, hard truth that's decidedly uncomfortable to confront. Not that she hasn't had a brush with it a time or two, a few examples springing readily to mind, but now she's got to look it dead in the face again.

It echoes a lesson she's already endured, adaptation and using unclean methods to ensure survival. Ita doesn't have to like it for it to be any less true.

While she hasn't been studying the more advanced magics Arlo has been, she's not dead in the water by her own reckoning. After Juri finishes she skulks off somewhere into the undergrowth in quick order, putting to work what she knows to dull her signature and make it more difficult to discern.

As she goes she uses her mana to soften the ground under her feet, turning dense earth into soft sand to muffle her movements. There's a trick or two up her sleeves yet.
(Ita)
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[20:55] Arlo was a stronger worker in urban settings. More than just navigating social climes with a good-natured attitude and a few honeyed words, buildings and alleyways just tended to gel with him better. All he'd really need to do was adapt that kind of methodology to the forest, right? How bad could it possibly be?

Well, not so bad, as it turns out. While not a particularly adept tree climber, he managed to leap up onto one of the branches. Without Ita around to have her mana manipulated, he needed to let that rustle just happen. One of the trees in the broad thicket did, indeed, ruffle and shake...

...but as did that one, so did several others within the area. Using mere coins in his pocket, Arlo set several of the things to scatter in the air, some of them thunking against branches, leaves, and even the occasional woodland critter. There was a muddled amout of activity in the trees around him now.

Still, it didn't make him any closer towards finding her - in order to manage that bit, he began a quiet survey of the area around him, for any signs of Ita's magical meddling.
(Arlo Waters)
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[21:00] Ita sets to work on covering tracks as she meanders through the trees. Arlo does a good job of masking his exact location through use of...well. Literally throwing money at it. How about that? Coins collide with branches, disturb the smaller jungle denizens, and generally make a ruckus that makes him hard to track.

So for now, she does as is probably expected of her- she focuses on staying hidden. Unfortunately Ita doesn't do a perfect job of it.

The sand she's using to muffle the sounds of her footsteps leaves behind patches of disturbed jungled detritus where she passes. If one looks close enough the spots of beige are easy to spy among the browns and greens.

Apart from that she casts out a finer layer of little grains all around her, puts her back to a trunk of a particularly large tree, and pauses to focus.
(Ita)
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[21:06] While Arlo didn't neessarily have some sort of perfect dark vision, he could certainly suss out disturbances in the soil. The disturbances were such that they carved out a neat little path for him to follow. Still, from high atop his perch, he would almost certainly make his presence abundantly obvious for her to track.

Inhaling deeply through his nostrils, the urchin becomes as shadow once more, using what capacity he has to dart from the treetop to a cluster of greenery situated more closely to her. It was a decisive 'closing in', but it wasn't significant enough for him to try pouncing at her anytime soon. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't be sure of her precise location.

As far as Ita could see, - if she could see - there was a deeper, darker shadow seemingly darting through the greenery, entering this bush and that.
(Arlo Waters)
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[21:13] Ita can't see very well. And, at some point, it does occur to her she actually has glasses now. She fumbles around for them, shoves them on her face. While her back is pressed to the tree, her focus cast out, she could've swore she saw something moving.

It could've been Arlo. It could've been literally anything, given that she didn't get a good look. Whatever it is it's safest to play a game of avoidance. Or...

No. She's got a better idea.

While Ita continues to soften her steps, she also starts sprinkling sand behind her once more in the finer, blanketing cover. A little here, a little there, to cast out 'feelers' for movement.

It's dark and he's upped his sneaking game, but maybe this can even the field a little.
(Ita)
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[21:19] Unfortunately for Arlo, there was probably no way he could know that she was putting those feelers out behind her. At the very least, he hadn't expected her control over sand magic to grow such that she could do something like that. As he moves from cover to cover, his footsteps blanket over that sand stripe she leaves behind.

But it does so rapidly enough between Arlo's shadow steps that while he's closing in, he seems insistent on zigging and zagging. However, he still had his 'finger' on the pulse of magic at display here. There was, however scarcely, a trail of breadcrumbs he could vaguely follow to direct himself towards Ita.

With the understanding that this game of cat and mouse was not going to get them very far in either direction, Arlo steps up his game. In plain sight does the urchin's figure dash out into the light, looking around. It could well be parsed as a misstep - that perhaps he was simply slipping up.

Or it could be some kind of subterfuge. Either way, his presence there was fairly apparent.
(Arlo Waters)
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[21:21] Juri goes about cooking jerky. There's a subtle scent of meat in the air.
(Juri)
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[21:25] Ita's wise to some of Arlo's antics. Some, but not all by a long shot. It looks like he's rushed out into the open either by mistake or impatience.

Before she steps into what's potentially a giant trap, she stays hidden at the edges of the light and focuses less on her sand and more on him. There's an attempt to separate his presence from any potential illusory handiwork at play.

For all she knows, this could be much like one of the few times he was 'sleeping'. A decoy to get attention while the real Arlo was perhaps even sneaking up behind her at this very moment.

...Gosh she hopes that's not the case this soon.
(Ita)
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[21:29] There's a bead he can draw on her now. That little bit of focus towards him was enough for him to get a stronger idea of where she is. Arlo stands there, looking in no particular direction besides 'all around him' as if going for the most generic possible means of surveying someone as possible. All the while, there's more movement within the area.

Arlo's signature appears to be bathed in illusory mana, sending indications to tell all that could hear that the deceptive magic was being engaged right this moment. Meanwhile, another Arlo begins to creep along through the thicket, bushes and shrubs rustling about it.

He was getting closer - closing in towards the vague direction of where he detected Ita.
(Arlo Waters)
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[21:33] Aha. When she narrows her focus on the distraction, she can detect it for what it is. A ruse. The real Arlo must be somewhere-

Oh, oh god. Did she hear something? Whether it's him or something else shuffling through the trees she detects she reacts on it on immediate instinct- which in hindsight is probably the worst thing she could've done.

Her focus breaks momentarily and she moves quickly from her hiding spot, sacrificing some of her stealth for the sake of swift movement. She still tries to use the patches of sand to make her footsteps softer...

And ends up leaving all the more obvious a trail behind her. If she'd mastered clean up it might've been more useful.
(Ita)
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[21:39] The rustling and shaking that the approaching Arlo becomes more conspicuous as he closes in on the trail she was making. It was aggression incarnate - he was going full tilt into a chase through the woods.

The Arlo who stood in the path, meanwhile, dusted himself off before casually strolling forward in the direction of that signature. One of them was surely an illusion, and both of them were offering a decent hint of illusion magic, but which one was actually Arlo?

That choice would probably have to come soon. It presumably took less energy to control a strolling clone... while that base aggression seemed fairly expensive.

Both of them, in either case, were now rapidly (or briskly) closing in on her location. As if to just punctuate the pressure he was now relishing in putting on, there wends a wispy voice on the wind. "It-ty~... Ya ain't gotta run, ya know..."
(Arlo Waters)
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[21:46] Ita has not ever responded well to aggression of any kind. Sure she knows on some level that this is some sort of game- right?- but something about it still unnerves her on a gut level.

The pursuers aren't quite breathing down her neck yet, but they're getting far too close for comfort. She sets aside her panic for a few spare seconds to formulate a plan of sorts.

She's small, and quick, and more than capable of quickly scaling one of the taller trees that's surrounded by a healthy amount of vegetation. The boughs provide plenty of shadows to hide in, which is a plus, and the dense foliage on the ground is enough to hide another sprinkling of sand.

It's a little more detectable than she likes and she leaves the relative safety of ground cover, but it's a gamble she's electing to take as the hunter narrows in on her location.
(Ita)
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[21:52] The gamble doesn't necessarily pay off as she might have hoped. The striding Arlo but needs to simply look up towards the treetops and spy her startnig to climb up towards the top. He stands still there for a few moments, before melting once again into shadow. The Arlo that pursues her vanishes in an instant, the difficulty of maintaining a clone while melding into shadow a touch untenable.

Either way, it was a little too late to try and squirrel her way out. Arlo's sights were now on her, and it didn't seem like he was about to be denied. The shadow-coated figure bolts towards the tree before seeming to dissipate entirely. While there was doubtless a signature underneath her, the direction was a little bit difficult to suss out.

This was because, seemingly from the soil, several Arlos sprouted up, all of them reforming from the lurid shadow that fell from the boughs. Each folded their arms across their respective chests, before turning their gazes up towards Ita.

"Ya might as well come down now," they spoke in unison, feet firmly planted on the ground.
(Arlo Waters)
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[21:57] Arlo's successfully sniffed her out, and when she looks down from the shadows there's a whole squadron down there on the ground, waiting. Well, she can devote a little less attention to hiding herself now and thrust more effort into a last ditch effort.

The sand she'd left behind in the undergrowth stirs, gathers, and...

...Clings irritatingly to the hunters' shoes. That's. That's really it. It was probably supposed to be something way more impressive, but with her back against a wall it's hard to muster up the concentration to complete it.

From above, in the boughs, there's a soft and distant curse:

"...Damnit..."
(Ita)
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[22:02] "You ain't got a chance, Itty. Come down now before ya hurt yourself." The chorus of Arlo(s) barked up at the tree-bound Ita, most of them holding different expressions. From sneers to woeful, uncertain glances to smug smirks, each of them were goading her in some fashion. Unlike Juri's suggestion to spur on towards violence and... well, all of that, Arlo didn't seem to be acting on any particularly bellicose tendencies.

However, they remained at the base of the tree, still trying to talk her down. She was indeed backed into a corner - but shouldn't a cornered mouse fain attempt to bite back? Perhaps this was what the urchin was waiting on; an attempt, however faint, for her to try and retaliate.
(Arlo Waters)
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[22:07] Ita does another look about for possible exits. There's no way she's getting down, and no way she's going to suddenly sprout wings and fly out of here. Maybe jumping to another tree, but that would still leave her easily pursued.

She does descend the tree. Yet only after the earth stirs and a wave of mud provides ample distraction.

Outnumbered, out gunned, but she might as well go down swinging.
(Ita)
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[22:14] Perhaps a wave of mud springing from the ground was exactly what Arlo was expecting. For its appearance, it does appear to catch several of the Arlos off guard. Some of them sink, others trip over their feet, and all of them are generally caught mired by the muck.

Arlo Prime, however, seemed to be a touch more prepared for what she had in store. A prompt jump, having sussed out her mana to be preparing a cast, saw him scramble up and along the tree towards her. It was going to make for a decidedly 'strange' kind of confrontation. Now climbing up by way of grit, clenched teeth, and a lot of coarse bark, the proper Arlo conspired to knock her right down from her place.

Still, it was quite literally an uphill battle.
(Arlo Waters)
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[22:17] Even if she doesn't end up scraping out a victory from this, it's satisfying to see the numbers ringing the tree below thinned. Still it's ultimately not going to win the day.

Ita's just reaching back for her sword, ready to follow the tide of mud, when the REAL Arlo (she's pretty sure he's the real one), takes charge and charge and climb up the tree.

"Wh-whoa. Hey, hey. Alright. I give," she says, hands up. Though whether or not the bull-headed illusionist stops is up for debate.
(Ita)
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[22:19] The exercise probably didn't go quite as Juri envisioned. Perhaps not even by half. It didn't do much to teach the base principles of illusion or shadow magic... but it did demonstrate what it was capable of. That it was a particularly useful thing to have when hunting. Maybe, just maybe she could pick up on a thing or two just via observation.

But now Arlo found himself in quite a potent pickle. Just clung to the tree, unsure about how to get down, Arlo looks more like a desperate cat rather than a furious hunter. It looks rather obvious that the last thing he wants to do is just fall off and fumble right into the loamy soil and mud mix.

That 'puppy dog' desperation is conveyed just as easily in his eyes as he looks up at Ita.
(Arlo Waters)
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[22:23] Ita blinks down at him. Had she been less spectacled she'd have had to wait even longer to get the hint, or squint to see his face.

She can tell almost immediately now though.

"Oh god, Arlo, are you-"

For his benefit, namely for his pride, she lowers her voice even further.

"Are you...can you not get down?"

The 'hunter' looks ridiculous now and she tries so hard to keep back a laugh.
(Ita)
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[22:24] "I, uh. I ain't usually much of a tree climber. I just kinda winged it when I started out, and when I started climbin' at ya, and now..." Arlo goes back to facing the tree instead, mortified. The tables turned at such a rapid pace that it wound up making his head spin. Unable to extricate himself from the bark for fear of falling down wrong and breaking his neck, he just hung there.

"I... uh. Bit of help would be nice, sure."
(Arlo Waters)
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[22:29] It occurs to her that while she's had her forays in hunting Arlo's been, for lack of a better term, a 'city slicker'. Her sand might've failed her and been unimpressive, but now she can make up for it by climbing down a tree.

She clambers down with little effort at all, slight and swift. Ita does take more than a few seconds to admire Arlo's predicament. There's the faintest hint of smug somewhere in the direction of her and the ground.

Once she's done relishing in the sight, she sets about work. The sand she'd scattered about before? Now she can put it to a bit better use that she's not pressed for time. All the individual grains gather together slowly into a circle on the ground below him.

"Just let got. That should be soft enough to break your fall....probably."
(Ita)
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[22:32] Like a sticky hand being peeled off of a window, Arlo slowly manages to extricate himself from the bark of a tree. Unlike said sticky hand, however, Arlo was not light enough to not feel the impact. He somehow manages to tumble off the three in such a way that most of his body manages to land on terra firma, unlike his face.

His face was now simply pressed down onto the grains of sand, buried neck-deep. The rest of Arlo was lying like a loaf on the soil, arms and legs out spread eagle. It didn't seem like he was very much hurt by the fall. Physically, anyway.

His dignity? Stripped, bound to a rock, laid bare, and fed to crows all before Ita's eyes.
(Arlo Waters)
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[22:36] Ita can only watch as Arlo comes tumbling, tumbling down out of the tree. She winces as he collides with the ground, then she peers to see his state.

The Suddite, after a pause, erupts in a cackle that sends her doubling over. Try as she might to muffle it, this one takes some serious effort to quell.

Once it subsides she's a little more worried he might've been harmed by the fall, yet he seems fine...She shuffles over and stoops down to prod him.
(Ita)
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[22:38] It was for a blessing that they were out in the wilds, where nobody else besides them and probably the gods could see him. Rolling about in place, Arlo manages to pluck out his head from the sand and spit out a few stray granules, staring blearily at the night sky. At the very least, it sounded like Ita managed to derive some delight from it.

That fact, and that fact alone, gave Arlo enough cause to put a smile on his face. "Oi, oi... Ya got your fun. And... I dunno if ya actually learned anythin'. Here's hopin'."
(Arlo Waters)
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[22:38] * You have been awarded 1 Roleplay Points! *
[22:39] Ita says, "I learned that...whatever you were doing was terrifying."
[22:39] Ita asks, "That count?"
[22:41] Ita waves her hand and some of the grains of sand roll off of him. It's not Lord Tirel's mastery over the element, but it'll do in a pinch. She offers Arlo a hand up.

"I got something out of it. Don't worry...C'mon."
(Ita)
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[22:43] Arlo Waters asks, "Yeah, yeah... I figure that's the exercise, yeah?"
[22:43] Arlo Waters says, "After that experience, I'm about ready to take a rest..."
[22:43] Ita says, "Probably. Unless Juri wants something else. Uh..."
[22:43] Ita says, "...Yeah. I think you earned a sit down after that."
[22:44] Juri sits by a tree, lazily biting jerky.
(Juri)
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[22:45] Ita asks, "Er...Juri?"
[22:45] Ita says, "We good? You okay?..."
[22:47] Juri forgot something important:

He's bored.

The two were having all the fun while he was listening where he could. Not all the time, not every words. Mostly the rustle of leaves and motions about.

But he had nothing to do.
He cooked jerky... ate jerky... sat beneath the tree and ate more jerky...

What was he suppose to be doing again? Something about training.

Then he's called out to, remembering why. "Oh right. Did you learn anything? Who won?" He doesn't move from his spot.
(Juri)
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[22:49] Ita blinks a few times, dusts herself off, then calls out to the butler.

"Uh. Low. He won. I learned a little, sure. And if you want to do another lesson some time, wouldn't turn it down. He fell out of- He's tired and wanting to head back."

Narrow save.
(Ita)
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[22:50] Arlo Waters says, "Yep. That's about... it, there."
[22:52] Through all the waiting something came to mind. Something he'd forgotten. Wasn't Ita training somehow. What did Ita want?

...she wasn't suited for being an assassin, Arlo proved the better sort for it. Ita was- had her own charms. So he'd ask what he forgotten.

"...did you even want to learn my magic?"
(Juri)
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[22:53] Ita rubs the back of her head. Juri's magic did have its own appeal.

"If you're willing to teach? I'm willing to learn. Might not be as good as Low is at it though. He's uh. He's got a knack."
(Ita)
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