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[Eren had been absent for the entire Jaunt so far. Well, not exactly absent, but being stuck as one of the petrified Stonefolk is effectively the same. If anyone had gone to see him in statue form his expression was mostly stubborn and angry but had been clearly changing to a look of "oh shit I messed up" when he was frozen. It's not even known whether he was Infiltrating or if he just set a Jules-level record for how quickly terrible life choices were made on a Jaunt.]

[Now, only a couple of days before the ceremony is due to take place, that particular mystery is finally solved as Eren begins to speak on the Network. His mental voice is still a bit tired, and perhaps also slightly pained - although it's likely only those close to him can fully pick up on the latter.]

This is Eren Jaeger. I'm currently stuck as some kind of lizard person again. The native lizard people - uh, Stonefolk? They said sunlight turned me into a rock. So how long have I been a statue?

Oh, and is it safe to use my real name or do I need to go by something else here? Right now they think I have amnesia, but I don't know how long I can fake that.

[He pauses for a few seconds, waiting for a certain response that never comes. When he speaks again Eren sounds sad and disappointed.]

Mikasa's Infiltrating, isn't she?

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Probably roughly a millenium, if you revived with the others.

Stonefolk names are either the names of places or an adjective with a stone or part of Stonefolk anatomy.

I've been using Ravenclaw.

Can't have been that long. I remember the start of the Jaunt, but I got turned into a statue right away. [Unless the Jaunt's been going for a millennium, but that seems extremely unlikely.]

Okay, thanks. I'll think of something. ...'Freewing?'

[The symbol he almost always wears - the symbol of the Survey Corps - is called the Wings of Freedom. So that suggestion was the first thing that came to mind.]

In that case it's been about a month. A rather eventful one, of course.

[Like Jaunts have another kind]

Freewing sounds like it would fit in.

Do you mean it's been an eventful month compared to the average Jaunt? Or just the normal kind of eventful?

Okay, then I'll go by that while we're here.

The usual Jaunt eventful.

[Well...]

Rather more singing than usual.

It's the start of the fourth week on this Jaunt. So depending on what you last remember, you might have been gone for quite a while.

Four weeks!? [There's the mental equivalent of a groan.] At least shit doesn't seem to be hitting the fan yet, I guess. Or did something happen I'm not aware of yet?

It might in some time. Travelers have just completed a heist against an overlay of Beatrice. So she might not be happy about that.

On the other hand, the Ceremony to reunite the amulets is near.

Let her be unhappy then. The sooner she makes her move, the sooner we can get back to Liminal Space.

We need to find a peaceful way to settle this now that we're finally setting things right.

And if she doesn't let us settle this peacefully?

There's still the option to bring the Traveler back to their senses and ask them how to deal with the overlay. They'd know the best what to do.

All of you can try that first, but I'm still going to be ready for a fight if the peaceful solutions don't work.

I never said you shouldn't be prepared for a fight. Honestly, we might need to do that before getting to negotiations table.

If that happens you can count on me. I've never been very good at talking, but hitting things? That I can do really damn well.

I just want to get this stupid Jaunt over with so we can all get back home. [Anyone listening in on this that knows Eren will know from that line exactly how done he is with this Jaunt already. It's not often that he openly admits to thinking of Liminal Space as "home" now.]

I'm sure the network will have a call for help once things start happening.

We'll get this over with as soon as we're able to and go back. You'll see your friends again soon.

If not, don't hesitate to call me personally.

...I hope so.

Alright. If you need back up for negotiating, you can call me in return. I'm Mamoru Chiba.

Seriously? You've been a statue this whole time?

[That's definitely Jules-tier.]

It's safe to you the name of your hometown or some other important city. Locations are pretty common and if it's something native to yours, it's likely no one else is called the same.

As far as I've seen, Mikasa-san and Jean-san aren't investigators. Armin-san is with us Stonefolk.

Edited 2017-10-30 19:10 (UTC)

Hey! It's not my fault there hadn't been any warnings about sunlight yet! [...Although it is still Eren's fault that he didn't try getting out of the sunlight when stepping into it made him feel ill, but that's a detail he's hoping nobody notices. Or at least nobody that would publicly call him out on it, anyway.]

...My hometown, huh? [There's a short pause, and a vague feeling that he's not entirely comfortable with using that. And that, by extension, the answer he finally gives isn't the whole truth.] Thanks, but 'Shiganshina' sounds too out of place with everything else I've heard. It'd probably raise more questions than I want to answer.

Oh. I see. [Jean too!? Fuck. At least Armin's here. Eren's not sure he could make it even one week without any of them. Especially not right now.]

That doesn't happen in a few seconds though. You should have noticed in time like Kinji-san did...

[Whoops.]

Hey, no worries. It's just a thought I got since my overlay somehow fittingly had his name be Yasoinaba. It's a strange coincidence.

There wasn't any shade nearby!

[More like he didn't realize this wasn't something he could push through with sheer stubbornness until he was in the middle of a clearing. At that point he didn't have time to go back.]

That the name of where you're from? I'm going to use the other naming style they have here and go by Freewing.

Uh huh. Sure. Whatever you say.

That works. And well, technically it's just Inaba but yeah sorta.

Edited 2017-10-31 17:46 (UTC)

[There was a time not too long ago that Eren would have continued to argue about this. Nowadays he has finally learned from his mistakes, however, so he lets the subject drop rather than dig himself deeper into this hole.]

So what's the "Yaso" part from?

It's the name of the train station, more or less - well, one of them. Nevertheless, it's part of Inaba.

[Eren pauses, like he has to think about that for a moment.] Trains are those really long horseless carriages, right? The ones that can only move on metal rails?

[Oh, right. There were those who weren't as familiar with technology as some.]

Yep, those are trains. I don't think we've had a jaunt that has actually had trains... or then I've just missed them.

If there's been any on the Jaunts I've been on, they can't have been very important.

Then your overlay's really named after a place important to where you're from? Weird. [He's experienced weirder overlay "coincidences" before, but those are one aspect of Traveling he's never quite gotten used to.]

Yea. And in the jaunts we've needed to travel long distances, we had other options and crap.

[There's almost like a mental equivalent of a shrug.]

Once I was named after my best friends' Persona. It can be pretty weird from time to time.

Or when we did need something like that the world didn't have them.

People that betrayed me and my friends back in our world were our overlays' rival rock band back in California. You don't need to tell me how weird it can get. I still can't get used to that kind of bullshit, and I don't think I ever will.

That's... yeah. I can see how that can be very awkward afterwards. I'm sort of just trying to shrug it off and not think about it too much.

Shit hasn't gotten that personal on me yet.

...Good job, buddy. [Still, as far as screwing up at the beginning of the jaunt goes, could've been worse.]

The people who're actually with the Stonefolk can give you better advice on that front. As for Mikasa, she hasn't said anything on the network, so she probably is infiltrating - don't think I've seen her, but there's three groups that've only had a week or so of mingling time, so that doesn't mean much.

Need a crash course on what you missed?

Oh, shut up! [Eren sounds angry, but she can likely tell by now that he's actually just really, really embarrassed. Especially since he sounds much less angry when responding to everything else.]

I've overheard some of the Stonefolk here talking about humans and Forest Folk. Guessing those are the groups you're talking about? [He sighs.] At least I know she's here somewhere. So's Jean. I can still sense them through our Bonds.

I- yes. Please.

Those would be the groups. And yeah, no walkabout split this time as far as we can tell.

Hokay, so. There's a magical mystery amulet that's supposed to be rejoined once a year to balance out the local magic, bring the three races together in harmony, yadda yadda, except that hasn't happened in a thousand years because two of the pieces went missing. Possibly not coincidentally, some of us were here when those pieces went missing, but that was a pre-Moebius stop, so how much we know depends on what Riddick and company have been able to piece back together.

Overlay-Beatrice has been financing some archeology work that turned up the two missing pieces and set the local magic to running rampant when she put them on display in a museum, because of course she thinks they're hers now. And then she moved them, but we stole them back and got 'em to the right people for the ceremony thingamajig to go ahead as scheduled.

For some reason Overlay-Beatrice is directing her outrage over this at the forest. So far it's not lethal outrage, and we're working on keeping it that way.

That's something, at least. What are the Forest Folk like?

The Travelers messed up last time, and now we've been sent back to fix it. But not before this world had a thousand years to get more messed up? What the hell!? [There wasn't any better time for the Arcana to send them back in a millennium!? For someone from a world where written history only goes back a century, that seems an almost incomprehensible length of time.]

...Of course she does. People like that think everything belongs to them. So what's our next move? And what what do we need to do to stop her Overlay from hurting anyone?

Other than 'talking animals,' you'd have to ask one of them. [Claudia's had a lot on her plate, so the finer points of the non-human cultures are better imparted by other people.]

It didn't get more messed up so much as the cultures drifted apart, and since the amulet pieces were buried on the dig site, this was probably the first opportunity to actually sort it out.

I'm working on incapacitating her minions before they can do the same to the Forest Folk. Not lethally, if we can help it. That's only going to cause more trouble.

Talking animals? You mean normal animals, not something like Pogemon? That's a new one.

That's still a too damn long...

I'm not in any shape to fight yet. [There's obvious frustration in his mental voice at that.] But once I am, just tell me where I need to go and what I need to do.

Well, normal other than being pastel colors, but yeah. And look at it this way, better late than not at all. [That's without getting into the fact that most of the Arcana seem to have a shaky-at-best grasp on the concept of time.]

When you're ready head for the forest. The guards are all humans in uniforms. Try not to kill anyone if you don't have to.

[He's used to the kind of fight where that's absolutely necessary, but Claudia doesn't think it is, here.]

Better doesn't mean it's good enough. If there's a way to improve, you need to do it so you can keep moving forward. [At least no one ever has to wonder why he ended up one of Chariot's.]

Okay, I'll head there soon. And... I'll try. But if it comes down to killing the attackers or letting innocents get hurt, I'm not going to hold back.

[There are other factors to worry about as well, just none that Eren's realized just yet...]

[That's what they're doing now... but there are arguments it's worth pursuing with Eren, and Claudia's getting the feeling this isn't one of them.]

That'd be why I said 'try.'

[This really isn't an argument that's worth having. Claudia's relatively good at getting through to him when Eren's just being obstinate, but his skewed perception of time and history aren't things that will be easy to fix.]

As long as we're clear on that, there shouldn't be a problem.

Ah, that explains why you've been silent! I thought you were infiltrating like your best friend Jean. [Possibly just sort of kidding/teasing with the best part there or is she? But hi, she misses her infiltrating friend and she missed you too.]

Yeah, sorry I- Wait, what makes you think he's my "best friend?"

[Except he doesn't sound angry about it. Slightly grumpy at most, which for Eren is barely worth noting. That also wasn't exactly a denial.]

... the way how they all seem to be that to you in different ways but still in ways, that fit with those words?

...

Okay. You got me.

[Eren just doesn't have the energy yet to get into yet another dumb pride-fueled argument. Besides, it's not embarrassing to admit it in public if Jean's not around to hear it. ...Right?]

Heeeeee, so then you and I can team up into a pillow throwing war against him together the next time when we see him, right?

Maybe. [There's of a faint laugh.] Man, I think I've only had one pillow fight since I graduated from the Training Corps. ...Maybe Empress will give us a giant pillow room again sometime. Hopefully one without all the other bullshit we had to deal with that Liminal.

Why just maybe, we totally sho-- [and then priorities, sorry network.] YOU'VE HAD A GIANT PILLOW ROOM AND NOT JUST THE FRIDGE WITH GIANT-SIZED EDIBLE FOOD?? UNFAAAAAAAAAAAAIR, I WANT SOMETHING LIKE THOSE TWO TOO!

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