Afternoon at the Museum

[ohgoodgrief]

Who: Yang... and you!
What: It's time for a field trip to the Musée de l'Armée in Paris, France. The afternoon is in the museum. But Yang took everyone at like 10 AM as an excuse to get out and see Paris.
Where: Paris! And at the Army Museum.
When: February 25
Notes: The following prompts are if you want to interact with Yang directly! Otherwise, please feel free to use this as an excuse to do threads in Paris! Yang's taking basically anyone -- heck, even other teachers, TA's, and RA's -- because he really just wanted an easy field trip after grading all the papers and despairing over the fact he might have made his courses too hard.

A. WE'RE ABOUT TO HAVE PARIS RIGHT NOW

[The helicopters have landed at Charles de Gaulle airport, everyone has bused into the city center, and it's now about 11:00 in the morning. They aren't supposed to be at the museum until two. Thus, standing in front of the crowd, Wen-li Yang...

...is due to give a speech.]

So, Paris! It's a pretty big deal.

[Hm, what else is important...]

Meet at the Army Museum at 2! And try to not get in too much trouble. Have fun!

[He'll hang around for a second in case anyone has questions.]

B. AND NOW: OLD STUFF!

[At about 1:57 PM, Yang comes running up with a sandwich still in his mouth and a paper cup with tea in it in hand. He skids to a stop in front of the museum's steps, looks around, and... peers at the people waiting for him.

Then, sheepishly, he waves.

The museum is much too big to do a guided tour. However, unlike the free roam period in Paris, Yang is actually a good source of information here. He roams between the different groups of students, answering questions, providing historical detail, and showing that he isn't actually terrible at his job all of the time.

He'd be easy to approach during any of this.]

Comments

[prisoneroffate]

A. open

[Given that he hadn't had a chance to visit the fabled City of Light. It was huge, but the metro system, much like that in Tokyo, was expansive, allowing him to cover a great deal of distance in a relatively short amount of time. Thus, he was exploring along the 7th arrondissement, checking out the Eiffel Tower since he was in the area]

B. also open

[Ren will following along in the museum, attentively listening to Yang's explanations and nodding along, taking notes. He'll chat with other students, of course, as warranted.]

B.

[yokeye]

This is so boring!

[He's addressing Ren solely because he happens to be the closest person. The Army Museum is full of old things. Yang's explanations are background noise. Occasionally, there's been something suitably shiny enough to amuse him for a moment, like jewels and gold on some armor displays.]

How long have we been here?

[Hours. It had to be hours.]

[prisoneroffate]

Twenty minutes.

[Ren won't judge too much but seriously Toki. Have some culture or something.]

[yokeye]

Twenty minutes!?

[That's it. He's going to die right here in the museum. Of boredom. He stops to look over a helmet, Bourguignotte du roi Henri II. It has some interesting reliefs, but...]

Why would anyone wear a helmet with naked men on it!? Into battle!? That's ridiculous and no one would even be able to see them when they're fighting! All that work for nothing!

[prisoneroffate]

Maybe a distraction? If you're in a duel, that person might be thinking "why are there naked people on that helmet" and then you could stab them.

[Is he being serious here? It is impossible to tell]

[yokeye]

[Toki is taking it completely seriously.]

That's so insightful~! I would absolutely be distracted by naked men in battle! It's ingenious! Everyone should have naked men helmets for the coming Nightfall battle, don't you think!?

[prisoneroffate]

Do Daemons really care about naked men though?

[yokeye]

I think they would in certain situations! I mean, some daemons have to be in the contracting business for things other than souls, right!? And if there's a battalion of those daemons, like a horde of repressed lady daemons, you know? Yeah, I bet they'd be distracted by the helmets~!

[Is he being serious here? It is impossible to tell.]

[prisoneroffate]

That may be too specific. For this to be effective we need a lot of different naked people and creatures on the helmet.

[Whether or not they're serious, they're definitely going... places.]

[yokeye]

[Toki ponders this for a moment. It's a good point.]

Each helmet could have its own design with different types of creatures and people! At that point, though, you can't really be sure they'd line up with the daemon that would be distracted by them. Unless there's some kind of locator spell type thing that would read their minds and we'd know exactly where to place which helmet!

A

[gaiarage]

[It took a lot of finagling to get Naoki in a state where he could leave school grounds without tripping anyone's weirdness alarms, but he's here now. The markins on his face have been smudged out with a combination of makeup and illusions, the rest covered up by the hoodie and track pants they had to badger him into wearing. He almost looks like a person now.

He slouches around the base of the tower alongside Ren, staring up at its peak.]

Why do you think they built it?

[prisoneroffate]

To show they could, I think.

[Ren had at least done a bit of reading on the place. Apparently it was smaller than the Tokyo Tower, but the remoteness of the park really made it seem much bigger.]

[gaiarage]

That makes sense.

[Naoki, as someone who does most things just because he can, can empathize. He stops and rests a hand on the iron strut.]

Not as big as I thought it'd be. Only seen it in pictures before this.

[prisoneroffate]

How big did you think it was going to be, exactly?

[gaiarage]

[SHRUG]

Just... bigger. It always looked pretty tall in photos.

[prisoneroffate]

And this doesn't look tall?

[gaiarage]

You know what I mean.

[prisoneroffate]

You have unrealistic expectations?

b

[ohgoodgrief]

[In a break in the questions, Yang approaches Ren. It's important to reach out and talk to students!

He read this in the training materials.]

Hello, Ren! Enjoying it so far?

[prisoneroffate]

[Ren nods somewhat slowly]

There's quite a lot of war history, isn't there?

[ohgoodgrief]

I'm afraid so. Army museum, after all.

[He shakes his head.] There's other museums with different focuses, though.

[prisoneroffate]

[Ren chuckles a bit. Walked into that one, he did]

I guess I mean there's a lot of history of humans fighting each other.

[ohgoodgrief]

It wasn't very sporting of me, I'm afraid.

That's the truth, though. I think it's one of the things we're very good at. [He sighs.] Unfortunately.

[Says the person who made a career off of fighting other people, but he thinks of himself as a hypocrite.]

[prisoneroffate]

That doesn't speak well for our chances of surviving this.

[ohgoodgrief]

That's... unfortunately true. We have our work cut out for us. We're going to have to convince a lot of squabbling children with nuclear weapons to play nice for a couple of years.

I think we can do it, though.