shifted_logs | paper cities burning

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paper cities burning

Characters: Braxiatel and anyone ever. It's an open log! Tag in! Join in origami art!!
Location: The Astral Plane. Somewhere near food, probably.
Time: After Narvin has been made into a wee-bitty thing. Before the hypothetical future where Braxiatel jumps into a ravine because he hates babysitting.
Summary: Braxiatel needs to do something in his spare time. This is it.
Warnings: Origami awesomeness.

Among the stars and spaces between them, free of the heavy weight of unease that had haunted the Plane, a man was putting his supreme talents in dexterity and mathematical genius to use by making art out of folded paper. Or to put it more simply, Irving Braxiatel was going slightly mad playing the babysitter and so had resorted to origami to try to keep himself sane.

He had begun with a few simple flowers and had quickly gotten sick with the mundanity. That was how the paper model of the Palace of Versailles had ended up at his feet. Then, when he had gotten bored with that, he crafted for himself origami warriors, the grand life-sized sazu game pieces that once were placed in the floating tombs of the Deathless Emperors of Draconia, that they may battle one another in their sleeping death.

Presently, Braxiatel was putting the finishing touch on Nelson's battleship. He had done a fairly good job of representing the Battle of Trafalgar, as far as he was concerned, and was rather pleased by the final product.

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Braxiatel considered this proposition seriously. "I've been making them entirely out of boredom. I don't see why not. It should be fun."

There were times when Braxiatel would argue about the sanctity of art and the importance of preserving complex works. This was not one of them. Indeed, Braxiatel probably would have been very happy to watch it all go up in flames.

Nathan would have agreed with that sentiment if he were capable of knowing it existed, so one can only take solace in the narration. Idly, Nathan picks up one of the things Irving made and turns it over in his hands, trying not to completely crush it or whatever.

"I have no idea how to manage battleship without battleship rules or layout. I guess it'd be more of just, uh, coming to an agreement or something when ships get destroyed." Because he can totally run with that, and as his interest wanes in the bit he picked up, he places it back down from where he got it. "I mean, fuck, what else are you gonna do with them. Throw them away, that's what."

He knew well the cycle of buying things and just throwing them away afterwards. Or smashing them. Smashing them was always fun.

"Will you be taking Admiral Nelson's fleet, then?" Braxiatel nudged Gravina's ship. After working so hard to put everything in a historical accurate place, he would take a lot of pleasure in messing it all up again.

"I have no idea who that guy is," he said, and paused a few seconds after to tilt his hand and look up in thought. "But, uh, hey, whatever, just tell me whatever ships are mine and I'll go with it."

It wasn't like it was checkers or anything and there were to be epic arguments over who got to be black. They were paper ships. There was nothing to argue!

"Those are the ones with the British flags. The opponents were the French and the Spanish. There are more of those. Historically speaking, the British won, and they haven't stopped bragging about it since." Braxiatel considered Nathan. "Any suggestions for the rules?"

"Well, we can't use, uh, typical battleship rules. That shit is basically a bunch of guys looking at radar picking places at random." Nathan paused, considering the mechanics of Battleship as he examined a ship. "Really shitty radar. I don't know about you, but, uh, when I use my radar, it fucking shows me shit. Fucking wasteful. Firing missiles and bombs everywhere..."

He didn't linger long on the potential criticisms of what the fuck kind of governments have two guys fire blindly into the ocean, thankfully. God knows he could have gone on forever about that crap.

"And yeah, fine, I'll play that guy. You can have, uh, I guess the French and Spanish." He gestured at the ships, Irving could have aaaaaaaaall the ones that were his. "Probably want to decide how many hits a ship can take though, anyway. And just- whoever wins, uh, they're the one who lost the least amount of... ships. I guess."

Unwilling to talk about the sort of governments that did exactly that, Braxiatel picked up one of the Spanish ships, as if getting the weight of them could help him decide something so arbitrary. "Two or three?"

"Three. Two makes them seem too ...flimsy?" He considered it for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, three."

"Yes, we wouldn't want them to seem flimsy," Braxiatel said as he set the paper model back down again.

"Well, I meant, you know, in like... imaginary mechanics," he grumbled, as if interpreting some sort of recrimination implied. "I know they're just paper and I could break it all with just a tap."

But the grumble passes as quickly as it arises, thanks to the wonder of ADD. Probably actual ADD, I would not be surprised.

"Uh, who's supposed to go first? I don't think I was in school when, or I guess if they taught this shit."

Amused at the grumble, Braxiatel merely said, "You may. If you prefer." He was smiling still, perhaps a little more relaxed for the childish game of battleships.

Nathan nodded slightly; he was all up for going first, but he had to figure out which enemy ship to hit first. He was absolutely outnumbered (he should have argued that all of Irving's ships took like, two hits to destroy instead of three to make it fair, but too late now) and fuck did that put him at the disadvantage here. Especially since he knew nothing of the history behind the battle, so he couldn't cheat and just reference what happened.

After a few minutes of contemplatively stroking his chin and examining the layout, he pointed at a completely random enemy ship. "Uh, I fire at that one, I guess."

Maybe it would get easier after he got an idea of what Irving would do. Like with chess or checkers, the first move or two are completely trivial and shitty, but once you get the big boys in and you're like able to wreck some shit, then it's on. Otherwise it's like 'oh well I move my fucking pawn diagonally left, yeah, totally winning move there, fuck'.

Clearly imaginary battleships was just like that.

Braxiatel considered this for a moment, then decided to mark the hit by drawing an 'X' on the side of the ship. It was a lot easier than finding pins to jab into the things, anyway.

Out of a reflexive desire that probably came from years of being told not to touch history, Braxiatel pointed at Nelson's ship. "And I believe I'll have mine fire at that one."

Nathan, without much concern for whether or not things were his, leaned over to snatch Irving's pen or whatever it was he used to draw an X on there. Nathan didn't keep pens with him, so, you know, he was just going to use Irving's. It was right there. And plus he wasn't going to try to be creative and think of his own way to mark damage.

He carefully put an X somewhere on the boat, then set it back down in, more or less, the original position.

Was that an important ship though? He couldn't tell, nor was he going to ask, because mainly, he didn't care. Unless it meant he'd lose the game, but that would be bullshit, what fucking boat army just rolls up their ships and goes home when one ship goes down?

The French, probably. Everyone knows the stereotype with the French and running away from things.

A smirk crossed Nathan's face as he came up with an idea. Technically, it wasn't even against the rules, as they hadn't established anything. "Full front line attack." He gestured at the, well, first line of ships. "Groups of three focusing fire on specific boats."

He pointed out various ships equal to his front line divided by three. Yeah, take that, Irving. He was going to smash away at your boats as quick as he could to try to even up the score.

Braxiatel actually laughed at that. "Impressive, Mr Explosion!" And it wasn't sarcastic in the slight. Ignoring the logical problem of aiming at that ships with the formation they had--and as far as reenacting battles went, they didn't have much choice in that--it was a good strategy, and it just so happened to take down a good chunk of Braxiatel's ships. Obligingly, he removed them from play by crushing them under his boots. He tried not to take too much pleasure in the destruction of his own forces, but there were no two ways around it: stepping on things was fun.

"Very well," Braxiatel said. "Target the centre of the lines." He indicated the handful of ships he would have his taking down.

He glanced up from his ship to Irving. "Don't call me that, Irving." Nathan grinned slightly. "We're not fucking business associates. We're bros."

With that said, he indulged in the same sort of destructive tendency as Irving had shown, but in a different way. Nathan smashed them with his fist, then threw what was left of the ship absently in some other direction.

"I should have picked the side with more fucking ships," he said jokingly. It was true though, he totally should have. "Still going to try to kick your ass though, jackoff." Friendly insults.

Then he pulled on his Serious Business expression because damn if Irving continued copying his tactic of like just wildly shoot away at the ships in the whole... group thingy, Irving would still win... Nathan knew how to do math, or pretty simple math off hand, and the numbers? The numbers were 'Nathan Explosion takes out a small handful of ships while Irving takes out somewhat more than that, and then Nathan's number of ship killing count begins to significantly fucking die off while Irving is just cruising around the imaginary ocean, chuckling to himself for being a sly bastard'. That was exactly what the numbers were telling him.

And that was some pretty fucking horrible deductions.

"Shit."

"I wouldn't want it any other way."

The numbers were pretty damn honest, it was true. Indeed, 'chuckle' was even the correct word for what was lurking behind the benevolent smile on Braxiatel's lips. It was to the fortune of the world at large that Braxiatel only rarely actually laughed aloud out of smugness. He could be self-satisfied purely in a smile.

Braxiatel considered the battlefield, wondering if he needed to work particularly hard to get things done. The best thing to do, very probably, would be to move his ships around so that they could destroy the superior position that Nelson had given his fleets. But as he was attacking the centre lines, he could possibly just break through there and round the fleet up that way.

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paper cities burning

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