[complete] We Need to Lookout Landing (The Moon)

[Luca]

The sky was clear and winds were fair in Hyrule this fine day. People were coming and going along the roadways, birds were chirping in and about the sporadic trees, and one bird in particular was chirping in the fortification on the central plains.

"You are no longer being poisoned by a toxic cloud!" Moonfruit cried, his wings stretched out. Surely one of these angles would get these people to listen to reason. "The time has come for a bold NEW partnership between our eyes and the moon!" he exclaimed at a small Hylian. That Hylian's name was Aebok, who stood blank-faced, struggling to understand the genius that was being outlined by the bright blue bird before him.

It seemed that, even here, in the scientific capital of Hyrule, no one could understand what had been readily apparent to Moonfruit for years. Aebok had watched this Rito diligently make the case to each individual person in Lookout Landing. Most of them being tourists, travellers, and construction enthusiasts. Aebok may have been the first of the lot who actually worked there. Specifically he brushed the horses in the stables and helped out in the kitchens. He liked making bread. He was good at making bread.

"Does this have anything to do with your name?" Aebok asked. It really was unclear at this point whether or not there actually was someone named 'Moonfruit' or if this would end with a sales pitch for a lofty summer evening in a Lurelin hacienda. Maybe this Rito just needed the sun to beat down on him for long enough to work away the barrier between his sanity and his rupees.

"It has nothing to do with me! It has to do with our future, the future of bird POWER! There's only so much we can accomplish from the ground or a mountain. The future is the moon, and I will be the first to experience it!" He shook his wings with excitement, which drummed up dried grass and small rocks from the ground.

"I don't know anything about the moon..." said Aebok, wincing and shielding his face from the detritus. "I know about bread. And horses~" he said wistfully constructing a mental scenario of how one could extricated him from this conversation.

"Look! If you see or feel the ground, you form a connection between yourself and the ground and it binds you to the soil and that's gravity but if you've never been born or if you were born hovering in the air then you'll never be affected by gravity because the bond has never formed, so we need to make a bond with the moon by extending our vision to it because when we behold the moon it beholds us back and allows us to be drawn upwards to the moon. There are four simultaneous days and two moons. There's the normal moon and the blood moon, and the bloodmoon rotates once every three regular moons so when we look at the moon three times a week, we will bond with the moon and it will become easier to reach it with both a good diet and work ethic and the first step to beginning our journey into the next world is letting me use the telescope for twenty hours, three times a week."

It was then that Aebok realised that there was always something that he wanted to try. He reached into his satchel of freshly baked bread. He crumbled some of it up into small easy to consume pieces in his hand as Moonfruit spoke, and then scattered them to the ground.

"Oh shit!" cried Moonfruit who slammed his head to the ground, attending the distributed baked finery. There was a piece, there was a piece, there was a piece -- oh! There was another one! There was a piece. It was, indeed some fine bread.

Moonfruit picked his head up from the ground, but Aebok was nowhere to be seen. Damn it, he thought, that's the third time this week...

[Emily]

oʞǝɐᴚ

"Once you're done sweeping the footpath, go to the stables and report to Aebok."

"But Aebok isn't even the stablemaster, he's just some guy who works there!"

"You're the most some guy here, Raeko. If you didn't want to be the bottom rung of the Survey Team, you shouldn't have put that Yiga statue in Paya's room." Raeko's supervisor, a Sheikah named Piki, looked up from his clipboard and frowned at her.

"I didn't know it was gonna scare her so bad! I just didn't wanna look at it anymore."

"It was pretty fucked up."

Raeko inhaled deeply, then let out a giant sigh. She had wanted to join the Zonai Survey Team ever since the Upheaval, though she was slightly too young when it had happened. Being assigned here as ranking below literally everyone else was the worst punishment she could imagine. And yes, the Yiga had done a lot of bad stuff to the Sheikah, she knew that. But she didn't realise it was still too soon. It had been years since they had been strong enough to raid outside of places with easy depths access. "Fine."

She began sweeping the footpath below the giant telescope before noticing that Aebok was tossing bread, no doubt to make her job even harder. She felt a rising need to go over and complain to him about these actions- how wasteful it was to just throw bread like that- but then the Rito he had been speaking to began smashing his head against the ground. What the heck. She quickly ditched her broom and approached the Rito. Aebok had already sprinted halfway across the square.

When the wild-eyed bird looked up, confused, Raeko adopted her most authoritative voice and said. "Hello, I am a very important member of the Zonai Survey Team. Can I help you?"

[Luca]

With a gulp to dispose of the remnant bread and empowered by these midday snacks, Moonfruit was ready to carry on the eternal struggle. Enlightenment would be spread into this land like the wind running over this depressing grassy plain. Moonfruit strutted over to the next target of his wisdom.

"Hello..." he said, as if forgetting what came next in his overly-recited monologue. "...you." he concluded. An all-encompassing greeting. Very progressive. Most good. "I! Am Moonfruit! And I can take off at an 87 degree angle. And I'm here to use your telescope! It is for the greatest of academic pursuits," he said and spread his wings wide, kicking up grass, small rocks, and bread particles that were too small to be quickly consumed in the presence of the public.

Raeko was clearly impressed by the inclusive greeting, and nodded. "We here at the Zonai Survey Team, who I assure you I am well qualified to speak for in all things, are always happy to see academic curiosity in others! I am Raeko, a head scientist appointed by very important people to help with these sorts of things. Tell me, what are you needing to look at through the telescope?"

Moonfruit was overloaded with joy and inhaled to such an extent that it seemed as if the air pressure might have suddenly changed. "The answer to our greatest challenges now lie on the surface of the moon and by witnessing the surface of the moon with enough magnification that it fills our eyes completely to where nothing else can enter our vision, we will form a connection with the moon and it will connect with us through our minds and the visions of mutual respect will raise reduce our weight upon Hyrule and allow us to reach the distant lands of the moon through prolonged study and visual exploration."

Raeko nodded and stroked her chin like an intellectual might. "Before I go any further, I need to know if you've asked anyone else about this." It would be difficult to do anything tricksy if everyone was already on high alert.

"I've asked everyone! Everyone that I have met today, I have said the same thing! And I told them all that it was under the direst of circumstances. That it is the gateway to furthering our advancement and understanding of the universe." He sighed in exasperation.

The Sheikah's face fell slightly, seeing her plans potentially falling through before they could even begin. "And what did they say?"

"Mostly things like 'I am just travelling to Necluda' and 'I'm seven.' which wasn't very helpful at all."

"Mhm, mhm, okay," Raeko replied, trying to look as authoritative on the matter as possible. She didn't know if there was scientific study about the moon, so this could have been entirely legitimate. Anything was possible in these crazy times. "I think your idea has merit, Moonfruit. And your name is very appropriate, I like that about you. If you want to sn- uh, if you want to use the telescope, meet me back here after sunset, and I'll be happy to get you in."

"After sunset??" Moonfruit exclaimed. That's so long from now... he thought.

Raeko looked up at the sky, then back to Moonfruit. "I don't think the moon is out right now."

Moonfruit craned his head around to look for the moon in the sky and realised that it was, indeed, not there. "Oh yes, very true." This is how he could tell that Raeko was a professional. "The moon must not be out during the day because it is anxious of the judgement of the common individual. We will need to restore its confidence to gain its recognition fully," he concluded aloud.

[Emily]

It is now the evening, bordering on night

Now that it was the edge of night, it was time for Raeko to get to work. Well, she had been working all day- in fact, it had been extremely difficult work, Lester had said something along the lines of "If you have so much energy that you can talk to random people, you have enough energy to clean the stables" and given her a pitchfork- but now it was time to do the big heist. Well, there wasn't a heist, really, but the idea of her next big mischief had provided Raeko the motivation to do her work in peace, bathe in peace, and eat in peace.

She had no idea where Moonfruit had gone during the day, and that was probably for the best. He seemed harmless, but probably in a way that would potentially at some point do something really funny or maybe find something interesting. She didn't know. Honestly, she didn't know if they'd used the telescope to look at the moon, either. She imagined most people just accepted that the moon was made of chalk or maybe rocks, or maybe it was a giant Talus! Ooh, Talus moon! That was way more interesting than the dumb floating islands that had, at least as far as the Zonai Survey Team had found, little more than dumb things like robots and ancient gacha machines.

She left the emergency shelter- maybe they'd get a better name for that at some point, it hadn't been an emergency shelter in like 115 years or something- and walked across the freshly-swept pathways full of detritus from being outside to the telescope landing. The head researcher was out of Lookout Landing for the week, spending time at her old laboratory in Hateno with the Queen, and instead there was a large, bulky Sheikah guarding the door. "Hello, Raeko," he said.

"Hello Rodra, everything go well today?"

"Yeah. It was pretty warm, though, I'm surprised you were able to do all the heavy lifting without passing out."

"Passing out? Couldn't be me. Anyway, gotta- wAaAiIt WhAaAt's ThAaAaAt?" she pointed toward the Castle Town ruins. When Rodra turned to look, he saw a bunch of multicoloured flashing lights and heard the sound of distant explosions. Of course, he was the only one who could see and hear all of that, but there was no way for him to know that. He turned back to Raeko, "I'm sure it's nothing, but just to be safe I'll get Piki and Pokie and we'll go take a look. Can you stay here and watch the door for me? Head Researcher's orders state nobody's supposed to go inside until she gets back."

"Uh," this was the big moment. Raeko really had to sell that she was entirely uninterested in doing this.

"Raeko, please."

"Okay!"

"Thanks!" Rodra ran off toward the emergency shelter. Alright, excellent. They should have at least several minutes for Moonfruit to arrive, look into the telescope, and get the information he wanted about the moon. Just in time, too, because the moon was already starting to rise. Raeko leaned against the railing, looking down at the central courtyard, feeling awfully proud of herself. She'd nailed it. Everything was coming up Raeko.

[Luca]

Raeko looked out across the courtyard, trying to spot Moonfruit. It shouldn't be too hard, really, the Rito stuck out more than anything else. And surely he had maintained enough interest in the moon- he was named after it, so Raeko doubted it was just a passing fancy- to show up. The night grew a bit darker, and she stood up to turn and find him. As she turned around, she found-

"H E L L O !" said a large, feathered face, mere inches from Raeko's. "I! Am Moon! Fruit!" it continued. "You know, I started out today and I only had one leg bracelet on. So I took it off of my one leg and put it on the other one so that way my other leg would have a bracelet on it, but you know what happened is that my leg that I took the bracelet off of didn't have a bracelet on it any more so I still only had one bracelet and it was just on a different foot." Moonfruit inhaled for several moments. "I always wondered about that..."

Raeko blinked. "Hello Moonfruit. I... a-am Raeko. Do you... do you need another bracelet?" She didn't have another bracelet for Moonfruit.

"Oh, no thank you, thank you though. I would like to use your large telescope. For too long! The telescope has only been focused on Hyrule Castle. But the era of the paparazzi has passed and we must turn our talons towards the pursuit of science!" Moonfruit nodded in agreement with himself. The case was convincing, he thought.

"I agree, and I think it's about time people started saying it." Raeko didn't know enough about telescopes to argue the point, even though she wasn't sure it had been pointing at the castle the entire time. Unfortunately, it was pointed at the castle right now, so maybe she just didn't know what she was talking about. "I can take you inside now, actually. The moon is up and with just a couple adjuuuuustments, we can make it work. I'm very confident."

"Most excellent. I am an expert on things like flying and secret knowledge. You must be an expert in telescopes! I have always wanted to meet an expert in telescopes!" Moonfruit excitedly hopped from talon to talon, like a water buffalo but covered in feathers. Graceful and light on his feet. "Do you think that you can look at the other end of the telescope and see very small things in your office?" he asked with keen interest.

"I am definitely an expert on telescopes. I've never looked in the other end, but I'm willing to see you try it in the daylight tomorrow. Right now I'm afraid there's nothing bright enough inside to see. Anyway, please follow me." She led Moonfruit into the small chamber at the base of the telescope. Most of the larger research stations and rooms were around the outer ring of the building, allowing for this room to be a maximum occupancy of three or four. Raeko looked around for any indication of how to control the thing, and was delighted to see a series of levers on the wall labelled with different directions, and a wheel with a crank at the base of the telescope itself. With as much feigned confidence as she could muster, she pulled the lever labelled 'East', and was rewarded with the sound of the telescope base rotating. That... was probably going to result in trouble. But it worked! "Please look through the scope at the bottom, and I'll rotate this wheel until it comes into proper focus."

Moonfruit waddled over to the base of the instrument and sat on the small stool that was almost certainly placed here for a compact dog. He craned his head around at a unnatural angle to accommodate the eyepiece that was remarkably too low to the ground to otherwise comfortably use. Moonfruit blinked for several moments while taking in the majesty of the sky. "It is night," concluded the Rito.

Raeko began turning the wheel, which would cause more minor movements in the telescope, bringing the moon into focus instead of having it look at empty night sky.

"AH!" Moonfruit exclaimed. "It is the moon," he said, sounding slightly distant. "I know it well," he said more sullenly. "I have seen it several times before. But now. It is larger, it is taking up my entire sight. Once, everything was this large, and everything took up my entire sight." Moonfruit pointedly looked at Raeko. "I have formed bonds with all of them with this sight...Book, small bird, another book, a larger bird..."

Moonfruit sighed. "It's a shame that it's not the True Moon."

A moment of silence hung between the two. The only sound must have been Raeko's brain struggling to process what she had just heard. Gone were thoughts of whether Rodra would return before they finished. Now, she was just hoping to come to terms with the newest conspiracy. "The... what?"

"The True Moon orbits around our world, but only sometimes. Sometimes it's somewhere else, but when it's here you can only see the True Moon when you have True Vision, and you can only have True Vision when you look through water that has been purified for at least 3,600 hours by a Zora and then when it's already purified, another Zora purifies it for another 3600 hours because when you take perfectly pure water and purify it again you break the rules of purity by making it double-pure and when you look through double-pure water you see the true nature of the world, but when it's not on the world then you can see things that are true but not on the world. And one of those is the True Moon which is my favourite."

"Is- is the True Moon in the room with us right now?" Raeko was beginning to question her instant acceptance of giving Moonfruit access to a telescope.

Moonfruit produced a glass of water from his satchel. "I don't know. This one has only been purified for three hours. Then he got tired." Moonfruit turned back to the eyepiece and continued to look through the telescope for several minutes. "This moon has taught me much about the surface of the moon," he said finally.

"But it's not the True Moon?"

Moonfruit looked up at Raeko, distraught. "We won't know until the water is purified..." he said forlorn.

Raeko didn't really know how to react. But fortunately- or maybe not fortunately- they were interrupted by the gentle creak of the door opening.

[El]

Gao was an observant man. A trait which - for some reason - often took people by surprise once it was finally acknowledged.

Tch. What, a man with a loud mouth wasn't allowed to be observant? You had to be demure and delicate in order to be attentive? If you were proactive and short-tempered you could never be perceptive? UGH! As if those were mutually exclusive!

Anyway, Gao believed himself to be an observant man.

It was a skill honed to a fine point by the sharpest of primal instincts: survival. But it was also a blade without a sheath, quick to nip at the skin of his heels at what some would regard as the smallest of details. Tiring, is what it was: and also half the reason why he enjoyed a good drink on nights like today, when he could afford a bed that came with sheets and a pillow. Unfortunately he hadn't quite gotten there yet, his hands were instead occupied with a brusque and demanding horse who snorted and splattered hot saliva all over the remnants of Gao's half-eaten apple.

It wasn't his horse. But it HAD been his apple.

Poor thing had looked peckish though and he was a sucker for beggars when they came in the form of the adorable.

...Gao found a lot of things adorable.

And now he had no apple.

With a lopsided smile, he held back a gruff laugh, wiping the slobber on his hand off onto the mare's own coat. It didn't like that, but the Sheikah just bared his teeth back, ruffling up its mane as it huffed and whipped its head this way and that. Cute little shit.

But what WERE those two up to...?

The stables at the southern entrance of Lookout Landing might've been a distraction initially but they also made for convenient cover. He probably looked busy but his vision wasn't particularly obscured either. At first there had been a guard - a Sheikah with admirable physique - but then a girl had ran up and pointed at something in the distance. Gao had looked too but hadn't seen anything: perhaps he was just situated too low and perspective had cut it off? Either way whatever it was had alarmed the man and hurriedly - with a few short words to the girl - he dashed off, collecting two companions along the way.

The girl had stood there with a-... tense air. Perhaps some would've read it as simply vigilance, but no, Gao knew this not to be simply keeping watch... She was waiting for something - someone? There was a cautious certainty in her demeanour, an edge that made her look nervous with anticipation. Seconds dragged out into minutes. The minutes stretched on. And all the while Gao stood and watched from the corners of his peripheral vision, absentmindedly stroking the horse's mane with one hand and dodging its stubborn nibbling teeth with the fingers of his other. Then, JUST as he was beginning to believe he had been overthinking this whole thing- a Rito appeared!

There was an energetic exchange - which he couldn't quite hear - before the two disappeared inside.

...

The telescope groaned.

Huh. Were they using it secretly? Gao had just about cocked his head to one side in curious wonder when he caught sight of that Sheikah guard again... running at full pelt towards the door.

The 'zoologist' pounced.

"RODRA!!!" Gao boomed, appearing as if out of nowhere to ambush the bewildered soul and immediately capture his broad shoulders within an equally as brawny arm of his own. He gave it a good - too firm - squeeze. "HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN?!"

"BLOODY BOKOBLIN!" Rodra yelped. If Gao hadn't been holding him in place he might've jumped out of his own skin, ha! "Fucking Depths-... Gao, how many times do I have to tell you STOP doing that? I almost had a heart attack!"

"Eh? Just from that?" Gao grinned, all cheeky teeth and fangs on show. He nuzzled a fist into his 'friends' chest. "Sounds like it could do with some exercise. Besides, I had good cause: you're always avoiding drinking with me these days. I've been getting lonely, y'know?"

"Ugh, look, now really isn't the time. Raeko should've been here and I swore I just saw th-"

"A-ah-ah!"

"Gao!"

"I want a promise first!" He demanded, swatting Rodra's hand off the door handle and pulling him back a good extra metre or so.

"...What? What are you: five?"

Gao raised his eyebrows, feigning a petulant pout - it really didn't suit him. "This is what you've done to me, Rodra."

"Please don't do that. It's gross."

Struggling to hold back a laugh, ooooh so tightly did he scrunch up his eyes, desperately trying to squeeze out a tear. "That's such a mean thing to say to your good buddy."

"Since when were we buddies?!"

"YOU DON'T THINK WE'RE BUDDIES?! After everything we've been through?!"

[Emily]

Raeko felt like her heart was about to stop when the door opened. She never seemed to think all the way through these things, and while causing trouble was fun, consequences were absolutely not. Especially consequences that always seemed to follow harmless fun, because those were always way overblown. Nothing bad had happened here, nothing bad was ever going to happen here, and she realised she was already rehearsing what she would have said in her head.

Fortunately, a voice boomed out at the same moment the door began opening, taking Rodra's attention- somehow? There was no way it was a coincidence; fate had decided Raeko and Moonfruit would probably escape this situation without anyone noticing them. She turned to Moonfruit and nodded- her heart pounded in her chest, but she was still the person in charge of the telescope to Moonfruit. "It'll be alright, Moonfruit," she realised she was speaking quietly, but there was nothing to be done about it now, "we'll get you back in to look at the telescope after the water is purified. Then we'll know if it's the True Moon."

"The True Moon!" Moonfruit cried out gleefully. "Hey, did you know that there's a hidden underground government beneath Hebr-," he began.

"Thanks Moonfruit, very cool," Raeko smiled, a manic sheen to her eyes. "Tell you what, how about we go get something to eat and you tell me about the government."

"Something to eat? I love bread! But but all I have is this purified water, but it's not purified enough..." He started flipping through the contents of his satchel, passing through notebooks on 'theories' and empty beakers for water.

"I'll introduce you to a Zora there, you can ask them if they'll purify it for you. But we have other water in the meantime. But we have so much bread, it's all freshly baked down there. You'll love it. And so many people who will be happy to learn from you."

"Oh wow, really? Do you think they can purify it for 3,597 hours?" Moonfruit's interest began drawing him slightly further away from the telescope, although still not quite far enough for Raeko's liking.

"Probably, that's what, a couple days? Or else we can get 3,597 Zora to stand in a circle around the water and they'll all focus real hard for an hour, and we'll speed the process along so we can learn about the True Moon sooner. And all that lovely bread, don't forget about the bread."

This type of crowd-sourced purification mathematics had never occurred to Moonfruit before, at least not in the short amount of time that he had developed this idea of breaking a visual barrier by purifying water that had already been purified. But it was intriguing enough that he wordlessly got up from the telescope and started waddling over to the other side of the room where Raeko was standing.

Raeko felt herself softening toward Moonfruit. He had been a means to her goal of messing with other people, but he was growing on her. He was very driven to accomplish the extremely strange goals he had set for himself, and she didn't actually know if the mass purification method would work, but she was playing a scientist right now so she hoped her calculations were right. It also gave her an idea to try something she'd been working on for a while, which would hopefully help him out too. She gave a conspiratorial wink, and just as the conversation outside the door was dying down, she shifted her posture and walked out the door. Leaning back slightly, fiddling with glasses she wasn't wearing, she grinned at Rodra, then struck a pose. "Check it! What's up, Rodra?"

"L-Lady Purah?" Rodra stood up straight. "I didn't realise you were back so soon! I thought Raeko had-"

"Raeko did a great job of watching the door, so I sent her to the shelter for some bread while I showed our esteemed guest," she gestured to Moonfruit, "the moon through the telescope. He has some fascinating ideas, and I expect everyone to treat him with respect. Anyway, smell ya later, we're getting some bread. Keep watch over the door for me, thanks."

Everyone else could just see Raeko doing weird poses and an affectation- though not an impression- of someone else. But Rodra absolutely saw Purah for the short time Raeko would be able to manifest it. But they absolutely had to go right now. She continued leading Moonfruit toward the stairs.

"Hello!" Moonfruit exclaimed. "I! Am Moon-Fruit!" he continued and spread his wings wide, dislodging all of the dust which had accrued in the room over the course of the last 30 days. "Did you know that the moon has fertile soil which can cultivate a wide variety of plants which can only be grown on the moon? I have some specimens of moon-seeds which I keep in my pack for scientific study and snacks!" he retrieve several glass beads from his satchel and held them aloft.

Raeko was already halfway down the stairs. Rodra looked in her direction, having expected more of the lead researcher, but knowing that all scientists are a little strange sometimes. He looked at Gao, another scientist, then at Moon-Fruit, yet another scientist, and felt more confident than ever that being a guard was the best thing he could have done with his life. "I am honoured to meet you, Moon-Fruit. I am Rodra."

"I am Moonfruit!" Moonfruit left the room without another word, following Raeko.

Rodra nodded, then looked around, then nodded again, quietly considering his choices. He closed and locked the door. "Gao, I think we might be buddies after all."

[El]

...

There was a long, pregnant pause.

An owl hooted. A horse scoffed. The cool night breeze rustled through untamed grass, an errant wisp of a cloud briefly blotting out some of the moon's light.

...

And then Gao roared.

Laughter boomed as it erupted from his lungs. Birds scattered to the skies and down Gao went, keeled over by the winding blow. Tears collected in the corners of his eyes but they couldn't hang on, soon shaken free by the quakes that thundered even throughout the floorboards beneath him. He heaved and croaked. Cackled. Sniffed. Wheezed. He had just about relinquished all strength and collapsed to the floor, when one of the arms that had clutched his stomach reached out and SLAPPED the living daylights out of Rodra's back. A more slender man would've gone flying.

"What in Hylia's name has gotten into you?!" The guard yelped, bewildered and in pain. He rubbed at his lower spine, confusion doing odd things to his grimace.

"YOU-! I-! AND THEN-...! But-... And I- .... AND THEN MOONFRUIT-.... MOOOOON-.......MOOONFRUIT-!!!"

"..."

"G-GLASS BEADS?!"

"......."

"O-OK, that was-... that was cute though... I shouldn't laugh. He might've been named that by his parents. Maybe he took a blow to his head or it was just another act and-... Phew." Grasping for his breath, Gao reluctantly began to collect himself and straighten back up. He pawed a bit at one of his eyes, rubbing it with a grunt when he realised an errant eyelash had also snuck in there. "...Speaking of, Rodra my good man, how many fingers am I holding up?"

He held up three.

"...Three?" The other Sheikah gave him a strange, annoyed look.

Gao lifted another finger.

"And now?"

"Four."

He folded all but one.

"And now?"

"One." Rodra sighed, patience wearing ever thinner. "Stop messing around, Gao. I was in a good mood for a moment there too. What's gotten into you?"

"One last question! What phase is the moon currently at?"

"...It's a full moon."

Hmn. So he could see perfectly fine........... Interesting.

"Say, Rodra, about that Raeko girl you mentioned earlier. Is she a problem-kid or something?"

"Ha, pretty much." He grumbled with exasperation. "She's really passionate, I'll give her that, but-... well, I don't really know how to put it kindly: this isn't the right place for her. I don't know why someone like her was allowed to join the research team to begin with."

"Ouch." Gao grimaced. "Really not a fan, eh."

"Oh don't look at me like that. I don't dislike her, she's just... a handful. Scarcely a day goes by when she hasn't caused another problem or gotten herself into more trouble."

-And now she was using magic(?) to pose as the lady Purah herself and sneak strangers inside restricted areas. She apparently got away with it too. (Unless Rodra was punking him right now.)

Regardless Gao wasn't convinced in the few brief moments he had seen her that the girl held any malicious intent, but you didn't have to be evil to cause evil. Mischief could easily misfire if you tempted fate enough times.

...But then again, he doubted she'd appreciate being lectured by some geezer she didn't even know. THAT could backfire too. Horribly.

With an awkward, albeit resigned, huff, Gao scratched at the back of his head in thought: completely ignorant to Rodra's stare as he watched the man go from dying of laughter to looking suddenly pensive and stern. Nevermind. At least he was worried for no reason, Gao thought with moderate relief. (Though he wasn't entirely sure that hanging around someone like that Rito was a great idea. As amusing as he was, he also seemed a bit-... unstable? But then again, quite a lot of people also regarded HIM as unstable. Heck, some even had him pegged as a Yiga, 'consorting with evil forces' and all that.)

Gao looked off down the stairs, but the duo had long gone, scurried away into some corner or another. He should've at least seen which direction they headed but he was too busy being stuck in his own head, processing everything and putting the pieces together.

"Well, I'll wrangle you for that drink another day, mate." Gao decided, raising a spare hand to bid Rodra a casual adieu as he turned to leave. "I'm glad that resolved well for yer."

"Me too. But stop rubbing that bloody eye and go wash it out."

"Ah~ the pains of having luscious eyelashes." Gao mock-sniffled, waving the fellow Sheikah off as he descended the stairs. "But at least my eyes are balding and not my actual head."

FWIIIP~! Nimbly Gao dodged an 'errant' soaring rock. Again he laughed.

Now then, his favourite - the comfiest - beds tended to be down below in the Emergency Shelter. Hopefully there was still a spare one he could nab for the night.