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A True Lady's Quest

[X] And ever the long roads wind

You give Del one final massive squeeze, and let her go. "Goodbye, Erina," you say, taking the girl's hands in yours for a moment before turning to Dio.

"Goodbye for now, Jojo," he says.

You nod, and try to smile. "I'm sorry I can't be here to see you off, Dio. Write me from school, won't you?"

"Of course," he replies.

And with that, you turn and take your father's arm. If you won't permit yourself the luxury of tears for your hometown or for Del, you certainly cannot shed them for a young man. People could get the wrong impression.

You enjoy the first leg of your journey immensely. Father, as always, can point out at villages passing by the window and tell you the most fascinating tales about peculiar things that have happened there. Until a short while ago you had assumed that these stories were dreamed up out of that brilliant mind of his just to entertain you. But the revelation of the thorns has made you perhaps more open to the less conventional fields your father researches.

It is only when you arrive in Dover that it begins to sink in: you will not be at home again until December. This is to be your last day on British soil for nearly four months.

Somehow, that thought hits you harder than anything else. You've been apart from Father for longer than that before, and Dio is Del's concern now, not yours, but... England is all you've ever known.

A strange mix of sorrow and satisfaction fills you. Sorrow at leaving your home behind, and - to your surprise - satisfaction that for once, it's you doing the leaving.

You quash this discomfiting line of thought at once, of course. How could you be so churlish? Such feelings are entirely improper and unfair to Father.

You and Father arrive at the pier of the affiliated ferry line and begin searching for Professor de Owen. He is to be your travelling companion for the next leg of your journey. Father says he sent a telegram that said he'd be wearing a green carnation.

What he neglected to mention was that he would be wearing it with a purple suit, a black silk cravat, and a tie tack ornamented by a large dragon passant Gules.

The crowd gives him a wide berth, pointedly not staring at him. Very curious.

De Owen seems at first glance far too young to be a professor of anything; his face is unlined and (if you're being honest) rather handsome, with wide-set eyes and a poetic pout to his lips. His hair is boyishly fair and wavy, with only scattered strands of silver to hint at his true age. Overall he certainly makes an impression, but you could not for the life of you say what kind. You know only that you've never met anyone like him.

"Lord Joestar," he says, taking your father's hand with a polite nod. Then he turns that piercing gaze on you. "And Joanna, I presume?"

Never in your life has someone called you by your first name upon a first meeting, but you bury your shock under courtesy and take the professor's hand. "How do you do, Professor de Owen?"

"Quite well, thank you." He stares at you consideringly for a moment, before turning back to Father.

You let out a breath you weren't aware you'd been holding. His eyes are so cold. It was like he was measuring you for a coffin!

Father's final farewell hug dwarfs even Del's in its bone-crushing enthusiasm.

"Goodbye, my Jojo. Study hard."

"I will, Father, I promise."

"I swear," he says, eyes misting as he smiles down at you, "when you return, we'll have the grandest Christmas in all of England."

You nod, swallowing a sob. "I'll write you every week."

He laughs. "Never mind about that - go! Learn! Live your life!" He pats your head. "And then tell me about it when you come home."

After boarding the ferry, the first thing you do is run up to the top deck, all manner of propriety forgotten, to look back at the dock as you pull away.

Father is there in the crowd, waving, and you wave back. You stand there watching him, arm in the air, until the mist swallows the English coast, and him along with it.

-----

Sorry, guys, real life is intruding on our fun. My quests are going on hiatus for the summer. I promise I'll be back with fresh madness in the fall, but right now I have other things I should be focusing on.
 
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...Is there a reason you hate older computers? Or did RAM do something to your puppy when you were a little girl?

Think of the poor computers! Not everyone has one that can take embedding of this magnitude!

...Seriously though; really? I mean, really? You couldn't even just hyperlink them? It's bad enough dealing with it on the music thread but at least there it's kinda meant to be like that.
 
Fine, I'll replace them with a bunch of ugly links that can be opened into a slew of awkward and inconvenient tabs.
 
Letters dated 'the 23rd of August, 1881, Marseilles':

Dearest Del,

Paris defies description. Even in the scant half-day I spent there, I saw such sights as would scarcely be believed. Indeed, I hesitate to commit them to paper, but you will believe me, I hope?

First, I have exclusive news for your eyes and Erina's alone - the bustle has made a resurgence! Since my arrival on the Continent I have not seen a single woman without one who was not English (it's such a shame that the Channel should keep our island nation in its dowdy shell). Enclosed is the card of a tailor who says his brother runs a London branch of the business; it should be v. reasonably priced. Ooh, I wish I could be there to see Petula Clark squirm to see a maid dressed more fashionably than she! Not that it would be the first time; you've always had an excellent eye.

[... several paragraphs given over to the discussion of coiffure, millinery, and scandals of the day...]

You may perhaps be wondering where on Earth I should have found time to take in so much of the city. Well! No sooner did our ferry arrive at the docks yesterday afternoon than it was queued up behind three of its fellows, all of which had arrived later than scheduled and all with their captains shouting the most foul obscenities at one another in heated argument over who should be permitted to dock first. As such, though the line was gracious enough to refund Prof. de Owen and myself our tickets, we completely missed our scheduled train.

Having quickly purchased replacement tickets for the 9 am to Marseilles from Austerlitz Station, Prof. de Owen suggested we take the opportunity to see the Exposition of Electricity, and oh, Del, I am ever so glad that I consented.

I told you once before about how telephones work, do you remember? I have now had the great privilege of using one! Just the thought that the voice I heard coming from the receiver was from the next pavilion over sent chills down my spine. And that was nothing to the théâtrophone - a M. Ader has devised a specialized line set up connecting a set of headphones in a small room at the Exhibition to the Paris Opera, over a mile away! It was as though the Comédie Française were sitting on my shoulders, performing especially for me - I don't mind telling you they had to prise the headphones off of my ears to make me leave.

The ship to Naples leaves in ten minutes, so I must run. I'll send you a postcard the moment I arrive, I promise!

Your loving friend,
Jojo

=

Dio,

If you can prevail upon Father to permit you to visit the International Exposition of Electricity on now in Paris, I urge you to come and drink your fill of its elixir. I spent a happy handful of hours there as a result of a missed train connection, and I eventually drifted out of the Palace of Industry on a cloud of hope and excitement for the years ahead.

Newspaper accounts of Thomas Edison's exploits do not begin to do the man justice; he is quite as brilliant as the electric lamp he's currently showcasing at the Expo. His high voice should be to the detriment of his public speaking, and yet somehow he makes of it his strength; together with his inexhaustible energy, it strips years off his face and leaves him a young man expounding on the love of his life - electric light. He says his dream is to make electricity so inexpensive and simple to use that candles will be considered luxury items pulled out only for special occasions - what vision! What boldness, to say such a thing not a hundred yards from the oldest candle shop in Paris(1)!

The light cast by this new incandescent light bulb is not nearly so pleasant as those of more commonplace streetlamps - it was harsh in the extreme, to be perfectly frank - but I took a closer look at one of the doused bulbs, I realized why: there was no space between the rods! Indeed, no rods at all! The light appears to have its source in a tiny thread of some indeterminable substance, through which the current is directed until it reaches a sufficient temperature to give off a piercing, steady glow.

I spent the next few minutes trying to convince the assistant on-hand to explain to me how they managed to keep the whole project from bursting into flames (do they replace the oxygen inside the bulb with some other manner of gas, or merely evacuate it - and if so, by what method?), but all he did was make the vague noises underlings often do when questions surpass their expertise. I would have bypassed him for Mr Edison himself, but the good inventor was in an interview and I didn't wish to disturb him. I left a visiting card and a brief note with his staff, however, and I hope to hear from him at his convenience.

I cannot begin to say how glad I am that I missed that train, and that Prof. de Owen suggested this adventure. It almost makes me wish I could change my mind and attend St Trinian's after all - Aunt Polly used to say they have the best chemistry and physics programmes in England. I suppose it's no small thing to train as an artist, either. Still, though... a work of art is but the outward expression of one artist's limited, human understanding of reality, whereas science is the accumulation of thousands of years of work towards understanding, by many gifted men building off of what has gone before; how can a personal work equal power of endeavours centuries in the making, when the shared goal of those endeavours is to raise the limits on humanity's potential?

Oh, for heaven's sake, now I've gone on about complete nonsense for a full paragraph. Feel free to ignore it, brothermine, though I suspect you won't and will instead delight in providing some clever refutation of my pondering. I miss our rainy-day discussions already...
-
1. The Cire Trudon is in fact located almost three kilometres away from the place where the Palais d'Industrie once stood. The exposition centre itself, a widely unloved edifice, was torn down in 1897 to make way for the Grand Palais, erected for the 1900 World's Fair.
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- from Lady Joanna Joestar, A Life In Letters, curated by Dr. Josephine Joestar, 1953, Little, Brown & Company

-----

In this episode, Furiko tries and fails to understand how arc lamps work as opposed to incandescent light bulbs. For an encore, she attempts to not badmouth Thomas Edison.

Don't worry, the actual update'll be up in the next few days.
 
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MrGazzer said:
I woudn't blame you, if you did. The man was kinda a dick.
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I would blame me. He was a charismatic businessman who knew how to get people to like him; there's no reason for someone who doesn't know about his shady practices to hold him in contempt. One of the reasons netizens love Tesla so much is his social awkwardness, I think. Shit's moe.
 
FurikoMaru said:
I would blame me. He was a charismatic businessman who knew how to get people to like him; there's no reason for someone who doesn't know about his shady practices to hold him in contempt. One of the reasons netizens love Tesla so much is his social awkwardness, I think. Shit's moe.
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With all those strange quirks that Tesla had he does kind of look like a new try on troubled moe archetypes..

And I am eagerly awaiting joannas comments on the republic of france in hindsight and if she gets seasick during the longer travel *g*
 
3705721573_d2c3de0201.jpg


Encounter: 1d4 = 1 - Welcome Wagon

You spend most of the voyage with your head in a basin.

Professor de Owen makes his excuses and heads up to the promenade deck as quickly as possible, leaving you alone in the washroom, violently unwell and utterly mortified. When you eventually struggle to your feet to wash your face, you discover to your dismay that some of the blood vessels in your face have burst, giving you tiny purple freckles around your eyes.

You groan in despair as you realize that you're going to have to take this boat back to France in December and then return for winter term, back and forth every few months for the next four years.

The sight of Naples bathed in sunset almost makes up for your seasickness. Children chase each other up and down the docks, giggling; the breeze is cool and calming; the fishermen unload their evening catch; and an enterprising young would-be cabbie is loading your parcels onto his cart.

This moment of peace is short-lived, however. The kindest words you have for your 'cab' are that it does not smell quite as strongly of pigs as its fellows did. The floor of the cart is covered in straw and shredded newspaper, and you and de Owen have to sit on overturned buckets because there's no proper seating. At every bump in the road your 'stool' hops.

Your stomach is beginning to regret joining you on this trip.

"Is the school close by, Professor de Owen?" you ask hopefully.

"Reasonably so," he says in his cool, clipped voice. He does not say anything else.

The most interesting thing about Elowen de Owen, you have discovered to your disappointment, is his outlandish attire. Everything else about him could not possibly be more bland - and his conversational skills are practically non-existent. Even his lunch on the train was cream of mushroom soup with salt crackers. You're glad Father's trust in him as your chaperon was not misplaced, but even so...

After what you grudgingly admit to yourself is a reasonable period of time, you come to a stop.

It takes you a moment to realize you've arrived, mostly because you're still in the city. Right here, in the thick of it! The imposing limestone building the cart has pulled up next to fronts directly onto the pavement; there isn't so much as a postage stamps' worth of garden, let alone a wall! The first-floor windows are massive, too, never mind that they have the curtains wide open to let every passerby see inside!

"Professor de Owen," you say, by all appearances calm, "I was under the impression from the photographs you provided that the Common School was located in a private residence."

"This is a private residence," he replies, descending from the cart and helping the 'cabbie' unload your luggage.

"Four doors down from the shopping arcade?" you ask, a hint of steel entering your voice as you take in the haberdashery to the school's left and the small cafe full of laughing tradesmen to the right. "In what appears to be the high street?"

You are on the verge of demanding to speak to the Headmistress when a tiny figure in brown snatches a suitcase off the top of the pile and dashes away up the street.

"Thief!" you cry, "Thief! Someone call the police!"

"We needn't trouble them," de Owen says with a shrug, turning back to the cabbie to pay him.

[X] :mad: Useless dratted lump of a man! You'll just have to chase down the thief yourself!

[X] Demand that de Owen catch the boy or else reimburse you the value of your possessions.

[X] Trust your professor. This is his city, is it not?
 
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[X] :mad: Useless dratted lump of a man! You'll just have to chase down the thief yourself!
 
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[X] :mad: Useless dratted lump of a man! You'll just have to chase down the thief yourself!
 
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[X] :mad: Useless dratted lump of a man! You'll just have to chase down the thief yourself!
 
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[X] :mad: Useless dratted lump of a man! You'll just have to chase down the thief yourself!

Time for shenanigans.
 
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[blockquote]Rolled 1d4 : 1, total 1[/blockquote]
 
*gets the popcorn* Do we have at least propper victorian boots suitable for inflicting harm on such a impertient thief ?

While the remaning parts of our luggage will get stolen *g*
 
Don't fret, dearies, that's the encounter roll.

It's just... uh...

Actually maybe you should fret. ._.;
 
*panics*

Well we could bring the full force of ourself against a possible encounter after all we have oldschool Tsundere-Fu..
 
[X] Your temperament's wrong for the priesthood, and teaching would suit you still less

The boy is faster than you and much more agile, but these past months of practice with Dio have greatly increased your endurance. Your corset groans and jabs at your skin in protest at the additional stress, but you ignore it; you can tend to your bruises once you get your bag back.

You get turned around once or twice, but luckily the boy isn't so great at covering his tracks. At one point you think he's lost you completely, only for you to catch sight of a fat man with a broom leaning against a wall, panting and cursing at someone who's just ducked into the alley.

As the rush of making the decision to chase the thief dies down, a thin thread of fear trickles into your mind. How are you to return to the school? It's most definitely more twilight now than sunset and you haven't made note of any of the street names or landmarks.

But you shelve your worries. Once you find the little scoundrel you can make him take you back.

"...help..."

"No one's gonna hear you, brat."

You stumble to a stop. Oh, no.

Poking your head around the corner, you see your suitcase lies but a few feet away from you, discarded in an obvious panic. A dark figure lifts the boy over his head one-handed, choking the life out of him.

[X] Grab the suitcase and run. You don't know if you can take the man on by yourself and better the brat than you.

[X] Try to create a diversion.

[X] "Unhand him at once or face the consequences!" >: <

[X] Dash it, what's the Italian word for police? "Polizia! Aiuto, aiuto!"

[X] Throw your suitcase at the assailant.

[X] Charge the assailant.

-----
Beige words are in the Neapolitan dialect of Italian, which Joanna does not speak.
 
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