LLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAADIIIIEEESSSS AAAAAANNNNNDDDD GENTLEMEEEENNNNNNN (AND NON-BINARY FRIENDS!) The scene is an amphitheater nestled into a featureless, black void. As featureless as a black void can be with an amphitheater nestled into it. Raucous cheering erupts from the seats: all of it is the voice of Dulcinea d'Avingon. She is sitting in every seat in a variety of different guises, each guisier than the last. Here she is as a 1950s-style housewife! Here she is as a cat! Here she is as a child, a skeleton, Poseidon Earthshaker and Stormbringer, as a rave scene enthusiast, an Entrapta cosplayer, and the tsundere antagonist and secret best ending character of a dating sim. All of them are applauding and screaming and smiling from ear to ear. D'AVIGNON PRODUCTIONS PROUDLY WELCOMES YOU TO ANOTHER EXCITING EPISODE OF! [h3]Dulcey! Explains! Things![/h3] The words hang there in the air, glowing bright magenta. Then the audience erupts into an absolutely deafening roar as the star of the show steps onto the main stage, brushing the letters away with the sleeve of her pristine white labcoat. The sleeves stain pink as the title dissolves into mist around her, but she turns and poses for the crowd without stopping to worry about it. There is screaming. And screaming. Fanchants. Somebody, somewhere, throws her underwear on stage. Dulcinea steps over it and presses a button. There's an enormous POV shot of Jasper floating in the air behind her now, filled with rain and sniffles and bits of Dulcinea-brand trinkets that clearly mark it as the moment our lovely and perfect heroine is experiencing this very second. Labcoat Dulcey picks up a pointer wand, and extends it. And extends it. And extends it. And extends it. It wobbles precariously when she thwaps it against the surprisingly solid image. "So! Thanks for coming today but we've got a lot to talk about so let's dispense with the pleasantries and get right to it!" "YAY! YAY! IN THE SHA-DOWS! IN THE LIGHT! DUL-CI-NE-A DOES IT RIGHT!" She blushes scarlet. "R-regardless! This woman represents an alchemically significant event unto herself and I think we ought to talk about that! Now, as you are no doubt aware, the concept of 'alchemy' splits along a large series of lines depending upon the origin of the thought that spawned it, and all of them can be more or less significant to a particular discovery depending on the energies and leylines involved in the creation of the process!" "SIMPLE! ELEMENTARY! YOU'RE SO CUTE OMG!" Several screens pop up over the picture of Jasper. They're all diagrams, boxes with different colors and little elemental pictures. She clacks her absurd pointer over each one. "So here you can see your classic Earth Wind Fire Water worldview, thank you so much Aristotle, no I do not think we are discovering Æther today. Shame. And over here the Persian theorem suggesting a great number of so-called 'lesser' elements but holding up our big four as 'sacred', which is nearing something approaching relevance but doesn't quite get us where we need. If we stretch ourselves a little further we can see the Pintrest model which breaks down thusly: Light, Air, Water, Fire, Nature, Mystic, Ice, Magma, Storm, and Dark." "OOOOOOH!" "Yes, I agree it [i]is[/i] intriguing; you can almost invite comparisons to Outside dust from here," she waves at a picture of a swirling tornado with fangs and a big frowny face, "Though it's even easier if you adopt the Pokemon model. Tempting as that is though, we're better served by stepping waaaaaaaaaaaaay back, all the way to the practice of [i]wu xing[/i]." Applause turns to murmurs turns to stunned silence. Labcoat Dulcey nods solemnly and thwap thwaps her pointer over the five-pointed diagram. "Yes, that's right. Admittedly we're leaving the firm ground of facts here and wandering into the luscious, sensual, and flirtatious arms of conjecture here but I submit to you all right now that this woman here, this... Sun is a phenomenon connected to a much larger chain of events. It does seem quite likely, given her general state, demeanor, and the fact that she has no clue what [i]food[/i] is that she's not actually here by result of her own decision making. "Ergo, we can reasonably assume she was [i]brought[/i] here. And if that is true, we can further assume her physical presence as part of our world means she's not presently manifested in her full capacity as a The Sun, but rather as a celestial body brought to the earthly realms by some force, be it malevolent or beneficent. Therefore! Her dominant Principle can be assumed to be Metal! "Which, if this is true, is very exciting because it FINALLY provides a narrow enough band of study for us to apply a dominant Principle to the dust of Outside. Metal carries Water. Metal cleaves Wood. Through careful observation we can determine whether she is part of a creative cycle or a destructive one. And that will allow us to, at long last, categorize these stupid storms! Finally, the Metaphoric Principle Assertion Device will have a purpose! We might even get a government grant! And then... ohohoho, and [i]then...[/i]" "DUL-CI-NE-A! DUL-CI-NE-A! DARK OR LIGHT! DARK OR LIGHT! ALWAYS RIGHT! DUL-CI-NE-A!" "Buuuuuuuuuuut, we do also have to consider another unpleasant truth. If this woman is, in fact, The Sun, and again I have to point out the [i]overwhelming[/i] likelihood is that she is. But [i]if[/i] she is, then... doesn't she seem a bit... oh I don't know... old? To have been created by the ritual? But the altar is functioning perfectly, we checked it only last month. And yet? Doesn't causality imply that? That is? I mean? Did we create the sun? Or didn't we? And, if we didn't, then... what did... what did we actually [i]do?"[/i] Murmuring and angry whispers fade into so much noise as the camera zooms out further and further and further until the amphitheater is nothing but a tiny mote of light in a plane of pure darkness. Suddenly with a lurch sure to make audiences sick it zooms forward again, through the still-disturbed crowd of Dulcineas and then up up up into the sea of screens, past the unhelpful diagrams and straight into the eyes of... *** Dulcinea blinks. "Huh." she says, with a vague air of concern. She packs away her gear. She glances nervously up and down the street, then at Jasper, then up at the sky. Then at her conscience crystal. It flashes the color of a shrug. She scribbles a few more quick notes and tucks the notebook under her arm, snatching the umbrella up with the same motion and best present-best attempt at a smile. "Ok well my prognosis is that you are dying because you are very d... edicated to your weird lost bets. Or maybe you're a tourist? And you didn't read the brochure properly? I've got theories. Anyway the point is, and apparently this will be a shock to you, but you do actually need to take in as many calories as you burn on a daily basis or your body will collapse in on itself and you'll die and then I'm going to have to cut out my heart [i]all over agai--[/i] ahem! I mean, nothing! Hahaha, how silly!" She flashes an even more best-try smile and grabs Jasper by the hand and starts dragging her down the street, carefully angling the umbrella to block the rain from off her head. "Regardless! I [i]did[/i] have plans for this afternoon but I just noticed my karma is getting a little unbalanced which usually works out pretty bad for me so really I've got no choice, [i]no choice[/i] but to take you somewhere reasonably far away from here and the people I can feel lurking so I can introduce you, [i]apparently,[/i] to the concept of ramen. Which by total coincidence is nowhere near that weird owl cafe I heard was opening soon and also has absolutely nothing to do with this weird roller coaster feeling in my stomach or the fact that you have the softest and most perfectly touchable skin I have ever seen in my life. This is a random charitable act with zero ulterior motive whatsoever! Trust me you will feel a lot better in like an hour, and that will be better for... basically everybody else in the observable universe. Probably!"