[Shieba]

"That kind of point of view is right up my ally!" Morwena thought about if she needed a new torture tool shaped like a sex toy. "But don't say something like that! My Dear clearly isn't worthless! He is the most wonderful and attractive human ever!"

Bentner just sighed, ignoring Morwena. "Forgive me for sounding so suspicious of you, young lady. But if you think of us humans as so worthless, why would you give us your items that you seemingly aquired with quite a bit of effort so freely?" Yoshi had just basically outright denied being a mortal, so she was probably very old. He had to be careful. "Since you certainly seem to know about all of these items, would you mind describing the effects of each of them in a short sentence? I would not want to ask for something that wouldn't help us much but still rob you of your item - or ask for something that you or your Majesty would need. After all, I wouldn't want to make you need to appear in our world just to get something that was rightfully yours in the first place."

Hearing Yoshi admit that she had been there was quite surprising. Maybe she had used one of these bracelets? After all, the desert had had no pillar to hide in. Bentner decided to ignore the spying for the moment. "You wish to hear about our dragons? Well, I can certainly tell you a bit. I doubt that the dragons here would be holy creatures serving Vorphied, though...or are they? If they are, that would be most interesting indeed..."

Morwena, on the other hand, decided to not ignore the spying. "Deary, you spied on us?!" She joined Bentner and Yoshi, looking at the girl rather suspicious. "I can't say I blame you, with how good my Dear looks, but I think he might be out of your age group."

[MillietheWarrior]

Yoshi just laughed, her smile unwavering. “Oh, it’s just all humans in general. You’re so…fragile. You break so easily. Isn’t that right, Halibel-sama?” She glanced at the woman, who by now was looking faintly disinterested, as if she didn’t want to answer the question. Yoshi’s smile sharpened, and she turned back to the two mages.  “Oh, there’s far too many items for me to just describe. We’d be here for days!” She picked up the amulet carefully, holding it aloft by one finger. “This makes you invisible, but unlike those bracelets, you cannot walk through solid objects.” She tossed the amulet carelessly from one hand to another; her smile never faltered, and seemed perpetual. “I don’t need any of these things. It’s just a fun hobby acquiring these artifacts. I always have so much fun playing games with their…former owners. They’re so kind to donate them!”

From the way her eyes glinted, it was clear that ‘playing games’ meant something much more sinister. Her laugh was as hollow as she seemed to be; while the other women they’d met all had mostly visible Hollow holes (except for Halibel and Sung-sun), Yoshi’s seemed to be covered up by her dress. “Oh no, our dragons are nothing like that. In fact, they’re probably far more feral than what you’re used to. Would you like to meet one?” She leveled Morwena with a radiant smile, placing her hands behind her back and rocking on her heels, looking like the adorable child she certainly was not. “I was only interested in what you were saying. You both looked like you’d be fun to play with! I think I was right!” Halibel twitched ever so slightly, appearing uninterested, though she listened to every word. She wondered how far the girl would take this; her charade was rather…interesting.

[Shieba]

"Hmm, I suppose to immortal creatures, we humans must seem fragile indeed." Bentner watched the amulet. "Invisible, hm? Very interesting."

"Indeed. I think I could make such good use of such an item when it comes to make people...'donate' more of their magical artifacts to our cause. It is a fun hobby indeed." Morwena smiled sweetly. "I know exactly what you talk about. Say, if we end up accepting your generous offer, does that mean that you might one day stop by and ask to donate some of ours in return? Because we really can't, you know? Just making sure here~"

"Hmm yes, we have these kinds of dragons, too, but we call them 'drages' - the holy dragons don't want to be associated with them." Bentner looked at the horns of Yoshi. "Might your horns be related to your dragons, maybe? Our dragons can take on human forms... and if you listened, you heard about our half-dragon race, the Dracons. They have horns as well." These forms of mind games were normally only something for scheming women - a kind of person Bentner despised - but he knew how to play these games as well.

[MillietheWarrior]

Yoshi’s eyes followed the amulet’s movements as it swung back and forth, reminiscent of a pendulum. “Humans live such short lives. They break so easily, and they die just as easily. They’re fun to play with, though.” Her smile widened as she set the amulet back down on the pedestal. She glanced at Morwena, and spun around in a circle, rocking back and forth on her heels. “Oh yes! You understand how much fun it is to gather donations! I’m so glad you do!” She clapped her hands, stopping her spinning and gazing up Morwena with large, bright eyes and a smile that was equally bright.

“Oh no. I don’t want anything from your realm. And I wouldn’t ask you to donate. You are Halibel-sama’s honored guests; you are exempt from any and all donations from here on out!” Yoshi turned to Bentner, reaching up to place her hand on the edge of one orange colored horn. “Oh my, you are certainly very perceptive. Yes, they do. Our dragons can take on human form as well.” This time, when she smiled, her teeth were decidedly fanged, and she tilted her head. “I can show you, if you like. But it might not be what you’re used to.”

[Shieba]

"And that makes them understand how precious life is the most." Bentner didn't like to be referred to as something like a toy to play with, but well, that was probably how immortal creatures thought.

Morwena's smile mirrored Yoshi's. "How very wonderful! I indeed understand! Though I gather them for a reason, actually, but that hardly makes a difference, I suppose." She indeed was most interested in this amulet right now. "Do you happen to have an artifact here that can create portals that you could spare? We have one in our world that creates gates to every place the user has ever been to, which is the closest to a portal-magic we have, but the woman who owns that staff sadly doesn't want to donate, no matter how hard I try, and my Dear wants such an item so much." Hey, it never hurt to ask, right, if there was really no drawback - or was there?

"Show me, hm?" Bentner smiled a bit, glad to have figured that out. "Maybe I would indeed like to see it. If the dragons here would be anything like those from our world, their size would fill out the room and knock all these artifacts over. So if it's so much different, it might be interesting...considering we learned that those forms - Hollows, right? - before becoming an Arrancar relate to beasts of some kinds. So that would be a very different dragon indeed, then..."

[MillietheWarrior]

“I suppose,” Yoshi agreed, canting her head to the side. “I will never understand humans.” She continued to smile as she shrugged, turning to gaze at Morwena from beneath her green bangs. “Oh yes, we do indeed have something like that here. It’s not a staff; it’s a necklace.” She seemed to disappear from sight, immaterializing and reappearing a moment later, a necklace of gold dangling from her fingertips. It was intricate, and beautiful, with an peridot colored gem situated in the middle of it and surrounded by smaller, white pearls.

“This can create a portal to any world you are aware of; basically similar to this staff of yours. However, it must be used sparingly. It can only be used about once in a mortal week, and needed to be recharged.”  There was always a catch. She held the item up for Morwena to take form her hands. She turned back to Bentner, clapping her hands with a smile. “Oh, I have a way to solve the size problem,” she explained, her smile unwavering. Without another word, Yoshi threw her hands out to the side. Her eyes flashed a bright white, and suddenly, the pillars in the room began to move, a harsh, grating sound against the marble of the floor as they journeyed to opposite sides of the walls. When the artifacts had all safely been moved, Yoshi leapt away from the two mages, smiling widely.

With a giggle, she suddenly began changing shape, her body glowing an iridescent white as it glowed and began to grow in size. Her neck and head lengthened until they were a sharp snout and elongated neck. Her legs lengthened to claws, and her dress disappeared, turning to green, scaly skin and a long, pointed tail. On her chest where her heart should have been, there was a hole, covered by her dress in human form, but now visible in her dragon form. She did indeed fill up a great deal of the hall. Tia stepped back, giving the great beast room to move as she stretched her purple webbed wings.

The dragon canted it’s head, and lowered it so it was on level with Bentner and Morwena.  “Well?” it asked, flashing a fanged smile their way. “What do you think?” her voice was deeper, more reptilian, with a hiss at the end of the ‘s’ of each word.

[Shieba]

"My!" Morwena took the necklace. "How long do these portals stay open? And does it work for places inside the same world, too? After all, my dear 'donors' are all live in the same kingdom as us. I wouldn't want to get stuck in a different world without my Dear for a week anyway! But this would be so very useful in our research indeed!" Morwena could almost already see herself armed with the necklace and the amulet, stealing items left and right and getting praised by her Dear. She then stepped closer to Bentner while Yoshi changed to make sure to not be accidently in the way of the dragon. "Quite impressive, I must say."

"Indeed. Very different from our dragons, though." Bentner stroked his beard. "There are tales of old in our world, about certain kinds of drages liking to hoard treasures. Does this hold true for you as well, Lady? You seem to have a special bond with this room, moving things around so easily, as well." While being in front of a dragon was quite the experience, Pandovia was still a kingdom in the realm of the dark god and Bentner had seen demons bigger than Yoshi's dragon from, so he wasn't overly stunned.

[MillietheWarrior]

In the next instant the dragon’s form had vanished, rematerializing as the small girl from before. As if in fast forward, the pillars suddenly reversed direction and moved back to their proper places in the room, light shining unnaturally down on each artifact. “The portal will stay open as long as you like. But once it’s closed, the necklace must recharge and gather it’s power for another portal.” Yoshi’s smile was still unwavering as she canted her head to the side.

“Oh, I suppose. I’ve always had a propensity for gathering shiny things. I suppose it just evolved into something more useful, and I began gathering items with a purpose and a power. They’re not very shiny sometimes, but I don't mind; as long as Halibel-sama finds them useful, that's all that matters..” Her smile didn’t falter even as she reached over and pressed her hand against what looked like a carved, ivory horn, inlaid with copper. “My absolute favorite thing to collect is this, though!” She reached into the belt around her waist and pulled out a small, folded up piece of…tin foil. “I don’t know what it’s called, or where it’s from, but it’s so shiiiiny and preeeetty.” She smiled even wider as she looked at the two of them. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

[Shieba]

"Ooh, how neat! I could stea-- get more donations so much more easily with that!" Morwena looked at her Dear with big eyes. "Dear, even if I have an easier time, will I still get rewarded if I do well?"

"Hm, I suppose." Bentner was still trying to figure out if there really was no catch. If they could really just take items from here, they'd have so much to research! The amounts of things they could learn! The--

"Yaaaaaay!" Morwena squealed - given her really shrill voice a really painful sound for the ears that stopped even Bentner, who was used to it, in his thoughts. "Yoshi, deary, can I have this and the amulet? Pleeeease?! I would do so well with them and might even be allowed to give my Dear a blowjob if I succeed!"

Bentner sighed. Morwena would sleep in the kitchen for a very, very long time. "If your quee-- king finds them useful, is giving them away really a smart thing to do?" Bentner played with the bracelet he was wearing. There had been four - maybe he and Morwena could keep the ones they had gotten? He also took a look at the tin foil. "I cannot feel any magic in it. Is it made from silver? I don't recall ever seeing anything like it, but since it looks like paper, it might serve as a protection of sorts?"

[MillietheWarrior]

Yoshi’s smile didn’t even falter a the shrill volume of Morwena’s voice. Halibel flinched slightly, however, not used to such loud, painful sounds. No one made noises like that when she was around; they were too busy being subservient, which could get boring from time to time. She felt her eye twitch when Morwena mentioned her ‘reward’ and inwardly sighed; she was glad she wasn’t a human. She stepped forward, intent on cutting off any more mentions of such rewards. “They are useful, from time to time. But our problems are nothing that magical artifacts should or could solve, I’m afraid. The responsibility of fixing those problems lies with me. So I have no qualms about giving you these items, as long as you do not use them in Hueco Mundo.”

Yoshi nodded enthusiastically from beside Halibel. “Uh-huh.” She clung to the tin foil, gazing at it with adoration. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s soooo preeeettyyy,” she cooed, petting the edge of the foil wrapping. “If you find any of this, you must tell me, so I can discover it’s secrets and it’s secret hiding place.” Though she was still smiling, her face was intensely serious.

[Shieba]

"That is a promise we can easily make." Bentner nodded and Tia and bowed. "We indeed would have much use for these items. Our kingdom lies in the realm of the dark god of our world and we constantly need to defend ourselves against demons. We have much need for powerful items since, as the lady here said, we humans are rather fragile. How many items are we allowed to choose? We are grateful for everything, but of course we don't want to be greedy."

"Hmm..." Morwena looked at the tin foil. If she could figure this out and make the dragon-girl happier, maybe they would get more items and her Dear would be even more pleased. "My Dear is right, it looks like a protective sort of paper. We definitely don't have it in Pandovia, but I think I might have seen it in Evelon before. I don't think it's rare or anything. There certainly was stuff like this in some public trash cans, so it might be used for wrapping everyday things - food, clothes, I'm not sure. Maybe you should start looking for something like that in shops. You can get it...donated when you figured out what it is for sure."

[MillietheWarrior]

“Our worlds have many parallels,” Halibel commented, her eyes closed as she thought of the former ‘God’ of Hueco Mundo and his tyranny and her life spent fighting to remain alive. “You may choose two for each of your.” She waved a hand, indicating the expanse of the room. “What you will find useful. If you state your needs, Yoshi will lead you the item you need.”

Yoshi, meanwhile, was very nearly lost her smile at Morwena’s statement. “They…they throw it away?!” she gasped, absolutely scandalized. She held the piece of foil closer to her, as if afraid someone would try to steal it and throw it away. She carefully tucked it back into her belt, patting it lightly with her hand. “Ahem, yes, well,” her smile was wide again. “What are you looking for?”

[Shieba]

"That is very kind of you." Bentner bowed again. "These bracelets - you said they suppress our energy so that we will become unnoticeable. Does that hinder us in casting spells? If not, such a bracelet, giving the power to travel through objects together with becoming invisible, would be more useful than the amulet."

"Oh my, it would really be, Dear!" Morwena thought about it. "A necklace to travel into other worlds is surely useful, but I think we need a tool which allows us to quickly get around ours more, don't we? To be able to teleport around, I mean, if possible even through magic fields. Only the Dracons of our world - and well, the holy dragons and higher-ranked demons of the dark god - can teleport, so the shields are only made to stop Dracons and their unique magic. Any other teleportation would probably get through!"

"Very good, Morwena. Other things we would need are...items that amplify magic power, items which lessen the amount of magic drained by spells, anything that could help with research - items that analyse the magic structure of artifacts, for example -, items that can be used to spy on far away people...or generally anything that is unusual. Anything that maybe comes from a world that is very different and so would have a power I probably wouldn't have thought about yet. Do you have any items fitting into any of those categories?" Bentner figured that just listing everything might get him a choice of items instead of ending up with only four specified ones without ever knowing what else was in this room.

"You're so smart, Dear!" Morwena commented and then smiled at Yoshi. "Well, but if they throw it away, that means that it isn't worth much to them - quite possibly because there is a lot of it somewhere, right? That should make it easy to find!"

[MillietheWarrior]

“The bracelets are a gift from me,” Tia intoned quietly, her eyes still closed. “Your other artifacts are a gift from Yoshi, as it is her prerogative as to whether or not she gives them away. She is their collector, after all.” Yoshi nodded from her place by one of the pedestals, still looking vaguely ill at the thought of someone throwing tin foil away. “I don’t have many teleportation artifacts…I do have one, but it’s broken.” She smiled, though she still managed to look annoyed. “It used to teleport people anywhere and everywhere, but unfortunately, it just sets people on fire now.”

She shrugged, her smile still in place. “I have a few artifacts used for spying.” She flounced off, skipping down the line until she came to one of the identical looking pedestals and pulled what appeared to be a jewel encrusted monocle from on top. “This will allow you to remain inconspicuous while you spy. All you need to do is think the name of the person you want to see, and it will show you.” She held it out, and then seemed to brighten. “Unusual, eh? Well, I have a horn that will summon spirits to do your bidding, if that interests you.”

[Shieba]

"That is very kind, thank you so much." Bentner bowed again, mourning his hurting back secretly, but for such powerful items, he would bow a hundred times again.

"My! I can set people on fire pretty easily myself, so I don't think we would need that, as funny as it would be." Morwena commented and then happily watched how Bentner seemed to like the monocle quite a bit as he examined it. Then, however, she paled. "Spirits to do my Dear's bidding? I-I--- I think I can do better than a spirit! S-surely I can! Right, Dear? Right!?"

Bentner sighed. "As useful as such an object sounds, Morwena does not do well with competition. If I don't want her to whine all day long, I better not employ spirits. This monocle, though, sounds like a wonderfully useful object." He paused. "Morwena, hold out your left hand. You see, lady, the rose that it tattooed on Morwena's hand? It's a powerful curse done by three of the best magicians of our world - she cannot cover it, for every touch causes great pain and it also gives off an aura to alert mages to her presence. Do you have any item to remove something like that?"

"Dear! You care for me so much!" Morwena beamed in happiness. Bentner sighed. As annoying as the woman was, getting her killed and losing her would probably be even more bothersome.