Simone finds Frank’s castle
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A few miles outside of Denton, there's a mysterious castle. Nobody knows how old it is or who lives in it… well, nobody respectable knows for certain. There are rumors, of course, but how much stock one chooses to place in rumors certainly depends.

It's a reasonably clear evening in early November. The first snowfall of the season hasn't hit yet, though the trees have dropped most of their leaves.

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This resonably clear evening is rather unresonably interrupted by a flash of light and the appearance of - probably a robot. She's somewhere between two and three stories tall, and rather gorgeously put together, with a build reminiscent of an opera singer, including a full red skirt. She has what look like skinned human women rendered in metal formed into earrings and a belt.

She looks around - this involves her top spinning an entire three hundred and sixty degrees while her skirt stays stationary - with confusion and wonder. 

That doesn't look like Cinderella Castle (it's missing the heart shaped hole and the rollar coasters, not to mention it's the wrong time of year - it should be twilight, not evening - and entirely the wrong aesthetic), and it looks like maybe the same architectural style as the Forest Kingdom's castle, but it's much more intact and also has a different layout. And the Forest Kingdom's castle has a giant river with a very noisy waterfall, and fully leaf'd trees, which this doesn't, so. 

Which means it's a new castle! Possibly containing new beautiful things to adorn herself with. 

Simone de Beauvoir hums a cheerful tune to herself - a light version of Le quattro stagioni (starting with the Spring section, which seems maybe appropriate here - it certainly isn't winter, what with the sun being visible on a cold day, but it certainly isn't summer either - her best guess is spring, somewhere at a high elevation and possibly downwind of a glacier, such that it's still cold out even with a fully visible sun) - and rises in the air, a soft glow coming from under her skirts as she floats over the uneven landscape and towards the grand front entrance. 

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Okay. Sure.

He silences the alert that got his attention in the first place, then spins his chair over to the PA microphone.

"Master, we appear to have a visitor. You may want to take a look."

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Frank directs his wide-eyed gaze towards the nearest camera.

"I'm busy. Can't you deal with it?"

(Eddie hums smugly.)

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Fine.

"Of course, master."

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She arrives at the great doors pretty quickly, and tries to send a message announcing her arrival, then pauses in puzzlement when she realizes the inhabitants aren't using any kind of normal transmission and encryption protocol. Are those radio waves - ? How quaint. 

Rather than figuring that out, she decides to go with the eternal fallback of sounds in standardized ranges, and raises her hand to knock on the front door. 

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This is great, because it means that Riff Raff can open the door reasonably promptly and gracefully.

(Wow that is a big robot. Is it a… ship with a very confused cloak? It wasn't interfacing with the ship's radio on any Transylvanian frequencies…)

"Hello."

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Awww is this an android castle? How awkward. Simone is, however, excellent at blithely ignoring awkward situations, and this android hasn't tried to stab her yet or anything so they're already off to a great start. 

"Hello!" she chirps after a moment spent figuring out which language this probably is. (Just to be safe she copies his pronunciation exactly.) "You have a very nice castle! I seem to be lost, because I don't recognize it."

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Lost, huh? That's… reassuring in some ways, less so in others. Perhaps that's how everything is, when you're a 30-odd-foot-tall robot.

Riff Raff does not say "I could tell," which would be unhelpful.

"I'll pass your compliments on to the master," is what he says instead. "Where are you trying to go?"

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"Oh, I wasn't trying to go anywhere. I was in my theater dealing with some pests, and then I was here."

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A kindred spirit.

"Troubling. Do you know if you could identify where your theater is on a map?"

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Slow headtilt. "Probably! It's in The Land of Twilight, which isn't exactly very big - if this is still near the major contested islands it's at the Amusement Park, across the ruins from Facade. Closer to the Flooded City than the Forest Kingdom."

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Well, there was likely already no point in pretending to be human.

"It sounds," he says calmly, "like we may be on a different planet from your home. If you'd like, we can check our directory of known planets to see if yours is one of them. Or search for it some other way."

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" - Ohhh. So you're not an android?" Well that explains a lot. Oh also - "Oh hey so is this planet not tidally locked then, I was having a lot of trouble figuring out what season this is but if you're somewhere with a standard rotation then I bet it's early winter. I should change my song list..."

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"Right. Well, by some reckonings it's late autumn; we're about halfway between the equinox and the solstice."

He turns so that he can open the great doors wide enough for the massive robot to enter.

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She floats in, not even having to duck. Though she might need to crouch at least a bit to get much farther than the entry halls. "Checking a directory of planets sounds good, though unfortunately I don't think I have the plans for the motherships in my databanks," she says, musingly. "And a trip through space would be so lonely... But I can get to know this world's music just fine."

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"Well, if your home world is in our directory we'll most likely be able to contact them. But yes… the master of the ship also likes music."

Not that he doesn't.

"I'll fetch a terminal, then?"

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"Alright!"

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