Return of the Emblem Chapter Ten: Converging Destinies

[scorri]

"Well, I don't know the man you're talking about,but typically if someone's lost a close friend or someone who was even closer than that, they'll need to handle their grief. Sometimes that's by being alone. Sometimes people lash out. You need to give him space so he can mourn. Bringing up something like that... well, it can really hurt a person if they're not over it yet. I'd suggest that you be careful, but I don't really know you. So I guess I'm not really in a place to be telling you what to do." Marella shrugged and turned back to Rook. "So, how'd the fishing go?"

[Parrhesia]

Rook grew bored of Robin, and quickly perked up when Marella mentioned fishing. "Excellently; you shall be feasting upon the results tonight, methinks. Which reminds me, that comely wench needs me or summat. 'Bye!" He dashes off, to help further in the kitchens in boring and nondescript ways.

[Phoenix]

Silas

"Oh morning-wait. You want to meet the quartermaster? Sure hope you've got actual business with the man; he's got no good company to offer you, I can tell ya that," Silas warned before elaborating a bit further by saying, "Man's a real hardass."

Raquel and Reign

"Oh, morning," Reign said as Blake came over. "Guard duty it is ..." he casually added, figuring Blake would know what he meant after last night's discussion.

"Good morning," Raquel greeted, avoiding eye contact quite noticeably.

Zoe and Shadrak

Rook left suddenly which meant Zoe would have to handle the stirring herself again for at least a moment. It might have been easier to keep with the flow of cooking if she hadn't been surprised by the sudden but small kiss. She nervously continued scaling the fish, picking up the pace so she would be finished or at least done with one of them before the pots needed stirring again.

"Thanks, Nadya," Shadrak replied. He was then planning to head back out and let Raquel know that she was going to be getting some toast, but Zoe saw an opportunity to solve her problem and took it.

"Hey, wait! I'm not sure when Rook will be back, so can you take over for him for a little bit?"

"Uuuugh, seriously?" Shadrak moaned at having been dragged into the cooking business at random.

"It's your breakfast, you know. You can even have credit for helping us make it," she explained.

Shadrak sighed. "Alright, fine." He came over to the pots and began stirring, prompting a smile from Zoe.

"It's nice when the boys are willing to help and not just bang their forks down on the tables for ten minutes, heehee."

I hope that Rook guy gets back here soon ... Shadrak thought to himself. He didn't mind the kitchen necessarily, but he was trying to help Raquel right now and this was an unnecessary distraction.

Suzume

Suzume knew someone else was down there but didn't even consider revealing herself until she noticed an intense build up of power and some unnerving sounds. When she peeked over the crate, she saw one of Raquel's people, a thunder mage from the looks of him. He was doing ... something, she wasn't sure what, but she didn't want him doing it down here. She was still reluctant to try and get him to leave. If he recognized her, he would probably just attack her without thinking. She wasn't what worried her so much as how everyone else on the ship would interpret it. Once someone else showed up and pointed out some of her concerns for her, she disappeared back behind the large crate and went back to silently listening.

Edited December 18, 2012 by Phoenix

[-Cynthia-]

Kitchen

Nadya chuckled a little to herself at Zoe and Shadrak. People are that used to not doin' the cookin'? If anyone didn't help out in my clan, they're either too sick or injured to move or just a lazy ass. Guess things are a bit different around here. Nadya thought to herself, making a large stack of toast.

To the Galley

Veronika woke up, unfortunately with perfect recollection of the dead bodies from the previous night and her complete lack of success at finding Pavel. She managed to perform basic personal hygiene before heading to the galley, realizing she hadn't eaten dinner the previous night. She managed to make her way through the crowded galley and squeezed into a spot next to Raquel, who was sitting near Reign and Blake.

"Morning," she said unenthusiastically to the table. "How's the wound?" she asked, turning to Raquel.

[Mercakete]

"Well, if I'm goin' t' work on this ship, I have t' know what needs doin', aye?" Gytha replied, mildly amused by Silas' question, "Knowin' who's th' quartermaster should help me know who t' take orders from, too, methinks."

[Parrhesia]

Rook rushed back to the kitchens, but luckily found Zoe on the way first. "Zoe," he purrs. "I was just about to go out and murder more fish! Unless, of course, you'd be needing any other services I have to offer..."

[Phoenix]

Silas

"Hahah, sure, sure, but ya don't have to talk to the unsavory fella. Why not just head on up to the main deck and start givin' someone a hand? I figure he's up there keepin' us on route and on schedule ... and barkin' orders like we're all hard of hearin'. If he really has somethin' for you to do specifically, he'll come right up to ya, I'm sure," Silas explained. "... mmm ... otherwise it's the man with the stomach. One of few men who have to do any work around here, so naturally he's got some needless pounds on him, heheh."

Raquel and Reign

"Morning," Raquel greeted Veronika. She looked down to the tears in her vest and shirt when the wound came up and grimaced. "The wound's fine but I have to fix this ... I can't go around like this all day."

"Can it wait until after breakfast? This is kind of important," Reign inquired.

"Mmm." Raquel thought about it but really wanted to do something about it right then and there. She was leaning toward waiting, but only because she would have to wait another half hour to eat if she left to fix her vest and shirt. "Okay, fine."

Zoe and Shadrak

"Well, Shadrak here--that's your name right?--isn't too thrilled with your job. Before you go out fishing again, could you mind the pots for me a bit longer? I'm almost done getting the fish ready."

"I'm done?"

"Yes, Shadrak," Zoe dismissed him, looking amused.

He quickly left the pots to Rook and went back out to the tables only to find Reign in his seat. He rolled his eyes and eventually took a seat beside Blake.

"... Shadrak!" Raquel quickly spoke up, causing Shadrak to flinch. "Can I borrow your tome for a little while?"

"W ... what?"

"I need to fix this ..." she pointed out the damage to her clothes. She knew he kept his tome on him at all times so it was just a matter of convincing him to part with it for just a little bit.

"Okay, fine. I guess having something to do is better than the alternative," Shadrak said, alluding to dwelling on the previous night's tragedies. He passed her the tome from across the table and crossed his arms to think.

[Parrhesia]

Rook winces, but continues with his duty to make the most hella badass gruel and hardtack in ship kitchen history.

[Mercakete]

"Thank ye! I'll head up n' do that, then," she replied to the first mate before hurrying on her way to start her first day of work aboard the Prometheus.

[roymbrog]

“If I hadn’t, you would have certainly died,” Valter replied. Barring a miracle, that was a fact. He frowned. “I hope you know I’m not blaming you for my injury. It wouldn’t have happened otherwise, but I was the one who chose to get involved. Don’t worry about it.” The horseman didn’t particularly want to consider what would have happened if Alexandria hadn’t missed. She hadn’t been aiming for his shoulder, after all. “Anyway, that was what I needed to speak with you about. Glad that’s over with…” Subject changes were always nice, but he couldn’t think of one at the moment. Damn.

-----

Suddenly both Katrina’s warmth and blindfold were gone, followed shortly by a scream that managed to break through her earmuff (Volga’s paw). Katrina finally opened her eyes. Oh, the light, it buuurrrned. She sat up, and all the blood rushed from her head. This wasn’t fun. “Noooooo…” she moaned, running her hands down her face.

[-Cynthia-]

Veronika smirked a little at Raquel. Being worried about one's clothes at a time like this...well it helps keep her mind occupied with more trivial things I suppose.

"So what are we discussing?" she asked the table in general, hoping food would arrive soon.

[Snowy_One]

Robin said nothing as she mulled over what had been said. "<I don't get it. He should know he can trust me. He should know I didn't mean him harm. We were best friends. I knew he would have changed, but so much that he doesn't even know me anymore?>" she grumbled to herself.

[GoD]

(OOC: At the ship, the ship's deck)

Cheslea x Robin!

As Chelsea got on the ship she quickly found herself wanting to retire to her quarters for the night. She didn't get a lot of sleep at all, the troubadour was still thinking about her fallen friends. She sighed many times in her vain attempt of reprieve, hoping to Mercy that this was all a bad dream, and that she would awaken from it soon. She knew it couldn't be a dream though, this was reality.

This sadness and anger was her reality.

Eventually, the next day, Cheslea had decided she had enough time to rest and left her quarters, her destination: the deck of the ship, where she could gaze at the sea in peace and quiet. Upon arriving at the deck however, she saw the archer, Robin. who looked quite furious, and some other faces she hadn't seen before. The troubadour was quite curious as to who they were, but honestly that wasn't the reason why she was here in the first place.

"I'd better go see what's wrong with Robin. Mercy please let me live another day."- Chelsea thought, and after a quick sigh, her previously gloomy demeanor changed into a happier one, not a cheerful attitude, but rather one that wasn't frowning like a sour-puss. Waving her hand so that Robin could see it, the girl decided to speak in Kigenese.

"<Hello, Robin. How are you today, is there something wrong>?"-

[Snowy_One]

Robin looked up at Cheslea for a moment. She had no clue what the girl was saying, but it didn't take a genius to get the general impression. She wanted to know why Robin was mad. "I do not speak Kigenese. But I think I know what you are asking. I am very mad. Very mad. Zach is in pain and I tried to comfort him, only for him to spurn me and threaten me before walking away."

[Mercakete]

A corner of Norbert's mouth rose a bit to form a slight smile. He would have gone on in the conversation, but he could tell that Valter was uncomfortable with that, so he just released a gusty sigh and changed the subject. "Wow, what time is it? It feels like I skipped two meals in a row!"

[ReformBlade]

"Europa? Weyland Enterprises?" Scratching her head, Mushirah's head swayed a little. "I'm not familiar with either too much, especially the latter. I should say I've heard the name here and there but I don't know what it is. Hmm." And then it mildly hit her, like a paper airplane flying into someone's messy hair. "Wait, again? You guys have been there, right? I wonder... if maybe I can tag along with you folk? I'm not helpless but if someone could help me with the layout of the place, I'd be able to cover the more important parts easily! It'd be perfect!" Her enthusiasm was showing, but yet another thought hit her. "But uh... not to be a downer, but how often do you guys run into things like..." She cocked her head a few times behind her. "Like that? That um... brawl thing..."

Aneda's face made a semi solid collision with the deck and boy was she not exactly liking that. "Owwww ow ow ow!" Pulling herself into an upright kneeling position, she held her face which seemed to have a small amount of blood seeping out from her nose. nothing major. "That son of a..." Wiping her face before realizing that was a silly thing to do, Aneda needed a cloth but didn't have one on hand. "Ughh... fuck my life." Her instincts kicked in and she kind of just sat there, holding the bridge of her nose to stem the bleeding as best as she could.

[GoD]

Chelsea blinked once. She was surprised that Robin did not speak Kigenese, but that would mean she was from Neviskotia... ah, the troubadour so ashamed, her cheeks reddening a little before making a coherent reply to Robin.

"Ah, sorry it was my mistake to start speaking in Kigen like that. Truly sorry about that."- she held her hands up apologetically. Then on to the matter at hand, it seemed as though Zach and Robin had a fight.

"Another quarrel again, Robin. You truly are a... spunky girl."- Chelsea thought as she attempted to come up with a response to Robin's dilemma.

"Was there anything you particularly said to Zach? Can you tell me exactly what you said to him before he, um... threatened you? I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding."- Cheslea asked in an attempt to calm Robin down.

[Phoenix]

Breakfast Meeting

"How to keep Raquel from being overtaken so easily in every fight," Reign answered.

Raquel was barely paying attention anymore at this point, having already sat the tome where her breakfast probably would end up eventually. She quickly took off her vest and sat it down next to the tome. That was about all she could take off without making a scene and so decided to just fix her shirt while she was wearing it, but first she had to get some tools. It looked like pointless finger fiddling, but she was actually forging several dark tendrils.

Reign just observed with a bored look on his face. Shadrak was tempted to watch though, as he didn't know a lick of tendril magic yet. Chie seemed to only care about his offensive training for some reason.

"So you really do know how to synthesize ...?" Shadrak asked her.

"Mmhm," she replied, still distracted by her work.

"So yeah ... eventually we'll get to that. Thinking of maybe having her train to use a defensive weapon of some kind. Staff maybe."

"I don't have the strength for staves," Raquel noted without looking up from her tendril forging.

"That's why it's called 'training', but it doesn't really matter what you use as long as it can floor someone in an emergency. Hell, even a two by four would do at this point," Reign explained.

Edited December 19, 2012 by Phoenix

[Mercakete]

The first thing she looked for upon reaching the Prometheus' main deck was work to be done, as advised. Thus far, today seemed to be pretty slow-going as far as ship work was concerned. That was fine by her. So, Gytha walked over to the sailors who were mopping the deck where they'd be out of the way. "Ahoy," she cheerily greeted the sailors, "Need an extra hand with that?"

[-Cynthia-]

"Perhaps you could reconsider entering combat entirely- most people in this group are sworn to protect you, but in the chaos of the battlefield there are other matters to attend to. Your...artifact also makes you the primary target for most of our enemies, making defending you even more difficult. Have you considered staying inside the Dauntless during combat? It may be easier for us to stop enemies from entering the wagon than to guard you individually," Veronika pointed out.

[Snowy_One]

"I said 'I thought you would be sad and lonely, so I cooked you some food to comfort you and wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help ease the pain of Lia's passing. I know you devoted a lot of time to her, and now she's dead, it must be painful.' I then kissed him on the forehead before saying '<I'm here for you though, Zach.' Appearently that was offensive to him though."

[roymbrog]

Valter was much more comfortable with this subject. “It’s midmorning,” he replied. “They’ve probably prepared breakfast already.”

-----

“Yeah, we’ve been there,” Synthia said. “…Yes, we do run into things like that quite often. Never this bad, though…” They rarely had casualties at all, much less three at once. "If you want to come with us, you should probably talk to Raquel over there. Just... not right now. She's having a rough time."

-----

Katrina heard a smack and some cursing, quickly discovering it was coming from Aneda. Her nose was bleeding. “Oh no… Um… I don’t have a cloth or anything. You should go inside and get one, and I’ll follow… as soon as my head stops spinning,” she said, standing and leaning against Volga.

Edited December 19, 2012 by roymbrog

[GoD]

"Robin... I'll admit that was a very sweet thing you did, cooking him some food and all. But maybe you shouldn't have mentioned Lia's..... um... death so casually like that."- Chelsea sighed, and shuddered remembering Lia's corpse. Shaking her head to get the image of that girl's corpse out of her mind, Chelsea raised her finger and placed it on her own chin.

"Listen Robin, you're gesture was a very kind thing. I won't say it was bad to cook the guy something, but you failed on a few key things. I have more experience in dealing with men, I had to deal with Shadrak after all, so I can give you some advice. First off, mentioning Lia's death was bad. It was kind of a... how do some geeks say it, a loser flag? But yeah, mentioning her death right after she just died was... not really a cool thing to do. Second, men operate differently from women most of the time. Some women seek others to comfort them when they have gone through a rough time in their lives. Men, would rather like to be left alone to their own devices... is anything I'm saying making sense?"- she paused to see if Robin was understanding what the troubadour meant to say.

[Phoenix]

Meeting Thing

Reign already knew Raquel's response to that and closed his eyes to go somewhere else for the duration of it. He began imagining some fancy combat maneuvers he might try to use to shield Raquel. He wasn't too confident in them though, if only because Raquel wasn't quick enough in real life to react in time. Without proper timing, he'd just end up setting her ablaze instead of shielding her.

"I know I'm not ..." Raquel stopped working. "I know I'm kind of a burden right now; I can't defeat enemies, can't heal injuries, can't even look after myself, but ... I can't just sit back and do nothing. Knowing people are putting their lives on the line for me just makes it worse."

"But if you get killed, then all of this was pointless," Shadrak countered. "Hanging back isn't a cowardly move or anything. You're not built for combat."

"N-no! I'd rather fight with my bare hands than hide somewhere! Look, I know I'm not very useful right now-" "Your staff work is useful, it's just you're an easy target right now. You don't necessarily have to improve in anything but self defense. That's the most important thing here. I'll be guarding you personally from now on, but we also need to make sure you can fend off an enemy on your own if it comes to that," Reign cut in to clarify.

"You're ... just going to be guarding me all the time, now?" Raquel asked, a little surprised.

"You aren't giving me much choice here. So yeah, I am. Your chances are better if at least one person is guarding you at all times. I'm not interested in running around all over the place hunting down enemies anyway, so perimeter defense is just fine by me."

Work

"Ya one'a the merchant's people?" the sailor asked. He looked around for some reason and then immediately came back with, "Okay sure. Why not."

Edited December 19, 2012 by Phoenix

[Mercakete]

"Well, been travellin' with 'er, aye," Gytha replied as she picked up a spare mop and dunked it into the soap water. She began the actual swabbing as she went on, "But actualla, I'm a mariner n' I'm workin' aboard this ship till we reach Sergio."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"So I've been asleep since last night... No wonder," Norbert mused aloud before getting off the cot, but keeping a hand on it for balance. He didn't quite have his sea legs back yet.

"I'll talk to the doctor and meet you for breakfast," the pegasus rider decided. Valter could object if he wanted to. It was just a suggestion anyway.