Return of the Emblem Chapter Ten: Converging Destinies

[Parrhesia]

Rook spat. "Yeah, whatever."

[scorri]

Marella shrugged and walked back with Rook. Before they reached the rest of the group, she threw her arm around his shoulder for a quick hug. "Don't worry, no matter what, I've got your back."

[Parrhesia]

The archer smiled, despite himself. "Appreciate it. Glad to hear someone has."

[Phoenix]

Streets

"I'm expecting a long hike to Europa, so maybe I should get a cloak too ..." she mused as she started walking, keeping an eye out for any shops nearby.

[Script]

U Man Called Gar

"Can never go wrong with a good cloak," Gar nodded. "I'd loan you my spare, but I never bothered to clean the blood out so there's this ugly brown patch on it." That was kinda of a bad thing to talk about though. Luckily the ever-exciting awkward-breaker reared itself as a upper-middle-class clothing store materialized. "Well ain't that convenient." Gar held the door open for Suzzy Q as they entered the establishment. It was a decent blend between fancy clothes and run-of-the-mill stuff. Absolutely perfect for their purposes. Lucky.

[Phoenix]

Store

Suzume scurried over to the first sets of clothing to catch her eye and looked them over. What she didn't notice until a good ten seconds into her inspection is that she was looking over a few sets of outfits for boys. Not men, boys; she wasn't a particularly tall woman and so they seemed to fit her at a glance. "Err-okay I think I'm having some culture clash here, heheh." She backed away feeling slightly embarrassed. "I should have paid attention to the townsfolk around here. I've got no idea what women usually wear for road trips in this country."

Edited February 28, 2013 by Phoenix

[Script]

V Man Called Gar

Gar kept himself from pointing out Suzzy Q's initial draw and instead waited until she realized it herself. "As surprising as it might be, I'm not exactly on the forefront of female fashion either," Gar jokingly said. "Granted I think you'd look fantastic in just about anything, but if worst comes to worst a cloak hides all things." Gar looked around and saw the saleswoman looking at them from behind the counter. "Well, when in doubt ask the actual professional."

[Phoenix]

Store

"Hahah, thanks. Yeah I think I'll be getting that cloak here too if they have them. Okay ... so women's clothing, women's clothing ..." she trailed off as she began scanning around. Once she started looking for thinner waist lines and materials, she began to notice the differences. These were the more fashionable outfits, however, so she didn't pay them mind for too long.

[GoD]

And so Chelsea and co. had arrived at the tower, and not long after, Raquel and a few more had also joined them, with... a surprise guest. Apparently the guy sitting next to Raquel was part of the organization that was hunting them down, and the guy was apparently the party's prisoner for the time being. Some of the party commented that Raquel was on a date with the guy, which made the troubadour giggle and think "Well Reign you better hurry up. Looks like you have some competition, Ha!!"

Once all the hub-ub, Robin and Rook fighting, the new girl Tia being.... bossy, and that Marella chick fighting with Robin AGAIN,"Geez guys, stop picking on Robin." , Chelsea decided to ask Raquel about the new guy, so she approached the merchant to assault her with questions about the prisoner.

"So, Raquel... where did you find this guy? Why did he come along so willingly? And why is he so cute~?"

[Script]

W Man Called Gar

Gar waited for Suzzy Q to pick something out so he could comment on it and lead in on more ideas from that point. "Anything interesting yet?"

[Phoenix]

Store

"I found a few things once I gave up on trying to find something identical to my damaged tunic," Suzume replied, turning around with an outfit in each hand. Held up by her left hand was a tunic of a slightly paler shade than the one she was wearing, but with a lighter tone to it as well as short sleeves and a shorter tail in the back. It could be worn with pants easily enough and wouldn't restrict her movements at all during a fight. Nothing too fancy, but well sewn together and would likely last her a good while. In her right hand was a white item that could have been a shirt or a jacket, but it wasn't clear which the maker intended. Its long sleeves hinted at it being a jacket, while its incomplete set of buttoning that only came down to just below the bust hinted at a shirt; it couldn't be opened the way a normal jacket could and had to be put on from overhead. It also had some lacing in the back to tighten it around the waist line for a firmer fit if needed.

The woman working there soon noticed them and approached, her true motivations becoming clear the instant she spoke. "The white one caught your eye, yes?"

"Um, yeah. I was just about to ask Gar what he thought of both of these tho-" "Ohhh I see. Well this one has an interesting history behind it. You probably noticed it's not your typical Ursian design."

"I-I wouldn't know, Miss."

"My step-daughter's cousin made it. Sometimes he'll send his best works to our shop out here in Sergio~ If I remember it right, it's another one of his wearer friendly corset based designs ..."

"C-c-corset ...?" Suzume looked alarmed at the very mention of the word for some reason.

Outside the Store

The humans were out and about, going to and fro and making all sorts of noise. There didn't seem to be much to eat this morning, though. Perhaps perching on one of the nearby rooftops with the others would yield some results. Maybe today everyone could feast on the leftovers the humans left out of that one place. Before the pigeon could decide on a course of action, it found itself being crushed in Ringo's jaws and desperately trying to wriggle free while squawking for help.

"Hahahahahahahhh, I can't believe you actually caught one," Gabbie said, somewhat praising her wyvern. Rather than looking for people, she had been letting Ringo fly wherever he wanted. Since he was hungry, he eventually began stalking unsuspecting birds. Gabbie never expected him to actually catch one with her mounted along with all of their gear being strapped to him, though.

The bird breathed its last as Ringo chomped on its body once more and then began working it through his mouth and toward his throat. After swallowing the bird mostly whole, Ringo began looking for more birds. Gabbie then noticed a familiar person down in the crowd, Bert. What he was doing down there, she didn't know, but if he was looking for people from there, she felt sorry for him. Well, not really but there was some trace of pity in there, somewhere.

"Oi, Bert the Cruncher," Gabbie called down as she landed, scattering some traffic in the process.

"Gods, woman! Watch where you're going," came some random inconsequential voice.

"How's the search on your end? I've got nothin' ... not that I've actually been looking, moind you. I don't really care if someone gets left behoind."

Tower and Dauntless

"Find ...? Uh, well he's. Wait, did you say 'cute'? Um Chelsea ... he's ..." The words weren't quite coming to her, but Shadrak certainly was.

"Chelsea!" Or rather, Chelsea. "That's the guy ... who almost killed you ... at Weyland's mansion ... about a month ago," Shadrak tried to explain it in parts at first. "He's the one that stabbed you and then ran like a coward ... while telling us to bring our courage next time no less. That asshole, remember?!"

Colin gave an innocent smile and a little wave to Chelsea despite all of that.

"Umm, yeah. He's cooperating with us as an act of good faith or something," Raquel explained. "Specifically he's Veronika's prisoner for the time being."

[Ether]

Arietta couldn't help but let out an extended groan. If this was how this group usually operated, she had her work cut out for her. Making her way to Raquel, she couldn't help but question as to that regard.

"So tell me, Valcyn... are they always this... off kilter?" Arietta asked, a good deal of apprehension in her voice.

*******

It seemed as though something had gone down between Robin and Zachary. Faatina wasn't sure about the details herself, but it seemed wrong to leave Robin to her own. Following after the huntress as best she could, which to be honest, wasn't very difficult in horseback, though she was surprised that Robin didn't notice her... she must have been rather out of it.

There was some crying, some yelling in what Faatina could only assume was Skotian, and some stabbing of that poor tree, which eventually lead to Robin's knife splintering, some of the shards falling down and catching Faatina on the cheek as she angled her way around, causing her to recoil slightly. A thin stream of blood ran down the side of her face, but trust be told, it was nothing major.

"Robin... what happened? I've never seen you and Zach fight like this..." Faatina commented, hoping to finally catch the grieving huntress' attention.

[Phoenix]

Tower and Dauntless

"Ummm, no ... sometimes things are actually fine and not crazy or confrontational ..." Raquel explained, looking ashamed.

[Mercakete]

Norbert flinched some as he heard the unmistakable accent, though it wasn't because he knew exactly who was addressing him. It was more due to her using a mutation of his name. His first reaction was some alarm, but it quickly subsided when he realized that no one in the area had likely actually heard of him. The pegasus rider turned Rizen around so he could actually face the wyvern rider while talking to her. He had to admit, it was pretty funny watching people scatter to make room for Gabbie and her wyvern, especially with one of them giving her a piece of his mind. Not that she seemed to care. Apparently she was searching for stragglers too...kind of.

"I managed to find Synthia, Gytha, Chelsea and Nadya, but they were all together when I found them so I'm only counting that as finding one. They're probably back at the tower by now," he answered, though his scowl at his last statement betrayed his irritation at just how long trying to find everyone was taking. As for his sandwich, there was only one bite left of it, but seeing as he was in a conversation now, that bite was being relatively ignored.

Edited February 28, 2013 by Mercakete

[Script]

Y Man Called Gar

Suzzy Q brought up some examples and Gar looked over her choices. Both of her choices were quite nice. The first one's color was preferable to Gar's tastes--and Suzzy Q's if she picked it out. The second one was a simple white which Gar was less than positive about because of his own hair color. Both had pointless frills that Gar liked--a tail and literal frills. He suddenly realized he took too much after terrible person. But that asiede, coming down to it Gar found himself thinking the first one was the better choice. It fit Suzzy Q's build more than the second one in his opinion. Before he could voice that the store lady--store lady really?--came over and began a customer pitch. "Let's stay away from anything that's a corset or pairs up with a corset ja?" Gar put his word in. Those were all well and fine for high-class society but this was working outfit time.

[Ether]

"No need to get down over it, Valcyn. Just wanna know what I'm getting inta, y'hear? Weyland wants to see ya back safe." Arietta replied, giving the merchant a firm pat on the back.

'Can't have her getting too depressed over shit like this... damnit.'

[GoD]

"........"- once she received this information the troubadour went silent, her face not showing as smile, instead a blank look replacing it. It took her a few seconds before replying to both the dark mage and the merchant girl, but instead of words she made a variety of faces at them Angry look, surprised look, questioning look, forced smile look were present on Chelsea's face. Then the blonde girl covered her mouth with her hands, and yelled a muffled "WRAAAAAAAAAAAATHDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMNITAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALL!!!!". When she finished yelling, she faced Collin and gave him a smile and a wave back.

Once done with her odd actions, she called her horse Nenesha to her side, and quickly enough he came to his master. Holding out her hand to the two, now three with the inclusion of a cute little girl, Chelsea would definitely talk to later ,Chelsea reached into one of the pouches that Nenesha had on his side, and pulled out a light tome, opened it to a certain page and with that done the troubadour smiled, though it was quite forced and asked them:

"Hey... so. Why. Is. He. Here?"

[Phoenix]

Store

"Oh ..." The woman's expression grew sad and her voice with it. "Well ..." Upon spotting the other outfit Suzume had picked out, she perked up again. She was hoping to sell the corset coat/shirt hybrid, but now figured Suzume wanted something closer to what she already had on. With that in mind, she might still make a sale and so focused her attention on the pale tunic while accepting the white outfit from her and putting it back to its original place in the store.

"Sooo who made this one?" Suzume asked.

"I ... I'm not sure, dear. It might have been my mother, but I can't be certain. It's either my mother or my daughter--she's teaching her how to sew since I'm always busy with the customers~ I think it suits you, though. Are you looking for a replacement for what you're wearing?"

"Yeah, actually. I need something that I can travel around in, and doesn't restrict my movement at all. I'm going to get what I'm wearing fixed but I need something to wear in the meantime and later on when I'm doing the laundry," she explained, sounding slightly apprehensive, but didn't see an actual reason not to be open with the shopkeeper.

"Ah I see. Well if you'd like I could go and find a couple more of those and see if there aren't any other colors you would prefer, or extras. From the sound of things, you didn't bring much with you to Ursium."

The clothes I'm wearing, my tome, some gold, and the shattered remains of my pride. That's about it.

Outside Store

"Good job, I think we're missing everyone but ... buuuuuut ... hmmm," Gabbie stopped talking so she could do some easier thinking, going over each of the faces she knew. "... Gar. Have you seen him? I thought I saw Aneda, the rexian girl and the new wyvern roider there when I went to the tower, so they're probably accounted for."

"Lady, are you from Skotia?" a random passerby chimed in. "You should know you can't just go flying around on a wyvern wherever you damn well please. There are people coming through here."

For the moment, she wasn't even paying the man the smallest bit of attention.

Tower and Dauntless

The pat on the back knocked Raquel off balance, but was otherwise harmless. "I know but this is mostly my fault. I'm not really leader material right now and the best I can ever do is threaten to reduce people's pay if they get out of line. And the sad thing about that is that half the people here aren't even-! ..." she paused to lower her voice and leaned in close to Arietta. "Half the people here aren't even getting paid to fight. Some of them, like Gytha, are helping out voluntarily and making money with other things on the side, so that's a really pointless threat half the time. And even then only Veronika has the guts to actually make that threat and carry it out. All I can do is try to talk people through whatever the issues are but I'm usually distracted by something else." She ended her explanation with a deep sigh and went back to standing normally. "I don't know what to do ..."

By the time Raquel finished explaining her view of the situation to Arietta, Chelsea finally snapped. "Uhhhh ..."

Of the two of them, Shadrak ended up saying something coherent first. "He's here to annoy us and try to bed Raquel."

And now Raquel was upset again for some reason. "That's not going to happen," she said in a low angry voice.

"Don't attack him--or us--, Veronika was pretty clear on that. It's important that he not be harmed until after the meeting," Shadrak hinted. It caught Raquel's attention and she glanced suspiciously at Shadrak.

Is he planning something ...?

[Script]

Z Man Called Gar

"How's the price on this one?" Gar asked. There was some lingering feeling of... something about the woman's sadness about not getting the corset-shirt-thing out. So maybe he'd make it up to everyone by getting an extra extra or something.

[Mercakete]

The praise -- even as passive as it was -- was entirely unexpected, and so snapped Norbert out of his bitterness and into a mild state of confusion. That cleared up after a moment when Gabbie mentioned the last person left to round up was Gar. I guess I managed to tell everyone but him that we're leaving, then. Huh... Progress seemed a lot slower than that.

"Gar, huh? Hmm..." Norbert mumbled as he thought it over, "Lean with white hair, right?"

There was a townsman complaining to Gabie about her wyvern, but she seemed to be ignoring him. He managed to annoy Norbert some, though. "Wyverns aren't banned, moron, and if you're going to complain about them you might as well complain about horses, wagons and pegasi, too. Just go around and mind your own business; I don't think we'll be sticking around very long."

[Phoenix]

Store

The shopkeeper was already in the motions of turning to go and get a few uniquely colored tunics anyway before Gar's question came, but she stopped to answer him as this would probably make or break the deal right here and now. "Fifteen each, buuut I suppose since you could use some new additions to your wardrobe ..." she'd switched over to speaking to Gar to Suzume seamlessly and eyed Suzume up and down. "I could let you have three of your choice for thirty-six gold. A twenty percent discount~"

Suzume's gaze shot back to the tunic she was holding. These are a bit more expensive than I thought ... it's not an unfair price or at least it doesn't sound unfair, just more than I was expecting. Then again, my standard of living's been pretty low for the most part.

Not getting a yay or nay response from Suzume, the woman decided to go and fetch the tunics so she could have a look for herself.

Only once she was out of sight did Suzume speak up. "What do you think? Should I just get the one or three?"

Outside Store

"Yeah I think so," Gabbie tried to confirm but came a little short of actually doing so. And of course she was far more interested in Bert's attempt to chase off the random nobody that had been accosting her a second ago.

"Not banning wyverns was a mistake! The Skotian wyvern riders can just come and go as they please and no one can do anything about it! It's a wonder we haven't been overrun yet!" Another person nodded at the man's outburst, but few others seemed to care and tried to walk around Rizen and Ringo to get where they were going.

Well ain't that the wrathdamn truth, but coming from him it just sounds insane, hahahahahah. The messenger really does make all the difference hahah.

[Mercakete]

"Really?" Norbert asked the townsman sarcastically, "No wonder there are so many wyverns around here! I was wondering why they were filling the sky, climbing out of the ocean and crawling out of cracks in the walls!"

With a shake of his head and a roll of his eyes, the pegasus rider went on more seriously and just as cuttingly, "It's not like wyverns are dragons. Any Neviskotians who are actual threats are off fighting in the war or somewhere in Neviskotia anyway, at least on the whole. Which is why you good-for-nothings aren't overrun right now. So stop complaining about stupid, inconsequential things and move on with whatever mundane, submissive day you have planned or start complaining and doing something about real problems."

That said, he returned his attention to Gabbie for the time being. "So, any ideas on where to look for him? If we can find him and bring him back, we can get moving. Since it's only him and he doesn't have a mount as far as I know, we can probably give him a lift, too, so that'll save time."

[Script]

One Man Called Gar

"Well it'll last you a lot longer than a steak and soup that's for sure," Gar commented on the prices. He ran the math of the triple-deal on his head because it sounded off at first hear, but it checked out. "Otherwise, kinda doubtful you'd need three for a simple trip up, but even when you have a secure financial situation there's no guarantee you'd find acceptable outfits where you're going." Gar paused. "Well, that's an outlay possibility anyway." He shrugged. "Well, again?" Gar stopped himself at saying well yet again. That was kinda annoying. "Something other than well, I'm paying so get what you want really."

[-Cynthia-]

Veronika

"Colin is here to give us information about the Organization," Veronika answered simply. And to be used as leverage if need be...not very strong leverage I fear. "He is not to be harmed while he is my prisoner. I understand this may be an uncomfortable situation for you, but we will need every tool we can use if we are to rescue Jethro," Veronika explained to Chelsea.

Nadya

Nadya frowned as she looked over the group. This group might be gettin' too big, whenever we enter a new port people scatter every which way and it takes us forever to get back together. One of these days Raquel's enemies are gonna find us while we're split up- and then we're in deep shit.

Connor

Arietta's reassurance of Raquel got the wheels turning in Connor's head. "You know, if you wanted the safest route it might be better to go to Europa first, then go to this fortress. If we know the Organization is keeping your father there, then Uncle can probably think of a rescue plan of some kind," he suggested to Raquel.

[Eail]

Zach had been silent since Marella had left, thinking he'd managed to upset the woman with his actions. For a moment he'd also thought about going after Robin, but Faatina had already gone after the girl, so that was a moot point it seemed. So for now he'd just been off to the side thinking. Maybe know he could chime in and try to help though.

"Wouldn't our enemies know that we'd take that route as well? We might get to that fortress no problem, but then wake up with more people than we can handle at our door. That's even assuming we don't run into an ambush on the way, or even there."