There was something disturbing about the set of flashmail she'd received within a few moments' of each other. An inquiry through Mika had only confirmed her greatest fear- as had the message from her former Commander himself; she, one insignificant and completely unprepared fifteen year old girl, had just been handed down the leading position, the Commanding role and with it, absolute authority and control over the Army of Darkness.

Sitting with a tiny purple Grunty in her lap with a pensive, contemplative expression on her young face was the girl in question. Dressed in hunter green, dark brown and gold, she made quite a sight against the gray stone and the patchy summer grass that poked up around where she sat. One could have made the mistake that she was of a spell casting or even blade wielding class, had the evidence of her profession not been lying at her side- a long white bow with curved silver tips- and within easy reach.

In her hand was a physical copy- in the form of a letter with an elegant scrawl across the page- of her other disturbing flashmail. Soft golden-brown eyes slowly moved back and forth, reading and absorbing the words for what had to be the eighteenth time that day alone before setting it on the grass beside her. Reading what was between the lines wasn't her specialty by any means and Sekai found herself having a good deal of difficulty deciding what she should do.

On one hand, it sounded as if the hacker group basing themselves off of Norse mythology had been gathering their forces and were planning to strike out at her clan one last time in hopes of eliminating them for good. However, another part of her wondered just how this supposed informant and ally of the Army of Darkness had received such information without being caught. Keywords to the place she needed to be in order to take care of this mess once and for all were hidden in a rather amusing manner, had she not picked it up and tried reading it upside at one point, Sekai believed she'd have never figured the odd picture on the back of the single page letter.

” “Oink?”

She smiled down at the big brown eyes staring up at her adoringly and gently scratched between the little creature's shoulders to soothe her.

“It's okay, Emiko. I'm just lost in thought is all.”

“Something that seems to be happening a lot with you, or so I hear.”

Sekai turned sharply towards the unusually quiet voice, Emiko sensing the tension that suddenly filled the air and slipped off her owner's lap to sit at her side. Long silvery-blue hair and gold eyes that refused to meet her own gave the woman's identity away- even if her voice hadn't.

“Kira?”

Disbelief clouded her voice, a tremble betraying her feelings at seeing the tall AI once again after so long as she scrambled to her feet. She looked different than the bloodied, dying woman she'd been forced to leave behind in Ciar's care. Sekai's eyes searched over Kira's body, trying to find every place that had been changed from what it had been before. Had she grown a little taller? Her hair was a little darker than before- that much she was positive of.

Kira shifted uncomfortably beneath the searching look, still refusing to even look at the younger girl as she gritted her teeth against the urge to snap and lash out the way she'd been holding off doing for... who knew how long now.

The soft blue gown was form fitting, accentuating a model's graceful form with the toned muscles of someone used to keeping their body in shape and flattering to her natural skin, hair and eye color... and gave her more than enough room with the hip high slit to move about freely. Black belts wrapped themselves around her wrists, waist and upper arms, holding the near-shoulder length blue gloves accented in a dark violet in place and drawing attention to a narrow waist and slim stomach. Most embarrassing and unnatural for the normally rebellious woman was the thigh high black stockings that stayed up with the help of a dark black-violet garter and the knee high black boots that now covered her feet.

Sekai's eyes landed on her shoulders and narrowed, expression changing in an instant as she noticed the double navy crescent moons had turned into one- with something black standing out starkly against her skin. Despite the low sound of warning that Kira made as she approached, the young teenager stood right in front of her and let her eyes focus on the marks. Both arms, she realized after a moment, circling quickly around Kira's back to see for herself and confirm what those marks were.

Hand prints. Both of her arms where he'd gripped her during their vicious battle.

“Wipe that look off of your face or I'll do it for you.”

That had come out harsher than she'd intended, Kira thought with an internal wince at the rough, edgy sound of her voice snapping at the small girl. She knew better than anyone else what that expression meant. Some would say that it was worry or concern, would chide her severely for taking that tone with someone who'd been so distraught over her disappearance.

It wasn't worry; it was guilt and regret. Sekai blamed herself for far more than was necessary and those marks had been her own damn fault. She'd been careless and had actually managed to slip up enough that he'd gotten his hands on her person.

Kira wondered if it was irony that her new elemental affiliation had manifested itself as permanent, tattoo-like bruises in the shape of his hands on her arms. She raised a hand, silencing the words that were already threatening to come out of her little one's mouth with a weary sigh.

“No, they don't know that I'm here. And no, they don't think I'm healed enough to be here if they did know.”

The icy priestess spoke wearily, as if it had taken far too much energy for her to even get the words out, much less be standing there to begin with. She suspected Ciar already knew where she was and was letting her do what she wished for the time being. Probably get her ass kicked nine ways to hell and back once those damn handmaidens of hers caught up with her. Kira slipped past Sekai, picking up the letter and skimming the contents with a furrowed brow and narrowed eyes.

“Sounds like we have business to take care of,”

She raised an eyebrow at Sekai, looking away from the letter and facing the girl fully for the moment. Something that might have been a ghost of an amused smirk was on her lips and in the unusually casual tone of her voice.

“Commander. Have you sent the call out for people to get their asses over here?”

The face Sekai made in response was wonderful. It was like someone had just had the girl bite into a lemon at the same time they'd showed her some random sex scene in a movie. Kira congratulated herself on the comparison at the same time she grinned in good humor, feeling her mood rise for the first time in a long time. And she'd be taking that expression as a definite 'no' in response to her question.

“No... I haven't, and-”

Kira decided to take her mind- both of their minds, actually- off of her new look and reappearance after her long absence by taking charge and annoying the crap out of her by being bossy- something she did very well, at that.

“They're going to be pissed if you don't invite them along- and before you get started on the comatose thing, you went twice while comatose, so they're capable of it too.”

A glance over at Sekai's expression gave Kira the rather strong urge to start cracking up. That was a 'dammit!' look if she'd ever seen one on the young girl's face. Pushing it further to see if she could intensify it, she pretended to think a moment and nodded, as if something had just struck her mind.

“Don't forget to brief them on the new developments as well when you send your message either.”

Such a dark shade of red, crap, she'd been trying for purple. The time away must have made her lose her touch, Kira thought with a frown. She'd have to rectify that later on somehow as she watched Sekai's eyes close and her expression soften into one of concentration as she composed and sent off the flashmail that would gather those in the Army of Darkness to her side for another Valkyrie ass kicking.

Kira nodded her approval- she'd have to teach that girl how to write something authoritative sounding and less like an 'Oh god, why am I doing this? Please help me out here!' plea one of these days- and watched as the girl's eyes opened and cleared from their concentration as the mass mail was sent. Leaning against the wall as Sekai shook herself and dusted the grass blades off her hakama and rear, the newly awakened AI found herself unable to help trying to lighten the situation up a little.

“...so, does this mean you're the Commander of the-”

Sekai's hand slid into her own despite her attempt to put space between them, the disgruntled and distinctly unamused look on her face enough of an answer, though the grumbled reply was more than worth holding her breath for.

“Finish that sentence and I'll knock you off the cliff.”

Kira grinned, maybe getting back into the swing of things wasn't going to be too difficult after all.

It was odd, he decided finally, to be swimming through water that he knew was cold but have it feel warm. More to the point, it carried a strange greasy and yet sticky texture that made him positively want to shudder, but he didn't want to get out of the Mac Anu river just yet. It was one of the safest ways for him to move around the town ever since the Elites and Admins started to look for him as one of the Freedom Fighters or Eventide Crescendo; it was either that or he flew. He'd been flying quite a bit recently and felt like taking a swim, he just hadn't anticipated a rather bad hallucination about the...green substance that he was now swimming through. Oh sure, he was going as fast as he would have if it were water, but that didn't stop it from freaking him out. Water, he had decided several seconds ago when he had first jumped in, was supposed to be smooth. This wasn't in any way, shape or form, and it was irritating. Nothing he could really do about it though, except to wish that Sheila, Athelstan and Gunner would just shut the fuck up for once.

It was a pointless wish though, if they had the capacity to stop talking they might have done it long ago. At least he had grown more used to their presence over the weeks, as well as the girl that was currently spluttering indignantly in the muck. He didn't usually get Ondine back, but apparently this had worked somehow. Either that or she was planning on doing something truly nasty to him in another few seconds, one or the other. He was rather hoping, and not for the first time, that he had actually managed to catch her off guard (even if it wasn't something that he himself had done) and that she wasn't about to be a pain in the ass.

And for once, it appeared that he was right. She glared at him (visible through the muck how again?) and got out of it, but otherwise didn't do anything to him. That was good, because he was about to run out of air. One more downside to being Comatose, he thought to himself with a cross between a smile and a frown, was that he could actually drown now. Muttering to himself as he broke the surface without a real gasp of air, he took in as much as he needed before ducking back down into the water...which had turned back into what it was supposed to be like in the interim. How nice of his brain to finally stop with that. But really, that just meant that something else would take its place...like the dark, undefined shape that was swimming a few yards away from him that looked a little like a Tar Clone and a little like a shark. He jolted, eyes flaring, and began to swim as quickly as he could through the water before he finally gave up and broke the surface under one of the bridges.

He jumped out, unfolding his wings from his back as he did so and shaking them out, finding some irony in the fact that he was shaking out Ruem wings. As if shaking out wings already made of water and ice did anything. Now then, he had to get to the Chaos Gate in order to g-

Ping.

He blinked and swiveled to the side, searching for the source of the sound in case it was a hallucination, and then opening up his Flashmail. He had to be careful now, and that was a pain in the ass because he didn't want to not know where something had come from. Seeing that it was from Sekai, he simultaneously felt himself tense and relax. Relax, because she was one of the only people that he trusted in this world, tense, because he suspected that she was going through hard times without Kira there with her. However, the subject line got his attention quickly. Valkyries. He'd fought one back in Theta, which was apparently where he was going now as well. Wonderful. At least he could fly around there and wasn't in any danger of falling off.

Of course, there was still the matter of actually getting there, through the watchful Knights and whoever else. But that was alright, he could fly to the Chaos Gate and hope that they weren't being particularly watchful of the sky. Typically he went in and out that way, simply because humans didn't generally look up. He did the same thing all the time, although he had a better time of it. He wasn't as reliant on sight as the rest of the humans that walked around him. Grinning slightly, and pointedly ignoring the look and motion that Ondine was doing at the moment, he started to fly up and around the bridge.

It took him a few minutes, but he finally got to an angle that wasn't being watched so heavily by the Knights. At least they were rather blatantly obvious. He couldn't be so sure about the Elites and their flunkies from Yamiyo, but he could hope. It took him very little time, once he got down to the Chaos Gate, in order to warp off to Theta server. The blankness of the warp always bothered him, as if there was something that was going to go wrong. Gunner absolutely loved to play with it. That was the other reason he hated warping, the asshole always became active.

But then he was in the sky city itself, and he quickly flew away from the Chaos Gate. He wasn't sure just how much it was watched compared to Mac Anu, but he didn't want to stick around for some sharp eyed observer to notice him and recognize him. Fortunately, he knew exactly where he needed to go, and he didn't need to walk in order to get there. He was nearly there when his ears picked up voices, ones that he recognized and weren't from hallucinations. Only...one he hadn't heard in a while. He'd been rather concerned about her, but it was good to know that she was back.

It was only after he rounded the corner and saw her that he realized that quite a bit had changed. More than just her clothing had changed but...christ, some women just didn't need to become any more sexy, they just didn't. He flew down and landed nearby, his wings pulling close in to his body as he walked closer, aware that his face was burning slightly. Not the reaction that he wanted to have right now an-

“I'd tap her.”

His face flushed scarlet as he slapped one hand over his eyes in horrified silence. Ondine did not, he prayed to himself, just say that. Had to be a hallucination, just had to be one because there was no way that she could have said that about Kir-

“Cause damn does she look sexy in that.”

Focusing on the sting around his eyes helped distract him from what Ondine had said, which was definitely a good thing. That was not something that he needed to be thinking about right now. Trying not to mutter too much, or to give away that she had just been a brat again, he spoke up first.

"Hey Kira, Sekai. You two feeling better?"

Sekai had the decency to turn a rather becoming shade of embarrassed pink at the question. Apparently it'd been more than a little obvious she'd been worried... and missed Kira than she'd initially thought to the people around her.

"E-Everything's fine now, there's no need to be concerned."

Kira's expression hadn't changed- much- during the conversation, something that might have been a flicker of annoyance or irritation passed in shadows across her eyes as she remained silent for the time being. After Sekai's embarrassed stammer, she chose to look out of the corner of one eye at the Wavemaster before returning to whatever it was she'd been looking at before.

"I'm fine; you're wasting your time if you're worrying about me."

There was a moment's silence before the boy responded with a bit of a smile. Something had amused him, although it wasn't obvious what it had been. Of course, he was amused because Kira was blatantly back to her usual state of being, which was getting annoyed at him. So, apparently, everything was fine there. If everything went like it usually did, he'd be getting hit at least once this trip, probably before they even left.

"I don't consider it a waste, but thanks for letting me know anyways. Do you know who all might be coming?"

"No idea who might be coming. We haven't received any responses to the flashmail at this point in time."

Short and to the point, perhaps a bit more than usual as the icy woman stared out at the clouds that lurked over the edge. A nasty part of her was tempted to send the next one who inquired about her health straight the fuck over the side with no questions asked.

There wasn't a change in Takua's expression, except perhaps a flicker of the eyes as he registered what it was that she had said...and then a blatant wince from something. Capslock, he decided as he tried to inject a little humor into what was not a humorous situation, did not need to be on all the time. Even though he had noticed that something was off, he didn't push, deciding that the odds of his getting seriously hurt or maimed if he did were pretty high. Something was...different about her, besides the change of clothing.

"I see."

It was evident that he wanted to say more, but he didn't, instead choosing to look out at the cloud cover as well...and wondering just how far down someone would fall if they were pushed. A quick glance showed that Sekai was both irritated and concerned about something to do with Kira, but he was content to let it sit for now. Sheila's screaming in his ear wasn't something that he wanted to deal with, and a migraine was very, very quickly becoming known. As quietly as he could, he reached up with his right hand and crushed his ear inwards, trying to stop the outpouring of sound from overloading him. He did not need a sensory overload right now, he just didn't need to do that. Wouldn't take much at this point though...what could he do?

Well, there was one person that he could try flashmailing to make sure that they came. He wasn't really sure how well this might fly, but it was worth a shot.

Watorie grinned widely as he gated into Mac Anu, it would be the first time he was able to log in since his recruitment to the AoD and was hoping to meet up with Kotori for the second time since getting this game, after all it had been the main reason for joining the game. As he was running towards the bridge through the light crowd that seemed slightly out of place from what he had witnessed of the game prior to the day, he heard the beeping of flash mail and his heart skipped a beat hoping it was her… But opening it his eyes widened and he jumped over and sat on the rail of the bridge to read it, out of the way of the crowd. It had come from none other than the commander of his new guild, the new commander nonetheless.

Hmm… where’s this at… he thought to himself as he read the letter, he quick opened and sent an e-mail to Kotori…

As soon as he had finished sending the message he opened up a few guides to the game that he had downloaded and found out where the meeting was meant to take place, he made a face that was a mix between a smile and a wince at the same time. He was excited to do some work for the guild he had joined, and hopefully meet some more members of it than just his proctors and companions in the trials that it took to get in. He looked at a map and found out how to get to the ranch in Dun Loireag, and made a total oh-shit face at all the rickety looking bridges and tall fog-and-cloud-covered cliffs… Watorie hopped to his feet and jumped down onto the bridge again and ran towards the Chaos gate and entered the information to get to theta server, a warning about the monster strength flashed for a moment but he quickly silenced it. He was heading into battle with what seemed to be a group, though he might not bee that strong, he hoped that his aid in healing or whatever he was told to do would be enough to help his faction to win whatever it was they were up to.

Three golden rings that were made with a pattern that looked like Celtic rune scripts entwined appeared at his feet and journeyed up his body. Each ring taking more of him with it and the feeling of momentary numbness as his being was ripped form the current plane of existence and flung into the abyssal void between the lands in ‘the world’ overwhelmed him. But he enjoyed forcing his eyes to stay open, he liked to watch the flashing tunnel of colors and steaming shapes and symbols as he transported. The feeling of immobility and weightlessness seemed to ease his tension of going to such a higher level place for a moment, then he felt his feet hit ground again and his vision straightened back into reality where he saw the statues around the chaos gate of strange creatures acting like gargoyles. He looked just past them and saw the cliffs, that made him jump back almost knocking into the spinning golden gate.

He patted his chest to try and calm himself down, and though he knew how nooby he looked doing it, he made his way across the bridge from the gate slowly, trying hard not to lose balance from the wind. When he reached solid ground he leapt forward onto his belly in desperation... Getting up and brushing himself off he walked forward and looked into the distance and remembered the directions the map gave him… O_O; Great, just another 9 yards of rickety doom and a tiny land plot of a platform to go before I’m there… he thought to himself. Taking a breath he made his way forward, slowly enough getting a little more comfortable with each step. Enough so that he stopped at a shop or two to stock up on some necessities before reaching the meeting point. Watorie stocked up on revival supplies and speed charms to give him more of a chance of success with avoiding attacks and being able to heal his allies quickly without delay.

Finaly, feeling prepared he walked off again, he only had one more bridge to go before he was there, and of course it had to be the longest one, and the one that curved in odd and ridiculous angles and seemed as if it would fall any second. He slumped over looking at the bridge and sweatdropped with a face of utter W.T.F.'ness, “...Oh, you have got to be kidding me…” he let slip through his lips. Making his way across the bridge still slumped with doom written all over him he let his staff drag on the wood behind him, amusingly this was the most relaxed he was this whole trip through town, his vertigo had him so out of it he couldn’t be scared, he was basically walking unconsciously across it in his astounding disbelief… In fact, a few of the players that were coming from the ranch were laughing at him, until they got to him, then the horrible crazed and disturbing ‘I-will- kill-you-and-****-the-body’ laugh scared them so shitless they ran the other way with there eyes over there shoulders the whole way.

Finally he was relieved to be back on the solid ground of the mountain with the grunty ranch on it. He was regaining his composure slowly and presently worked up enough to walk forward and go around the ranch. As he turned the corner he saw his proctor Takua standing there with two female characters. He used the cursor to it’s fullest and targeted them in order to find out their names. The taller of the two was someone he’d never heard of or from before, her name was Kira, and the other was the commander of his guild that had sent the flash mail, Sekai. He bowed to the group traditionally, “Good to see you again sir,” he said as he bowed in the direction of Takua. “And it’s a pleasure to meet you as well, Madame commander, Kira-san,” he said, bowing to each of the women as he addressed them. “I hope I can be of some sort of assistance in this endeavor, whatever it may be, and await any order you wish to give me."

The day was a typical bright and sunny day in the root town. The sunrise especially had been beautiful that morning. The first one she’d witnessed in what felt like a very long time, but time had become increasingly difficult to measure. Sure she could say days or even a month if she purely based it off the sunrise and sunsets of the game. Not that it mattered, this was now home. Something the young girl was slowly getting used to.

After escaping from the Elites prison with the rest of the Freedom Fighters, she had spent most of her time around their hideout. Not wanting to chance being seen by the Admins or for that matter, her cousin; only venturing out to help with something. Sometimes, really late at night she would go alone, when she could be hidden in the shadows; a chance to go for a walk and think in private.

Today was one of those days. There were several things that had been weighing heavily on her mind. Her cousin had sent several messages after seeing her online. He wanted to go questing with her. What was strange about them was that he never mentioned anything about how she could be online and in the hospital at the same time. So the question really was…did he even know where she was? Did her family know?

There was no way she could respond to any of them as much as she wanted to. If he was playing possum just to see if a response would come, he was going to have a long wait. This, along with all the other more obvious reasons was why she stuck to the rooftops when she traveled through Mac Anu. Today in particular, she had found a nice high spot where she could look out and see the clan mansion. A place she was told she could no longer visit. It wasn’t safe to do so anymore. The only solace that came from not being able to visit was that several of her clan mates were with her at the hideout, at least part of the time.

Ping

Another message arrived breaking the silence and her thought process, almost making her jump where she sat. She was surprised to see that it was from Sekai. Someone she hadn’t seen in awhile. It seemed that she had her own private place to run off to after the prison break. In a way the female Twin Blade was a bit jealous of that. After many searches of fields and following of leads, she still had yet to find a field that fit all the aspects she was looking for as a quiet place of solitude where she felt comfortable.

A quick read through the message gave her the meeting location since the subject gave the contents pretty much away. The meeting place well, might be a strategic thing to avoid unwanted eyes but the dark haired girl remembered her last time there. Getting to the meeting was going to be difficult to say the least. Reading further, Talal was a bit taken at the change in leadership, sad to see a member of the clan leave, but knowing that Sekai would do just fine in his place. Granted she could be timid at times but to those who had fought side by side with her, there wouldn’t be any question that she could handle herself when the need called for it.

Dark brown eyes lingered for a bit longer on the mansion, the girl herself simply lost in thought. A quiet sigh whispered in the air as she stood and headed along the roof tops towards the gate. Staying low, the Twin Blade moved swiftly along, out of sight of the wandering eyes below. Taking the last ladder available before the plaza, Talal made her way towards the gate. Luck was with her today it seemed, the Knights were gathered in a huddle taking care of fight between a Heavy Blade and a Blademaster. Stepping up to the gate, she entered the keywords for the Theta Server.

The blank darkness of gating as a comatose player always gave her the wiggins. In the back of her mind was a tiny bit of hope that when the blackness disappeared, she’d be waking up…for real. The hope was just that however and soon the sky city of Dun Loireag came into her view. The girl took a few steps away from the gate to stay clear of any incoming rings and promptly sat down.

Once again the girl wrapped herself up into a small ball. Her feet were flat on the ground, knees bent and legs pulled in close to her body with her arms firmly wrapped around the legs and her face buried into her knees. Ever since being in that stone prison, she had left her long black hair down, hanging loose; no longer pulled back in the tight braid she once kept. A few strands blowing around gently in the wind of the elevated city.

What am I going to do? How am I going to get across? I can’t just blatantly ask for help. It’s too embarrassing. I know! There is one person I could ask to meet me here that doesn’t know. I mean sure, I could ask Takua perhaps. He just knew I was uncomfortable…right? Maybe writing off what happened to a minor case of vertigo or something. No, can’t ask him. So, back to my one person it is then.

A deep breath was let out in relief. She wouldn’t have to go it alone. Hopefully, he would get there soon. Talal had learned a few tricks to calm the nerves but this was too big, too open, too…crickety looking. Why must they design such terrifying places? The root towns were supposed to be the peaceful part of the game…weren’t they? About five minutes had passed, or so she thought when the sounds of the gate being activated interrupted her thoughts.

Please let it be him. Please oh please oh please.

”Talal? You ARE Talal, right? If not, sorry but the vertigo is very bad to me here."

The sound of his voice was oddly comforting to her at that moment. Just the knowledge that someone she knew, a member of her clan was near, seemed to take the edge off. She paused a moment before answering, his words slowly registering as to what he was not doing and what he was saying, which at first made her laugh. The mentored now becomes the mentor so to speak.

”Yes, Kashi, it’s me.

Oh she just couldn’t resist the temptation. Sadly, the humor she was seeing was truly an inside joke; one that reminded her of a mistake she had made one early morning that felt like an eternity ago. She turned her head towards him and smiled.

”You know…there is a tiny little feature called targeting. It can help you in the future from making those kinds of awkward mistakes in front of people you’re not sure of. Trust me, I know.”

She chuckled softly, slowly coaxing herself to stand hoping not to give away the primary reason she had asked him to meet her there. Not that she wasn’t excited to see him and she really did want to catch up and see how he’d been doing, but the bottom line was that her pride had won the argument, so there was no outwardly asking for help. Hopefully, if he ever found out, he wouldn’t be upset with her. Turning towards him with an outstretched hand, she grabbed his and tried to offer what support she could and hoped his vertigo was only temporary. Otherwise, her whole plan would be completely thwarted and they’d both end up crawling across the bridges on their hands and knees.

”Steady now. You alright?

He stumbled forward into her hands, shaking his head a bit and blinking a lot.

"I'm fine. Just, these hills, they lead to the clouds, right? If we fall off, is there a bottom, or do we just keep falling..."

"Heights don't bother me this badly usually, but normally I can see the ground. Thanks for the tip with targeting, too. It's kinda weird when whatever's being targeted usually is what I'm trying to beat to death."

He laughed a bit. A laugh she knew all too well…distraction.

"How have you been since the event? I haven't seen you around much."

When his knees began to buckle, she tightened her grasp. Thankfully they were about the same height and she could lean into him a little to help keep him standing. Her smile continued as she listened and then joined him in his laugh attempting to put a little humor into her response to relax them both.

”I…wouldn’t know if there’s a bottom since this is only my second time here and I haven’t gotten any farther than the first time. As for the targeting, don’t worry about it. I still forget to use it when I’m not in a field too.”

She paused trying to gather her thoughts on exactly what she should say about the rest of it. She couldn’t tell him the truth. The girl had finally at least learned that lesson…the hard way.

”I’ve been good. Busy, but good. I went on a couple of quests after the event and then life kind of took over so I’m actually looking forward to going out with the clan again. How about you?”

"Nothing much, kinda been sitting on my hands as far as The World is concerned. Have any idea of what the Valkyries are? I could guess, but they'd be pretty wrong, heh."

Seeing him shuffle forward heading for the grass, she began to get worried that this vertigo thing was really affecting him badly. Better to try and keep him moving. If anything, she was an expert in what happened if you stop. You never get back up. She grabbed for his arm this time and tried to lead him towards the bridge.

"The meeting place is this way. Come on, I'll tell you what I know on the way. Here, you go first and I'll be right behind you. That way you can hear me better, heh."

He stepped forward, leading the way. With each creak of the wood below his feet, Kashi looked more and more unstable.

"So...where's the Grunty Farm we're going to? Shouldn't you be leading if you know where it is? I don't want to slow us down or anything." He waited a few moments, before adding "You seem kind of...out of it. Sorry if I sound like an arse, but something seems off."

She followed behind him with hesitant steps trying to keep up and not let the creaking sounds get to her as well; rolling her eyes when he mentioned slowing them down and trying to keep the butterflies in her stomach from bouncing too heavily. Thank goodness he couldn’t see her, but from his questioning, he didn’t have to. The young Twin Blade really needed to work on her slyness. Her rating on a scale from one to ten, with ten being the really sly end of the scale, just managed a negative two. Was it her voice? Her body language? Both? Brown eyes stayed strategically focused on the Blademaster’s back while she searched for the right response. Her soft tone would hopefully put his mind at ease.

”I’m…just extremely focused on something at the moment, sorry.”

Well, that wasn’t a total lie now was it?

” The Grunty Farm I believe is that large, barn looking structure over there. So we have just a few bridges to cross before we’re there.”

There was no hiding the amount of displeasure she was feeling from the mere fact of having to cross more than one bridge, let alone several.

”Don’t worry about slowing us down, you’re doing fine. She paused for a moment. ”As for the Valkyries, all I know is they are a group that our clan seems to have a disagreement with. One that made some of the higher ups rather umm, furious seems to be a good word. I accompanied one of the clan’s squads on a quest just after the event and we ran into one of them and it took all four of us working together to defeat her, so I assume they are all much higher leveled than you and I put together. As far as appearances, I don’t think I would have known she was a Valkyrie by just looking at her. Of course, my knowledge of these kinds of things is still really limited. I’m sure we’ll get more info when we get to the meeting.”

Wow, that was just a little wordier than she wanted to be. However, rambling on about information that answers a question, also helps to pass the time as they were already across the first bridge and rounding the connection platform to the next one.

"Stronger than the both of us? I know you're quite a bit stronger than me, but do you think that'll be enough to help? And if it turns out you can't do anything, then what can I do?"

Talal noticed his head turn. Why was he peeking over the edge at a time like this?

Kashi looked up, seeing a small barn a little ways away. "There's only one more bridge between us and the meeting place. Almost there, then we can leave this nightmare."

Okay so maybe rambling wasn’t always a good thing without a little common sense thrown in for good measure. Damn her stupidity. Every time, it seemed to get her in trouble when all she was doing was trying to help.

”Every little bit and person helps in a fight like this. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” The girl went silent for several yards of the bridge before speaking again. ”You’re a valued member of this clan Kashi, don’t ever forget that. I’m sorry about the bridges. If it’s any consultation, I don’t like them either, perhaps even more than you, heh.”

The Blademaster was silent for quite awhile until he finally laughed quietly.

"Thanks for the support, Talal. We shouldn't speak like this after so little time together, I should be more stable than this. Just, heights and raging fire make me feel so...ugh. Sorry about this, it must be really awkward, haha."

The farm was in front of the two of them, baby Grunties waddling around and oinking away.

"The meeting place is behind the farm, right? Behind that large rock?"

She stopped at the small fence surrounding the farm and looked down at the small, innocent looking creatures before them.

”They sure don’t look so, so fearsome when they’re small do they?”

She turned to face Kashi. Soft brown eyes looked at him, radiating of complete understanding of how he felt.

”There is a lot you don’t know about me Kashi, as there is much I’m sure I have yet to learn about you. However, I feel compelled to share something with you now. Had you not met me here and braved the bridges with me, I probably wouldn’t have made it to the meeting. I’d still be out there on one of those crickety old things sitting similar to how I was when you arrived and unable to move. I didn’t want you to worry about me or feel obligated in some way to help, so I’m sorry for not being upfront with you earlier. You’ve done more than you know already and we’re not even in the field yet.”

She gave the boy a small bow and a smile before turning and walking towards the meeting place, letting him chew on what she had said. Hopefully, he heard the extreme gratitude in her tone and wouldn’t feel so bad about his own issues with being in the clouds.

Arriving finally, she approached the small group that had already gathered. It was no surprise that Takua was already there. Talal smiled at Sekai and Kira while noting the outward changes in Kira’s appearance. It was a different look for the Long Arm, more feminine. Somehow, regardless of the outside, the Twin Blade was sure it wouldn’t effect what lied beneath. To say the least, she was glad to see her and hoped she would be tagging along.

A brief smile was also given to her friend before turning to offer a polite acknowledging nod to a new member of the clan she hadn’t met yet. By his tag, his name was Watorie and it appeared they now had two Wavemaster’s in their clan. That could be a very good thing on gatherings such as this.

She quietly stood there and pondered who else might be coming. Where were all of their heavier class members? No need to worry just yet. There was still plenty of time for them to arrive...she hoped.

*edited to put up the no rewards tagline, damn scheduling conflicts*

The sun shone down harshly as per usual, golden light illuminating the city of Mac Anu. The river ran, its gentle rushing melody providing a nice underlay for the beautiful soundtrack of background music provided by the programmers. People walked all through the city, some running, some shopping, some going out for an adventure.

Unfortunately, all of them were irritating.

Kashi couldn’t take it anymore. Everything was the same, everything. All the same characters ran through the town, picking fights with the same animosity, getting drenched in the same comical fashion, buying items with the same useless deliberation. Nothing was new, nothing was different. Nothing was unique. He had wandered the city all day, looking for things to do. At first the place was a buzzing hive of activity, interesting enough to keep him occupied. When things started to dry up, he hit up a couple of fields, still entertained even as the enemies thirds of his level were cut down like wheat under a scythe. And yet, beating the monsters set up in fields stopped satisfying him. There was no escape from the monotonous grind. He knew why.

He was alone.

Adventuring on his own sometimes provided something new and crazy to do, but the majority of it wasn’t worth writing down or remembering. Bashing the same heads in with the same sword, using the same tornadoes and spires of earth to pulverize the weak, finding the same treasure (all of it worthless and discarded immediately) at the same Gott Statue, every single field. Unfortunately, all the random fields had sent him to the same field archetype, notably the forest kind, so they all had the same background too.

He needed company. Real adventure! Someone, at least one other person, to travel with, to talk to, to grow with! There weren’t that many people on his friend list, and none of them were online. Kashi wanted a pal to travel with. But where would he find people? Where?

Searching his profile, he found the answer. The Army of Darkness!

The Blademaster joined the clan because it was one of the more prestigious clans in the server, but that was only a shallow form of reasoning. He felt longing for companionship, and joined hoping they would provide the answer to his problem. He didn’t do anything to deserve it, though. So why should they provide for him when he couldn’t provide for them?

The *ping* of a Flashmail racked his ears. Opening it up, the boy found an invite from the new leader of his clan, Sekai. Kashi read it over, comprehending the message in his hands.

What’s a Valkyrie…? The boy didn’t have much time to ponder that thought, for another Flashmail assaulted him orally again.

That was quick. He wanted to go with her, but the boy had no idea how to get to the other Root Town. Maybe screwing around with the options on the Chaos Gate’s menu would provide an answer and a pathway? The boy opened up his writer, typing out an answer to Talal’s request. Once he finished it, the Blademaster approached the spinning blue discus, opening the menu. The selection that stood out to him immediately was Change Server, but when he tried to access Dun Loireag he was rejected, told that one had to be or be with a level 15-plus character. The only way he could think of reaching Dun Loireag would be to heckle a random player into joining him, then using that person to enter Dun Loireag. But what would he do with them afterwards?

I’ll deal with that afterwards, the boy decided. Stepping forward a bit, he put up a small offer in the same way others would offer selling equipment. It read:

It took less than a minute for a sturdy, much stronger player to offer him passage. Agreeing, the boy accepted an invitation into the man’s party. As the Blademaster selected to move to Dun Loireag again. The golden rings appeared overhead, giving him an idea. Kashi quickly booted the Heavy Blade out of his party, giving him a light shove. ”Psyche!” he snickered, shoving the man lightly. The boy was whisked away before the incoming hands could shake him down for the dough.

~

There was only one thing that caught the Blademaster’s attention as he entered the foreign new Root Town. It wasn’t the giant stones standing in the distance, one behind each major shop location. It wasn’t the stray Grunties wandering around on the grassy floor. It wasn’t the rickety wooden bridges that connected each separated mound of stone.

Well, actually it kind of was the rickety wooden bridges that connected each separated mound of stone.

More specifically, it was the endless cloudy abyss that stretched on below them, as well as surrounding every possible land mass. The boy’s vision blurred massively and suddenly, and his fear of heights struck him. Normally, the boy could manage it. As long as he could see the relative height of the ground below, the boy could fool himself into believing the heights weren’t that high up, and the vertigo wouldn’t affect him.

The clouds weren’t ground, however.

The boy would have shut his eyes and returned to Mac Anu, until he spotted a woman crouched nearby. Stepping towards her, the outfit reminded him of a female Twin Blade he had quested with recently. The yellow top and black pants reminded him of Talal, the woman who sent him the second message. Stepping forward, he asked her quickly if she was indeed Talal, and explained that his head was messed up from the height. The girl rose and laughed at his cover-up, informing him of the game’s targeting feature which would show details of a person. The heights around him caused Kashi to lose his balance, his knees weakening from the vertigo. She quickly reached out and caught him, thankfully he didn’t drop completely before she had him. Embarrassed, the boy confessed the reasoning to his first fear and asked her about how she had been since they quested with Kyin and Rowan. She cleared his confusion on how she had been faring, and asked him the same question. His answer mirrored hers, and before he knew it they were heading over the hell of unknown depths.

The first bridge had him questioning whether there was an ending to the abyss below them, and his companion couldn’t give an exact answer. Instead, he tried to get some information on what these Valkyries were. The Twin Blade told him what she knew about them. Talal had faced one of them with the Phoenix Ravens, and it had taken four of them to take just the one down. It had him doubting his abilities to do anything to a Valkyrie, but Talal quickly put his fears to rest. Thanking her for the support, they reached the Grunty Farm. She assured him that everyone had a role in a fight like theirs, and that he shouldn’t worry. She then left for the rendezvous point, leaving him to soak in her words. She’s right. Whether we’re level one or level one-hundred, everyone has a place in battle. The same is true for the clan. I can still earn my spot. I need to.

He walked around the farm, eyeing the small pigs as he went. Around the farm, there were four, no, five other players. One he recognised from the Elimination Arena event a little ways back, vaguely. He was…Takua, if the Blademaster remembered correctly. Talal had taken a place in the group as well. The other three, however, were complete strangers. The only name he could recognise through the targeting system was Sekai’s, she being the author of the Flashmail. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself in front of his superiors, and meeting new people wasn’t exactly easy. Kashi stood a tiny ways back from the group, practically at attention, eyeing them with a bit of anticipation.

Kuishen sighed. Today had sucked, pretty badly in fact. The more he thought about it the more the amount of ‘suck’ continued to rise. Between the stupidity he had encountered on the subway on his way to work this morning and the ludicrous demands of his boss once he actually got to work, he was having a bad day and was happy to be home. Stripping off his suit, he put on more casual clothes and turned on his computer. He was going to spend the rest of the day immersed in The World because as it was currently, the real world sucked. It took mere moments for him to sign on to the game. Putting on his VR goggles and taking up the controls he stepped into Raethe’s body for the first time in quite a while.

Man it’s been a while since I’ve played.

The last thing he remembered doing on the game was completing the Army of Darkness recruitment. While he hadn’t initially made it through the recruitment, he had talked it over with the proctors and was let into the clan on the merit of his skills during the first test alone. It was nice to receive a little recognition for being good at the class he played. Looking around Mac Anu he began to remember why he played this game. The hustle and bustle of people was mesmerizing at first. Of course he wasn’t able to ponder that for long before a flash mail was sent to him, prefaced with a light toned ping.

Reading over the contents quietly, he wondered if he should go. After all he was quite new to the clan and it was obvious this was going to be more suited for higher levels. After a few moments of debating with himself, he figured he had nothing better to do and would leave if he became a burden at any point. Plus this was going to be a good chance to meet everybody in the clan. It was kind of sad to hear that the leader had stepped down, but he didn’t really care all that much because he didn’t know either the old or the new leader. The Long Arm headed towards the chaos gate and selected the Theta Server from the list of available servers and initiated the warp. The classic yellow rings slid down over his body and warped him out of the small town of Mac Anu.

When he opened his eyes, there was new scenery to greet him. Raethe wished he had the time to explore the town but he followed the signs that eventually led him to the Grunty Stables. It was interesting that the entire city was floating and he peered over the edge several times to see if he could spot the source of the lift, but he couldn’t find it in such a short time. Making his way behind the stables he saw a few members had already gathered and almost instantly wondered if he was late. Oh well, who gives a shit. Waving slightly to the group of strangers, save for a couple he recognized from his recruitment, he walked up to them and introduced himself.

“Hi, I’m Raethe… I don’t think many of us have met before. If my level is going to be an issue here though, I’ll leave. I don’t want to be a burden to you guys.”

Raethe leaned up against the stables and waited for instructions.

Sweating was never a particularly fun feeling. The boy was drenched in it, his top half almost completely sodden. It felt clammy, but slightly refreshing; a good workout would always do that to you. He had found a field that had no enemies in it, and had various natural objects that proved conducive to training. He dropped lithely down from the tree to look around. There were decent sized rocks for isometrics, a good number of trees and branches for strength training, and there were a few hills a little farther down that were good for cardio. He wasn’t sure exactly why being in good shape was suddenly important to him, but it was, and he was taking one of his few breaks to do so.

The best part of this field was probably the spring however. It was chilly but not cold, it was warm but not hot, for some reason it always seemed to be magically the perfect temperature, and it felt absolutely fantastic after the workout. The clamminess of the sweat would slowly leak out of his body, and the tension and soreness in his muscles would gradually fade too, until all that was left was a feeling of quiet comfort. The Long Arm just happened to be in said spring when the flashmail arrived.

It took him a second. Valkyries? What the hell were Valkyries? His thoughts directed him to a darkness field the group adventured into a while back, the one that started a whole chain of events that had made life rather interesting. Oh yeah, those were Valkyries. He hadn’t really had much interaction with the group as of late, but the fact that the Wavemaster went out of his way to ask him made things a little different. He probably owed the kid at least that much. With a sigh he heaved himself out of the spring, soreness slowly creeping back into his body as he donned his tunic. It was probably time to check in anyway.

Dun Loireag. The city situated on magically floating stone spires. The view was one to take your breath away, as equally from fear as from its splendor, but the boy had long since become accustomed to the heights and the sights. As the boy neared the grunty shop, he slowed. He hadn’t received the direct appeal of help from the head of the clan; it was more of a personal favor. That might mean that his presence would cause some slight distress and drawing attention to himself or select others was the last thing that he wanted. Perhaps it would be best to try and stay relatively out of sight.

Sighting a familiar pile of crates he was granted an idea. Using the crates as a series of platforms one could vault themselves a bit and with a little bit of acrobatics could find themselves on the roof of the Grunty Stables. Four seconds later he was on the roof. He crouch-crawled over to the adjacent wall of the Grunty Stable and took up residence not unlike that of a gargoyle. He could hear a couple introductions and if he craned his neck he could see a few familiar faces but the craning would make him obvious so for now he was content to just listen. He could likely overhear the mission specs and the keywords from here so it made a pretty decent perch. He decided to lie down on the roof, a much more comfortable position, before closing his eyes. It couldn’t help to relax a bit before their little excursion could it?

Three newcomers, Kira noted. Her gaze sharpening as she took stock of their names and committed their appearances to memory for future reference. Watorie was an auburn haired Wavemaster with bright green eyes dressed in dark blue trimmed in gold with a pleasant- if too polite for her taste- enough disposition. Normal enough player, she'd guess. Kashi was a Blademaster with dark red hair, green eyes and dressed in somewhat casual looking clothing in light blue and dark green. He hadn't approached or introduced himself and was located not too far away, but not terribly close either. Interesting. Again, another normal enough player. Normality might not be a bad thing in this instance.

Last and yet, certainly not least, was Raethe. A black haired, green eyed- what was with the group of green eyed warriors all of a sudden?- Long Arm dressed in grey, black and green with a straightforward, almost confrontational personality judging by the way he'd introduced himself. Nothing else out of the ordinary, save he didn't seem to be one who'd kiss ass- good thing too, she'd had about enough of that in the last six days she'd actually been conscious. Along with the three newbies came the kid, of course, and Talal- who was kind of a surprise.

We're about screwed, now aren't we.

Their heaviest class wasn't going to be of much use due to his level and the highest they had aside from herself if summoned in battle was Talal. She'd be willing to slaughter a village or two if it meant having one of their heavy hitters from the Clan- Sasuke, Ko or Bane- there to provide a barricade against the assault that'd hit them one after another once they entered whatever field this would lead them to. Just meant that they'd have to play it careful, dammit.

Turning over what she'd observed to Sekai, Kira nudged the young girl forward and folded her arms across her chest, eyes closing as she prepared to listen to whatever foolishness the clan had gotten roped into this time. Obviously uncomfortable with being the focus of attention, Sekai swallowed hard and bit her lip before speaking. Her voice matched about how the girl looked; soft, nervous and gentle with a slight accent whenever she pronounced a word containing an 'l'.

“T-Thank you all for coming, and I'm pleased to meet all of you I haven't had the opportunity to see before, I hope we can work well together.”

Damn formalities, Kira thought to herself with a mental roll of her eyes and urged the girl to hurry it up so they could get it done and over with. Especially before trouble found them or something stupid happened.

“I received an interesting flashmail from someone claiming to be against the group of people who've attacked the Clan in the past. If done properly, this could be our last counterattack against them and-”

The ground beneath their feet seemed to flicker, to those caught in a coma, like there was no solid ground at all before the entire world seemed to turn a rapid shade of red, pink, black, electric blue and bright yellow before fading completely to black. Only lasting a heartbeat and a blink of an eye, the group found themselves standing about in... a completely normal looking field. Windmills were seen in the distances atop rocky hills and lush knee high grass stretched out as far as the eye could see.

Unfortunately for Raquar, his comfortable spot atop the stables left him hovering in mid-air for a moment before he came crashing down to hit the soft grass and semi-sandy soil below. Not hard enough to hurt anything but his dignity or pride, and definitely on the embarrassing side as the collective members of the Army of Darkness stared at the tall Long Arm in surprise... and perhaps some amusement.

A windmill to their right suddenly made an odd cracking sound, drawing the group's attention over in time to see one of the blades crack completely off and hit the ground in a burst of dust, rocks and wood chips. Coughing and spluttering along with muttered curses came from the dust cloud as a tall, lithe form came stumbling out and waving his hand in front of his face. Wiping at his eyes and face with the charcoal grey sleeve of the form fitting robe, the man stopped and blinked at them for a moment before a sheepish, though not at all apologetic grin slipped across his lips.

“And here I was hoping my first impression with the infamous Army of Darkness would be cool, ahh well.”

He performed an odd little half-bow, one that almost looked mocking if not for the friendly smile on his face. Classically handsome with an almost fox-like impish tilt to scarlet eyes, the odd youth had short dark green hair that he kept running a hand through to keep out of his face. Dressed in a form fitting dark grey hooded robe that fell past his knees and were slit up to the hip for better mobility, white breeches could be seen beneath and tucked into knee high brown boots. No weapon could be found in hand as he jogged over to join the rest of them as if he belonged there.

“Welcome, welcome dear friends, I am the one who sent your darling little Commander the letter she was surely about to explain to you before I grew impatient and just brought you here myself. Please, call me Luka.”

And he liked to hear himself talk, it seemed. Quick and with a voice that could be described as warm and charismatic, there was a healthy, eager and rather happy aura about the young man that couldn't be denied. Almost like a big puppy who hadn't quite grown up all the way yet, really. He was already elbowing his way around the group, shaking hands this way and that with everyone with a grin on his face before speaking up again.

“I'm here to both help you guys out in any problematic situations, and to watch you guys totally kick these hackers' asses. It'll be fun!”

Talal found herself hassled over to where Kira stood, “Luka” wrapping an around each of their waist as he winked and grinned at the rest of the group.

“Let's split up into teams to make it really interesting and fun, what do you guys say? I'll take these two, the rest of you can decide on your own how you want to split up and- ow!”

The arms dropped from the girls' waist, hands clamping on to his foot as he hopped about on his uninjured one. Kira's spear disappeared from view, though the slit in Luka's boot- showing a bit of his foot- spoke volumes over what had just happened as the long haired woman gave him a look that could only be described as hateful and disgusted before turning to Sekai and speaking directly to the startled Archer who'd been silent the entire time.

“Whatever information we need from this idiot, get it fast and let's get going. We don't have any time to waste.”

Seeming to snap out of her befuddlement from the rapid series of... odd events and shaking her head to clear the last of the clouds in her mind, Sekai gave a somewhat apologetic smile to the sulking client and bowed ever so slightly before speaking.

“Umm... yes, it's nice to meet you, Luka-san. Kira is right though, we should get going as soon as possible, before they find out we're here. Which way to the dungeon?”

His composure completely changed, foot back on the ground and the cheerful grin back on his face as he pointed somewhere to his left and waved his other hand, as if telling them to hurry up.

“This way then, my fair lady. Do be careful though, we have a tedious and boring journey ahead of us. Enjoy the fresh air while you can- and beware; there are some portals around like- oh! One of those! Let's see if it's a treasure chest, I'm always a lucky guy, even my mother likes to tell me that-”

Before anyone could say otherwise, the green haired man bounded off and raced full speed toward the portal itself, watching it explode in a shower of gold light and blue sparks to reveal a quartet of typical field monsters. Running back as if someone had lit a match beneath his rear end, he grinned sheepishly at Sekai and proceeded to catch Kashi by the shoulders, swinging the poor lad around until he nearly lost his balance and peeked out from around his back.

“I really detest these field monsters, do your best you guys, I'll cheer from right here!”

With an odd combination of a Headhunter, a Water Witch, a Lamia Hunter and a Hell Hound headed their way, there seemed to be no choice but for the Army of Darkness to get their weapons, spells and everything else into order and start doing what they did the best; take out their enemies without fail. As Kira prepared herself to provide support of some kind, those near the rather temperamental amber eyed woman could overhear her opinion of their... rather eccentric escort.

“This guy is a fucking idiot.”

Sekai seemed to wince, biting her lip as she turned to the party she was technically in charge of at the moment and tried to give them a bit more of a positive start to the battle. Maybe a little morale boost would help break the, err, tension starting to form?

"Don't be worried about the battle, you'll all do just fine. Shout if you need any assistance and one of us will be there. We're a team and we'll all look out for one another; no one will be left behind!"


((OOC: Hopefully that wasn't too rambly for you guys. Below are the monsters' stats, pretty standard fare at this point, more fun will be there as time goes on though. Time limit is a week from today, I will make exceptions for those who are in college or something sudden comes up and grant an extra day or so if they need it and approach me via IM or PM to let me know ahead of time.

Headhunter
Level: 5
Skills: N/A

Water Witch
Level: 14
Skills: Rue Kruz, Rue Zot, Rue Rom

Lamia Hunter
Level: 23
Skills: Miu Lei

Hell Hound
Level: 29
Skills: GiVak Kruz, Vak Kruz))

He was in the middle of eavesdropping on the specifics of the mission when the grunty stables simply disappeared. Somehow something had managed to transport all of them into the middle of the field without a Chaos Gate or keywords. That was all fine and good except that the boy was still 10 feet up in the air and there was now nothing separating him from the ground. He bowed to gravity and tumbled downward eventually crashing into the ground. Thankfully he wasn’t seriously injured; he was just a little sore and disheveled, but the question was how in the world were they transported to the field without a Chaos Gate? The answer came in the form of an uncouth individual who attempted to preen and fawn over the group. There was really only one thing certain, the Long Arm wanted to kill him.

Killing their so called guide would unfortunately be frowned upon by the rest of their little ragtag group so he would have to behave himself, at least for now. Luka’s antics did nothing to raise his status in the eyes of the boy however, as soon he proved himself to be only a womanizing spineless moron. In fact, he proved himself useless beyond belief so much so, that Raquar started to doubt his loyalty. Not only did he whisk them away in the middle of their debriefing and try to split up their team, he also ran off to pit them against monsters before they had even gotten themselves remotely set up. He was definitely going to die, but first there were monsters to take care of.

A quick scan was performed effectively eliminating the Headhunter and Water Witch as targets and since the boy really didn’t want to deal with a charm effect right now that left the hell hound available. He also had new toys to play with, so it was time to have some fun. The boy watched as his Dek Anid gripped the monstrous canine even as his former position was swarmed with fireballs. He had a few brushes of heat stroke his legs but it wasn’t anything serious, and his spell had stuck, so he was in a good position. He stood up and glared the beast down, its salivating jaws and yellow eyes stared right back at him until a sea of darkness crashed over the creature, bubbling waves of Ani energy churning and toiling until a stark black falcon soared upward stretching its wings out toward the horizon before plummeting down and crashing back upon the Hell Hound.

He leaped forward, needing to close the distance between the beast and himself before the creature had fully recovered from the spell. As he neared he summoned the shadows to his spear and sprang forward his attack spell catching the beast in the ribs. His weapon ripped through the dog’s side sending it skittering away limply. It raised its maw in a pitiful howl before collapsing in the dust. He really did like his new toy, it worked well for him. The evidence for that was the dead dog in the dirt behind him.

One other player showed up after Kashi and Talal, a Long Arm. Using that target system, he was able to find the man’s name: Raethe. He and the Wavemaster, Watorie, were the two weakest players of the group present, however, since they were headed to a Theta Server field, he would most likely be in the same situation they were. The Long Arm introduced himself. Before anything else could be said, the short Archer thanked them for coming and provided a small amount of information on why they were gathered. Before Sekai could say more than one or two lines, the scenery around them flickered. All distinction between objects disappeared, the lines blending together until it seemed as though there was a giant sheet of rapidly-changing coloured paper encompassing his vision. It was as if the colours of a rainbow were being flashed directly in front of Kashi’s eyes. Before long, everything faded to black.

When colour returned to the visor’s screen, they were in a normal field. Well, that’s one way of gating into a field. Wonder if this is how they always travel. Mostly clear blue skies covered the top majority of sight while green grass rolled across the horizon, broken up by windmills. Portals dotted the landscape in the distance, fortunately they didn’t have the ‘luck’ of accidentally activating one upon entry (as he was prone to do).

Sound to the right drew the boy’s head to snap in that direction suddenly, a crack no-one should ever have to feel sounding off. A cloud of dust had formed, debris from one of the blades strewn about. A tall figure rose from the cloud, coughing and brushing himself off. Short green hair sat atop a generically handsome face, one that just irritated the Blademaster. The young man wore a long grey robe and white pants with tall brown boots. The instant he started talking Kashi winced. That voice may not have been annoying, but the tone definitely was. No-one has any business sounding that pleasant, the boy thought bitterly, and he slapped the hand groping for a shake away. He told them he was there to help, although the second half of his sentence sounded as though he was doubling back on the whole helping thing. Luka, the name he introduced himself with, had already started trying to pick up two of the members of their group. Slimeball, he uttered mentally, the look of disdain on his face clear as day. Mental cheering ensued when Kira slashed through his boot. Sekai and Kira urged them hurry, and yet it seemed that Luka took it the wrong way, as he hurried over to a Magic Portal. The yellow sphere deposited four monsters on the field: a flaming dog, a blue witch, a Headhunter, and a Cadet Valkyrie look-a-like.

Luka backpedalled as quickly as possible, grabbing the Blademaster by his shoulder and whirling him around. Kashi’s eyesight blurred from the gesture, his inner ear screaming for balance. When the earth stopped moving, he found a hiding Luka standing behind him. Barely overpowering the urge to smack the man in the face with the nice end of his fist, the boy drew his Komura, taking as many steps away from Captain Chicken as he could. There was fighting to be done, and they already had one piece of excess baggage. Targetting the three unknown monsters, he found the Water Witch to be the best target. If their party had been a bit different he would have taken down the Headhunter, but someone had to keep the Witch from blasting away.

Strange monsters had strange elements most of the time, but at least the name of this one gave him an idea of what he should use. Raising his hand, Kashi caught sight of a familiar Long Arm slicing clean through the flaming dog. Raquar’s here? But I didn’t see him in Dun Loireag. The moment of surprise gave his target the chance to make the opening move, which she did. A chill ran through the air around him, the winds picking up. A Rue Rom splashed around him, the wind, ice and sharp waters slashing his torso and legs. The spell dealt heavy damage to the young man, most of it remedied by a cast of Repth. The glowing aura recovered the majority of his health, but the sheer magical strength behind the spell left a small dent of red in his life bar. The Blademaster had to get close to avoid the Witch’s spells. If he could keep pressure on the monster, she wouldn’t be able to knock him down with a single spell, nor could she target other party members.

Kashi walked forward, breaking out into a run when he heard the familiar swirling of a Rue Rom. The tip of the tornado caught him, fortunately it didn’t do anywhere near the damage it did the first time. Reaching into his pocket with his left hand, the boy produced one Flame Blast scroll - the level two spell would summon forth a BiVak Rom, dealing damage to the Witch and any nearby targets. The boy pulled his Komura up in front of him, sticking the scroll to the fun end of the blade. The Witch kicked up her feet and made tracks, trying to keep her distance from him. Oh no you don’t, I’m not planning on letting you get away from me. The boy raised his left hand, the bracer on the wrist shining softly. ”…Rai Rom…” The spell breathed itself into being, surrounding the Water Witch. Sparks jolted into being around her, the whirlwind of electricity cutting off her exit. She turned around, raising her staff. The blue light signifying a Ruem spell shone into being with double the strength, only to be knocked down by the incoming Komura. The dark blade smacked the staff away, the Blademaster beating her with the dull end of the blade before slashing down her torso. The force of the blade struck through the attached scroll, igniting the paper and sending twin vortexes of flame spiralling into the air. The flaming tornadoes burned the witch, akin to the medieval witch burnings (except the witch wasn’t tied down or over a campfire of sorts).

The spell also had a side effect of distracting Kashi from the activation of the Witch’s spells. Particles of ice thrust through the dying flames as the ground shook beneath him. There was only enough time to dodge one spell, and with his Komura equipped, it had to be the Rue Kruz. ”Revolver.” He spun with his sword arm outstretched, deflecting the majority of the ice strikes. The Rue Zot struck as the first spell ended, pillars of ice rising from the ground. They rocketed up, battering him with enough brute force to break part of his right arm and send him into the air. He saw the Witch getting ready to cast another spell and did the only thing he could think of with next-to-no SP left - he threw his Komura. The dark jagged blade went flying through the air, whirling towards its target. Unfortunately, he missed with the semi-broken limb, and the sword merely bounced off of the staff again, at least preventing her from actually casting something. Gravity came knocking and he fell back to the ground, bouncing lightly off the grass. Groaning and waiting for the world to stop spinning, he pushed himself off the ground with his left arm, detachedly noticing that his arm was swinging on its own. Using the last of his SP, he cast another Repth, restoring the bone structure in his arm and a fair amount of his health. Looking back at the Witch, he saw her reaching for her staff. ”Uh, could someone get her? I’m done for range right now, and my Komura’s kinda…over there by her,” he sighed.

Noting that Kashi had approached perhaps a little cautiously and had stayed back a bit, the dark haired Twin Blade mentally cursed herself for not walking in with him. She felt he needed to think about what she had said, not wanting to put any undue stress or pressure on him by waiting around while he did it. It never occurred to her that he may not know anyone of the clan just yet.

No true heavy classed members had arrived but Sekai was ready to get things going; her calm and polite manner ever present as always. Talal wondered what kind of first impression of their commander that would leave on the newcomers. Not that it mattered. Anyone not showing the proper respect for her position would be quickly reminded.

Just as they were being informed of why they were all there, the ground shimmered and then disappeared. Talal immediately went into a slight panic while she watched the area around them turn vibrant colors of the rainbow and then suddenly there was nothing but complete darkness. As quickly as the darkness had arrived however, it had faded back to a very serene looking field, complete with tall grass and windmills and as much as she should be on guard, the only thing the young girl could think about was that she wouldn’t have to traverse those damn bridges again in order to gate out of the root town.

Hallelujah.

A quick tally noted that everyone was present and accounted for, but in what mental state from what just happened was anyone’s guess, especially for the newer members. As for herself, seeing solid ground back underfoot took care of the panic attack for now. Long black hair whirled around when Talal’s head snapped to see what caused the loud thud on the ground. Needless to say she was a tad bewildered to find one of the Freedom Fighters lying there. He must have been in the vicinity when everything turned upside down.

Strange that he didn’t arrive standing up like the rest of us.

Blades were drawn instantly upon hearing the cracking from the windmill. Her recent experiences drilling automatic reflexes into her muscles as any kind of crack, break or explosion was never a good thing. Surprise struck as well as the confusion that never seemed to leave her side when a young man dressed in a robe stumbled from the debris and dust with a large smile upon his face.

The Twin Blade wasn’t impressed in the least with his pleasantries and courtesies, not to mention his quick approach to the group. Too much, too quick and the girl was feeling uncomfortable. A quick glance told her that at least she wasn’t the only one not liking the situation seeing other weapons at the ready as well.

Luka, by his own introduction, was shuttling through the group smiling, and trying to shake everyone’s hands as he passed. Sliding her blades back into their sheathes, Talal kept trying to inch her way around hoping that Luka would miss her in his escapade of the group, but for whatever reason it wasn’t working. Her distrust of anyone new until proven otherwise immediately created suspicion he was following her. The fact that she found herself being shooed towards Kira, as if she was a group of chickens or something, only helped said suspicion.

So help me if he lays a hand anywhere, I will not be held responsible for my actions.

No sooner than the thought surfaced, his arm was around both the Twin Blade’s and Kira’s waists. A foot was raised, poised and ready to stomp as well as an elbow bent and ready to poke out an eye when Luka’s arm retracted mid sentence. Kira had beaten her to the punch, not that she minded. He got what he should have and a little more, since the Long Arm had used her spear instead of a fist or foot. Talal smiled in happy agreement at the outcome to say the least.

Another question from the small Archer and he was bounding off and gibbering at the same time. Honestly, she couldn’t keep track of him long enough to really understand what was going on except for the familiar sound of monster portals being activated and the bouncy coward high tailing it back to the group to hide. The Twin Blade had the sudden urge to use him as a meat shield, but didn’t have it actually in her to follow through on it…at least not yet.

Thankfully at least, she had battled three of the four monsters before or at least a lower leveled copy of a couple of them. Unfortunately, the one she was closest too, she’d never seen before and didn’t know what its capabilities were. It looked like a cross between a female Heavy Blade and maybe Medusa? No, this was no Medusa head, just a pair of snakes as a head. Perhaps when they return, she’ll spend some time in the library brushing up on her ‘World’ history so things like this wouldn’t be such a surprise anymore.

Popping a speed charm, she pulled out her Mikazuchi to give them a test drive. They had a Rai ability to them that she was just dying to try. A few fanciful, yet skillful swings that cut through the air and she was off.

Her first pass struck gold getting the Lamia Hunter’s attention and leaving it hissing with both of its tongues. The sight of which, actually churned the girls’ stomach a bit and made her shudder. Snakes were right up there with spiders and other little bugs on the not liking so much list. The Hunter countered, slamming downward with its oversized blade. Metal clanged against metal with the attempted block that sent the slight female back several steps.

Knowing they shouldn’t be lingering in the field, it was time to see what her blades could do. She called out for the blades skill and began the dance like movements that gave it the momentum it needed. With her Ap Do in place, she was able to keep pace with the Lamia Hunter as it tried to dodge around her movements ended with her body coiling up into a spring and releasing for a direct strike.

With her blades in motion like claws on a rotary, several gashes filled with the Rai element gouged through the flesh of the creature. Blood spattered and the snake heads sprang out in random but rapid directions, hissing and spitting.

The Thunder Coil attack had done everything she had hoped for including the bright blinding light that was oh so pretty. The snake headed monster momentarily appearing dazed and in retreat. Regaining her stance, Talal was about to charge towards her injured opponent again when things went fuzzy.

Looking at the Lamia Hunter angered her. It was damaged, wounded and needed to be protected. The Twin Blade turned towards the bumbling grey robed idiot that wasn’t even smart enough to have a weapon at the ready. Easy enough pickings to get started with, she thought to herself with blades poised; her speed carrying her quickly and directly towards him.

Right before she's within striking range, Luka suddenly looks up at her with an expression of shock mixed with a delighted grin.

"You've changed your mind and want to be one of my consorts?" He asks quite cheerfully, opening his arms as if ready to catch her in an embrace.

She smiles eagerly, seeing him as an even easier target than she first thought and laughs. "Sure, if that means I get to cut off your head and feed your carcass to the Hell Hound over there."

With a crestfallen and wounded expression on his face, Luka begins to reach out- as if pleading with Talal in her charmed state- to the black haired woman. "So very cruel, the women of this world seem to be to a young, brave magician such as myse- eep!"

Takua out of seemingly nowhere, dropped to the ground as he swept Luka’s legs out from under him. With a rather undignified yelp, the Wavemaster found himself smack dab on his ass with crimson eyes glaring sulkily at Takua.

"Well then, if you wanted to go out on a date with my magnificent self, you should have just said so in the first place! Your hair's a little short for my preferences but, you're a decent enough looking man." Luka comments, slightly irritated as he picks himself off the ground and brushes his robes off.

Talal glared at the blue robed Wavemaster who just stole her easy target for himself, or rather save him from her it appeared. It didn’t matter to her; one was just as tasty as the other she would imagine. ”So, you want to be the hound’s lunch instead. Fine by me.” With an unconcerned look, she took a swipe of her blades at Takua.

There was a brief twitch as Luka’s words, and far more than that, registered, and Takua responded without even looking at the male. ”Sorry, you’re just too sane for my tastes.”

Analyzing the oncoming blades, he stepped into them, one arm taking both swords as the other brought the Restorative directly to Talal’s mouth, the top already out of it, and the liquid going quickly to its destination.

”Now would you kindly get your pig-stickers out of my arm?”

Choking down the restorative that had been practically shoved down her throat, the poor girl was completely horrified. The look on her friend’s face and the words he used and…Oh God! of course, her blades needed to be removed immediately from his arm but, that would mean even more pain before he could be healed and she knew he would feel every millimeter of it. DAMNIT! When was she going to start helping him instead of hurting him?

Large dark brown eyes filled with guilt and regret looked at him. ”I am so sorry. Here, let me…” with no warning, she removed the blades from his arm.

Quite unabashed and looking frankly surprised at her vehement attack on her own ally, Luka looks from Talal to Takua as if contemplating something before happily throwing an arm around each of their shoulders.

"I see, you two have a little somethin' - somethin' going on," His grin grew impossibly boyish and wide. "Three's company, what do you guys say? Wanna experiment a little?"

Nothing but a red flushed face came from the girl in response to Luka’s comment mixed with her guilt about what just happened. But so help her she was seriously going to deck him with this whole touchy arm around the shoulder crap. Takua snorted lightly and wacked her lightly on her head, freeing himself of Luka as he did so.

”Don’t worry about it. OrRueRom.”

He turned back to the other strange person as the ice spell utterly wasted the Lamia Hunter and sent it to the ground. Guh! Luka was getting on his nerves and a few choice things were not helping.

A small smile was directed at Takua in thanks while she wiggled out from under the annoying man's grasp. She turned her head and gave Luka a brief glare that was nothing short of annoyance. Somehow though she didn't think a glare would stop him from doing much of anything.

"Well, that was fun," Luka comments happily, watching the monster as it's destroyed. Making a sad, puppy face at Talal, Luka sighs and wraps his arm around Takua's shoulder once again. "The fair maiden, she rejects my advances. Surely, you can be my consort? A fine upstanding fellow such as yourself?"

The second that Luka touched Takua, the Wavemaster went absolutely still which concerned the girl greatly. She knew what her problem with touch was, but what was his? He looked down at Luka’s groin pointedly as he spoke.

”I prefer someone with more size”

Luka's grin faded for a moment as he stepped back a moment, cocked his head to one side and took a good, long and measuring look at the blue clad Wavemaster in front of him before turning to Talal and stage whispering to her. "Well, mine's bigger." He replies, holding up a Wavemaster's staff and winking rakishly in her direction.

Rolling her eyes, Talal could barely contain herself at that point. Not only was she embarrassed to even be included in such a conversation, she couldn't believe they were having it in the middle of a battle. She wasn't interested in being put in the middle of whose stick and nuggets were bigger. She lightly shoved Takua on the shoulder towards the Water Witch.

"You, go blow something up." Turning around she then shoved Luka a little more firmly in Kira' direction. "And you can go hide behind the nice Long Arm. I'm sure she'd be happy to put a hole in the other foot so they match." She shooed him off just like he had done to her earlier.

Both of them seemed to agree, at least they parted company in the directions she had shoved them. She began to think that Luka had no sense about him at all as she watched him bounce off towards Kira apparently thinking that was an excellent idea. Talal was glad she wasn’t him at that point knowing for sure that Kira’s spear would indeed oblige a matching set of slits in the boys’ shoes.

As she watched the Wavemasters’ body language, he was off to vent about something most likely, and venting usually meant something exploding which would be fine in this case. That’s when the real reason behind all that posturing that just took place hit her like a lead brick. They weren’t posturing as typical males at all, or at least Luka wasn’t, but what was Takua thinking? Was he really one of those that preferred… Talal couldn’t even take her mind there. She shuddered and danced around a bit as if she was covered in those maggots from the Juk Prison field. It didn’t matter really, but part of her hoped he was just joking around to get back at Luka.

She found herself staring at the blue robed boy, pondering and wishing she wasn’t so dumb at times.

After Watorie had arrived and introduced himself to his former proctor and the leader of the clan along with, according to the look of it, her companion or assistant, or just another member of the clan that was a good friend, he heard footsteps behind himself. He turned slowly to see a couple of players walking in together, using the cursor he looked at their names. The first one he spotted out of the couple was the girl Talal, a twin blade by appearance, she was wearing a yellow shirt with black pants and a white sash, and old fashioned sandals… Was she a ninja? And long let down somewhat curled raven black hair made him think of a yakuza heiress without her bun. Though obviously the curls were from an undone braid. The second in the pair was a boy named Kashi, a blade master, he wore a light blue shirt that belled out the sleeves as they went down and donned his hands with silver gloves, he had dark green pants and green running shoes… Watorie was surprised that those were even selectable for footwear when everything else here seemed so old’e times.

Watorie turned and bowed to them, though it seemed to go un noticed. After the pair arrived without introductions another set of footsteps could be heard, and it turned out to be a somewhat familiar face… Raethe, a member that took part in the same recruitment challenge as himself. The long arm walked over to the group and introduced himself.

“Hi, I’m Raethe… I don’t think many of us have met before. If my level is going to be an issue here though, I’ll leave. I don’t want to be a burden to you guys.”

It was nice to see a familiar face, Watorie hoped there wasn’t bad blood form his screw ups in the recruitment that they were in… He hadn’t seen anyone from the recruitment after it had ended. In fact, he was told that he was the only one that passed… Was Raethe given a pass for technical difficulties? After all, Watorie knew better than anything that out of all of them, he was probably the only one expected to fail the exam, if not for errors or connection problems then Raethe should have beaten him to the exit. Oh well, this was a good sign, he knew at least two of the people around, in fact he was hoping to see another, he wondered if the second proctor would be showing up soon. Though his question was answered for him.

“T-Thank you all for coming, and I'm pleased to meet all of you I haven't had the opportunity to see before, I hope we can work well together.”

Watorie could tell in an instant by her mannerisms that Sekai was just as her avatar had suggested, Japanese, like himself.

“I received an interesting flashmail from someone claiming to be against the group of people who've attacked the Clan in the past. If done properly, this could be our last counterattack against them and-”

Before the commander could finish her briefing on the situation at hand the world shifted, there was a slight flash and suddenly they were on a field. Watorie jumped as this happened, he had no idea such a thing was possible, he looked around and though it wasn’t plain as day on every ones faces, he could tell it took all of the group members by surprise. Especially the one that no one saw previously, the one that suddenly fell form the sky near him. Targeting the newest addition to the group he found the name Raquar, another long arm, he wore a black robe that stayed closed by way of not a belt but a red vest, strange, though stranger still were the characters eyes white where it should be black and colored red, he also had white hair. Behind Watorie, where the cliff of Dun Loireag had once been came a loud and nasty cracking sound, louder than Raquar’s landing.

Turning towards the disturbance Watorie saw that one of the windmills in the area was breaking, one of the blades was falling, hitting the ground with tremendous force and sending dirt and splinters capable of impaling a full grown man flying. Out of the dust cloud turned up by the crash came a strangely dressed man, muttering curs words to himself as he walked out of the cloud, a tall man in a dark gray hooded robe with slits up to the hips, and white pants tucked into brown boots. A gust of wind passed carrying away a bit of the cloud as the tall man stood there looking at us in a shy way. The wind was strong, it sent ripples through the grass that could be seen for miles, everyone in the group was looking at this stranger now, hair and lose clothing whipped about, I held tight onto my staff as the red sash on it mimicked my ponytail, dancing in the gale.

The man grinned at the clan, “And here I was hoping my first impression with the infamous Army of Darkness would be cool, ahh well.” he finished and gave a sort of bow, I found it insulting; he didn’t complete the bow and kept looking at us. The way he acted even before he started going after the women in the clan he seemed to be trying to pick a fight. After a lengthy issue of this man who called himself Luka, he ran off and activated one of the magic portals in the field, running back to us and hiding behind our members for protection against a horde of monsters he had unwittingly unleashed.

Raquar ran forward and took out the hell hound quite quickly, I marveled at his strength. This was easily followed by Kashi and Talal going after some more monsters, Talal took out the Lamia Hunter whilst trying hard not to kill Luka herself as he was being as if not more annoying than when he first started flirting. While in the mean time Kashi was fighting the water witch, after which he called out.
“Uh, could someone get her? I’m done for range right now, and my Komura’s kinda…over there by her.”

Hearing this Watorie moved a few steps forward into the battle, he was in range of a monster, a monster that had it’s HP quite well depleted. As soon as he was close enough he incanted, “Vak Don!” a small flaming meteor fell from the heavens smashing into the water witches head, she stood somewhat unharmed, her attention was now on Watorie though so he decided one more and shouted, “Vak DON!!!” this meteor fell harshly on the witch and the elemental hit it caused was just enough to kill her. Watorie jumped for joy and ran to fetch his comrade’s weapon from the area of the dead witch, dumbfounded in the fact that he had done something, anything that seemed useful. As he grabbed the weapon and took it to its master with a grin he just handed it to Kashi and with a happy grin on his face started walking away. That is until he heard a roar come from his left, and the Head hunter started rampaging towards him. Almost instinctively Watorie used one of his speed charms to increase his speed and ran the opposite way, Why?!?!? he thought to himself, Why’d he have to ruin it?

With the speed charm he was slightly faster but not by much so he started diving and jumping here and there, darting between other players but the beast seemed fixated with slaughtering him, the horrid monster holding it’s skeletal head in its hand. Swinging it’s sword rabidly hoping to snag it’s next snack… Finally he turned and targeted the colossus to find its element, too bad though, because it didn’t have one. Watorie gulped and blasted the best spell he could for the moment, “Gan Zot!” he said slamming his staff to the ground, there was a small quake as sharp spires of earth shot up at the beast. With no elemental damage but still quite good, apparently these physical types were weak to magic… He almost head-desked for thinking it though because it was obvious that physical creatures would be weak to magic. He’d need time to recuperate for a stronger spell so he decided to nearly depleted his SP gage by calling out, “Vak Don!” another flaming meteor falls from the heavens and smites the head hunter, it wailed in pain but still was strong enough to restart the chase. Watorie moved quickly but his speed charm wouldn’t last forever, so waiting just until his SP was full so he could flurry it with strong attacks.

After less than a minute of running like a wild man Watorie was back to full SP, and promptly turned, to the head hunter which was dangerously close, “Gan Zot!” he shouted and the rocks again impaled the enemy, he even used one to launch him a bit further away, but the monster swatted him in mid air. He flew like he wanted at first, but not the way in which he wanted to. As he landed he found himself on the verge of death and used some of his SP to promptly heal, “repth…” he gasped and a healing light enveloped him, healing his injuries quickly, his speed charm had warn off so he raised up and cast fast, “Juk Rom!” he shouted causing a tornado to erupt around the head hunter, trailing with damage. The monster was finally silenced, and Watorie was shocked, he actually beat something on his own, if it weren’t for the fear of dieing from cheap shot monsters he would have feinted. So instead he stood there semi-alert, staring open mouthed at the spot where the beast had fallen.

As the last monster fell beneath the onslaught of the combined Army of Darkness' forces, Luka found himself smiling at the sight. Even during his foolishness, he'd been sizing them all up to see if they were really all they were cracked up to be... or if his other information source had really been as arrogant as he believed them to be.

A combination of teamwork, careful guardianship and vigilance- especially by that fine little Valkyrie who'd stabbed him in the foot earlier-, and solitary skills had brought their enemies down as efficiently as if they'd planned the entire thing beforehand. Naturally though, this wasn't this case or he'd have had to find a way to make the first battle a little trickier. Oh, the fun I'll have, the fun it'll be.

Dancing across the field as if he were a young high school theater student in the midst of playing one rather... flamboyantly frolicking version of a certain popular Elven character from a highly successful movie trilogy, Luka suddenly stopped and made an exaggeratedly respectful, sweeping bow the the entire lot of the clan gathered before him.

“I'm dreadfully sorry about all of that, honestly, I just never can remember the right buttons to make a good spell combination, you know?”

Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he pumped the arm holding his staff high into the air and swung it dramatically in a seemingly random direction. Beaming as if he were the most handsome thing on God's Green Earth, he bowed once again- like some sick, strange form of a fantasy jester and waiter escorting high class and famous individuals into a fancy restaurant.

“This way my little Valkyries and faithful Warriors! Let us be off to rampage across Odin's dinner table and steal his wine! Perhaps we'll even find the Holy Grail or some other fantastic treasures!”

Looping an arm through Watorie's, the unusually cheerful and energetic man gallivanted off... in the opposite direction of where he'd pointed with his staff. Practically skipping through the knee high grass until they reached a certain point, Luka dropped Watorie's arm and did a funny little skipping bow in his direction.

“Thank you, my fellow Magical Warrior of Justice and Truth! Your company was much appreciated!”

He proclaimed happily with a flirty wink toward the Wavemaster next to him and waited for the rest of the group to gather. Noticing the positively thunderous expression on the female Long Arm's face- and the not quite different one brewing in the male Long Arm's eyes as well- the happy go lucky expression suddenly turned confused, even a little nervous as he stared at the two of them, looking quite uncertain of who he wanted to talk to and hunched his shoulders towards his ears in an attempt to look innocent.

“...ahh, have I done something to offend you?”

With a strangled sounding, 'eep!' from his mouth, the ponytailed man ducked beneath the lengthy blade that was fully intended to remove his head from his shoulders, flattening himself on the ground and widening his eyes as Kira advanced on him with more than a hint of murder in those jewel bright eyes of hers.

Rolling away from the blade that sank nearly to the shaft of the spear that embedded itself where his throat would have been, Luka managed to get to his knees and flung himself behind Raquar, holding on to the- extremely tall and good looking, in his happily given opinion- man's legs as if they were a lifeline and looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes as big as he could possibly make them.

“You have got to stop her, you're a rare, handsome speciman of a male Valkryie, stop your fellow sister and protect me!”

Whether because he was just sick of it the foolishness or because the Wavemaster was just that idiotic and pathetic enough he took a moment of pity on him, Raquar easily reached out and seized Kira's wrist as she prepared to bring her spear down in an attempt to impale her target from an odd angle. A moment's struggle and a staring contest between the two revealed a power struggle... amongst a few other familiarities that had the young Archer feeling a little awkward as she hurried to catch up with them and paused for breath at Raquar's side.

"Enough,"

He said quietly, firmly and with no mistake that he was referring to the both of them despite his eyes being locked on to the hostile fury of the woman in front of him. Her teeth set and a promise in her eyes that said she'd make him pay- somehow- for the humiliating public rebuke before she dropped her gaze and looked pointedly away from him. Releasing her wrist as soon as he was certain that she wouldn't try and immediately spring back into attack mode- it had happened before; she'd proven that she'd go through anyone in order to get what she wanted- Raquar looked down at the man still grasping his legs and narrowed his eyes.

"Get your act together or get out of here, I won't say it again.”

Sekai bit her lip and bent slightly, offering a hand to the still cowering- and now sulking- man. Her expression was a brief mix of surprise and hurt as Luka blatantly ignored her and pulled himself up by grabbing Raquar's wrist. Brushing himself off and looking at the rest of them, he shrugged and slammed his staff into the ground, causing it to rumble and quake violently beneath their feet. The hill they stood on suddenly grew higher, as if something below them were rising up and finally settled after ten or so minutes.

Over the edge of the new cliff was a set of earthen stairs leading down into a cave-like structure; presumably the dungeon.

Looking more than pleased with himself, Luka bounded over to the stairs and waved his hands over his head- staff still in hand- as if beckoning them to follow.

“This way, this way! Hurry or it'll close up- oh! And you four,”

He pointed to Takua, Talal, Raquar and Sekai, one by one and shook his head.

“I don't recommend you jump down here from there, it might do worse than knock about five HP off your total... I'm sure you know what I mean.”

*

Within the cavern itself was an extraordinary temple like structure. Golden brown, warm glyphs filled the area and lit the straight path into the square shaped entry hall. Three paths stretched out before them, waiting with a door at the end of each. Pale blue fire illuminated the torches beside the door on the left, brilliant violet lit the ones in the center and a bright green lit the ones on the right side. Luka positioned himself in the middle of the three paths and looked to each of them with a shrug, as if he didn't really care what happened.

“Three paths to choose from and three you must fight before the hidden path can open and the end can come. Pick your path carefully, else you might not return.”

Kira's eyes narrowed and her words were venomous as she snapped at him.

“What the hell aren't you telling us?”

Scarlet eyes met the furious amber of the AI's own as he tilted his head to one side and offered an oddly mature... almost condescending looking smile to the temperamental woman.

“Think of it as a test to make sure I'm not getting screwed over, if you will. If you're just going to die at the first or second challenge, there's no point in risking my neck to take you directly to your deaths.”

He chuckled at the pure malice in her eyes, the way her knuckles turned white from her grip on her weapon and turned to the rest of them, blatantly inviting the opportunity for the female to attack him once again as he addressed Sekai indirectly, staring at something over her head in a show of disrespect.

“Now then, little Commander, I suggest you get your team in working order... or else I'll rethink the decision to actually destroy the safeguards protecting the people here.”

Swallowing hard and with her cheeks burning in embarrassment at the pointed comment and slight at her inability to really act professional and take command, Sekai turned hastily around to speak with her group, walking over to the center of them and waited for them to gather- Kira included- before speaking.

“S-So there are t-three doors we can choose from right n-n-now. I... think we should t-take the, um, “

She shot an almost helpless look over her shoulder at the three doors, mind scrambling to pick one at random and landed on the pale blue flames.

“The door with the blue flame torches. What do the rest of you think?”

->------------------->----------------------------------->----------------------------------->------------------>
((OOC: OKAY! Finally got this thing out and written. My apologies for being late. Call it ADD and lazy on my end. I'll try and be better about it. =D

You've got three doors to choose from, each with a differently colored torch set illuminating it. The majority of the vote wins. If, for some ungodly reason, you want your character to try and get some information out of Luka, feel free to contact me on MSN, AIM or PM and I'll do my best to find a proper time when we're both/all on to answer questions for you.

Otherwise, it's pretty simple, reactionary posts, character developmentish post and decision making time! One week is your deadline (and I'll actually stick to it this time; XD Takua can now use blackmail on me to get me to do it on time.) and I hope to pick up the pace myself to make up for lost time.))

After getting back to his feet Watorie noticed the horribly dense seeming individual that was Luka prancing through the grass towards the clan. Looking around he saw that everyone around him was regrouping together and followed suit. As the group was gathered once again Luka finished his prancing and made a sweeping bow to the entire clan. “I'm dreadfully sorry about all of that, honestly, I just never can remember the right buttons to make a good spell combination, you know?” Bouncing and making… gestures… Luka was messing around with his staff and swinging it around overly dramatically… Finaly he pointed it in one direction making a pose that screamed vanity, and everyone surely picked up on this little fact. Bowing while pointing as if inviting them all somewhere he spewed out poetic dribble soberly… It was more frightening than the headhunter…

“This way my little Valkyries and faithful Warriors! Let us be off to rampage across Odin's dinner table and steal his wine! Perhaps we'll even find the Holy Grail or some other fantastic treasures!”

Valkyries, why’s he calling us that, aren’t we here to defeat them? Watorie thought, but wasn’t able to ponder more for Luka ran forward snatching up the poor unsuspecting wavemasters arm into a forced arm-in-arm lovers walk… Skipping opposite the way he had pointed.

“Thank you, my fellow Magical Warrior of Justice and Truth! Your company was much appreciated!” he stated with a flirting wink and smile at Watoire.

Watories only response was a nearly inaudible “ewwwwwww…” As Luka dropped his arm and finally walked away. Watorie was slightly frozen for a moment in a mixture of feelings, disgust and filthiness… he even found himself glancing around for a spring of mist to jump into with disregard for the spirit in it… Then he noticed Kira-sama attacking the cornball that brought them to this location; inwardly he cheered her on and wanted to join in… He struggled to hold it in, he didn’t want that part of him almost getting out again like it had on his first adventure in ‘the world.’* He watched as Luka avoided the attacks then hid behind another member of the clan, another male member that he seemed to make notions toward… Oh god, is he hitting on us? Watorie thought. The choice of hiding places Luka chose was stupidly chosen at that, since he was to be almost betrayed instantly. Then Sekai-sama showed up and stopped the fighting gestured to assist Luka who blew her off in this. An act that just made Watorie cringe and solidified his position of thinking Luka was only interested in the men of the clan…

Watorie hadn’t exactly caught anything that had been spoken up to this point when Luka showed a strange serious side to himself and slammed his staff into the ground, making it rise for a few minutes; opening a doorway to a set of stairs leading under the ground, most likely to the dungeon.

“This way, this way! Hurry or it'll close up- oh! And you four,” He pointed to Takua-sensei, Talal-senpai, Raquar-senpai and Sekai-sama, one by one and shook his head. “I don't recommend you jump down here from there, it might do worse than knock about five HP off your total... I'm sure you know what I mean.” Watorie looked at his leader clan mates and proctor, what was so special, or different? He became confused instantly… though with the way things were progressing in this field it wasn’t hard to do that…

Watorie scaled the cliff a little of the ways down holding onto the grass roots and rocks, until his grips gave way and he fell flat on his back… “Ow…” he grunted getting up to his feet and followed the others into entrance in the cliff face. They entered a structure like an underground temple, Watorie though back to his friends game “Tales of Symphonia” which he had watched Hikaru playing once. This place resembled the first dungeon there a bit to him, except for the orange-ish glowing symbols on the wall. They soon came up to a square room with three doors in it, each one bordered with twin colored torches, to the right were light blue ones, straight ahead were violet, and to the right was a couple of light green torches.

“Three paths to choose from and three you must fight before the hidden path can open and the end can come. Pick your path carefully, else you might not return.” Luka recited again soberly… he was more frightening than any circus performer when he did this…

Lady Kira glared at him as he spoke and snapped at him like a viper, “What the hell aren't you telling us?” Their eyes met for a short stare down until Luka changed personalities again and turned his head smiling down on Kira-sama, as if he were the better of the two, acting as elder sibling to a baby child. Something Watorie knew would only anger Kira-sama further, judging by what he had seen of her so far.

“Think of it as a test to make sure I'm not getting screwed over, if you will. If you're just going to die at the first or second challenge, there's no point in risking my neck to take you directly to your deaths.” Their screwy host laughed as Kira-sama’s anger grew, the spite that radiated off her was palpable, her knuckles turning white from the sheer wish to impale the man. Luka then looked in the mere direction of Sekai-sama, off to the side and up though, not addressing her directly as though she were some kind of lower life form. “Now then, little Commander, I suggest you get your team in working order... or else I'll rethink the decision to actually destroy the safeguards protecting the people here.” Watorie hadn’t been in this clan for very long, and he knew she hadn’t been the leader for very long, but he still felt that they were all being disrespected by this. Sekai-sama, there commander, was being belittled by this very queer creature, and that meant that he was belittling them all…

Sekai-sama trembled, she was obviously affected by the vulgarity of the asinine man. She moved to the center and waited for them to gather around her, Watorie joined and crouched on the ground close to the front to listen to her closely. “S-So there are t-three doors we can choose from right n-n-now. I... think we should t-take the, um,” She looked around in a somewhat helpless state, choosing a door seemingly by eeny-meeny-miney-mo, “The door with the blue flame torches. What do the rest of you think?”

The young blue wavemaster looked at the doors again, and again, going back and fourth until something random popped into his head, it probably had nothing to do with this, but he thought it might be a good thing to mention, “A color wheel…” he let slip from his mouth, and he stumbled with his words before anyone looked at him wondering why the fuck he’d say something like that in this situation, “I-I remember f-form today’s art class I had, I had to use a c-color wheel to mix paint, and looking at the doors I noticed something…” He stood and looked at the doors closely, “In any color chart blue and green are right next to each other, but purple is almost completely opposite them…” he looked at those around him and bowed, “I’m sorry, that’s probably just useless babble, just disregard it.” He said and went back to his crouching position and looked at the commander again…

{{OOC:
*When he joined the world he kinda went skitzo, sorta, Watorie has a different side to him that Koji doesn’t, he acts differently in the game sometimes and it even shocks him. Of course it’s never that way when Kotori is around… for more info look at my first quest and see what happens with Faust’s offer… Think of it as two Watorie’s, the meek childish one and the one that likes to tear things apart just to see the warm blood change colors as it flows…}}

Even after everything had died, Takua didn't feel particularly good. The teleport that they had had before had been...annoying to say the least, and Luka did nothing to stop Takua from being paranoid as all hell about him. Sure, he was acting the fool, but so could the murderer right before he slid a blade in-between your ribs. As much as he wanted to cast a rather high leveled spell and kill the man right where he frolicked, such a thing would probably not be a good thing at all. God but how he wanted to. Sighing and removing that temptation from his thoughts, he instead winced as a particularly loud barrage of screaming came into his right ear from something. One of his hallucinations probably. That didn't make him feel good at all, and he calmly brought one hand up to block that ear for a few seconds, trying to pretend that he was doing something else. Like scratching at his hair. That was really the furthest thing from his mind, and eyelids closed over eyes that looked vaguely like Kira's, if only in the way that there were no pupils within their center.

Kira's attempted murder of the person that was their guide went almost completely ignored. He didn't really care about what happened to Luka, what he did want to know was how she was feeling, and it didn't look good. At all. He wanted to ask what had happened, but didn't want to push at the moment since she looked ready to snap at the slightly provocation. He shrugged and put that thought and action away for later. It wasn't the best place for it either. Besides, she'd probably want to spend quite a bit of time with Sekai after this was done and wouldn't want to see him for a while. Whatever, it all worked...essentially.

Luka did surprise him however when he summoned up the dungeon. Sure, there were ten minutes of just standing around as the ground under them rose up, but after that was a rather interesting thing that Luka said. He'd particularly singled out the only Comatose people in the party as what they were and told them not to do something...how did he know? Suspicion surged at the same time that two particular hallucinations perked their heads, whispering their dark madness into his ears as he descended into the dungeon proper. He ignored them as best as he could, although they did have a point. It wasn't just any old naïve and rather foolish person that could pick out, correctly, which of them were comatose and which ones of them weren't. Hissing his anger slightly, he followed and watched the ensuring conversation with interest.

So, their Wavemaster guide really wasn't an idiot and was just playing with them. More than half of him wanted to crush him like a bug, just as Kira was evidently feeling, but the rest of him held it back. There could be time for that later if he crossed them or if something else happened, for now they'd just have to go along with him. Muttering to himself about how he hated this part, he looked at the three doors before his eyes landed on a single one. For some reason, that just seemed to be the way to go, not the other two.

“I'll go with the blue door as well. We don't even know the puzzle behind this yet if there is one, so I'll go with that one.”

Luka was just about to make the Twin Blade sick to her stomach with all of his theatrics. He was just way too happy and she knew there was something up. No ally would suddenly warp them without notice and now that she gave it some thought, that must have taken a heck of a lot of power. Either he was more than met the eye or he wasn’t working alone and neither would bode well for the Army of Darkness…it never did.

Speaking of which, it would seem that Kira was having similar thoughts when the bouncy Wavemaster ducked under her spear. The girl watched Luka as he found a brief hiding spot, or so he thought. She hadn’t really spoken much to the dark clad Long Arm and wasn’t sure how he would react to such a flamboyant character. Even at that, it surprised the young girl when Raquar reached out and grabbed Kira by the wrist. Did he want to be the next victim of beheading? The intense eye stare between them was rather interesting as well.

However, it was the Long Arm that managed to knock some sense into Luka with only a few words. Looking as if he’d been turned down for a date, but that it was a usual occurrence noted by the shrug he gave, the Wavemaster slammed his staff into the. The ground began to shutter and shake, along with the loud rumbling noise that typically came with earthquakes. This quake unfortunately, wasn’t your everyday variety of a few seconds to maybe a minute or so. No, perhaps ten or more minutes had passed before it subsided leaving the girl wondering if Luka’s intent was to give them all indigestion.

The new cliff side that was formed dropped down into a cave of sorts with a set of stairs leading the way down. His singling out of the four members of the group that were playing more than just a game wasn’t very reassuring that he didn’t have something up his sleeve. The bumbling idiot knew way too much about them. A quick glance to their newest member told her what she needed to know. He’d heard the comment to the four of them. She knew the confused look on his face well. Talal grimaced at that while she began her decent down to the stairs.

Entering the cave, it opened up into a mini temple, complete with an entry hall, glyphs and of course choices to make. She despised riddles, never being very good at them. Luka’s words were confusing to her which again, nothing unusual there either. Three paths to choose and three we must fight. So does that mean beyond the three paths there are three fights or a fight at the end of each path which technically, would mean it didn’t matter which one we choose first. Gah! I hate this kinda stuff.

Kira’s loud voice snapped her from thought, but the question was an extremely blunt, to the point good question. The answer however, said everything and nothing all at the same time and then was followed by a not so respectful comment to Sekai. Listening to their Archer/Leader speak afterwards, it was hard to tell if he got to her or not. The Twin Blade had heard the stutter before under various circumstances which made reading her at times very difficult, not to mention she had the art of being polite down to a ‘T’ as they say.

Sekai chose the blue flamed path and was basically seconded by Takua. Watorie though blurted out a different thought path and for a moment, she thought maybe he was onto something. Looking at the three path choices again, she tried to make combo colors in her mind. Originally, she thought maybe the blue and green path were dead ends at it was the purple one they needed until she realized that it wasn’t blue and green that made purple but blue and red. Blue and green make a sort of aqua or maybe a turquoise color so that didn’t lead her anywhere. She didn’t have much experience mixing purple with other colors so again, she was at a stand still for thoughts on color, leaving her to accept what was being chosen for her.

”Looking at our options, I’m going to have to agree that blue is just as good of an option as any since there is nothing here to tell us differently.”

Their ‘guide’ immediately filled the silence after the battle, loudmouthed buffoon that he was turning out to be. He pointed his staff in one direction, the Blademaster’s eyes warily following it with more than a hint of distaste, before he dragged Watorie a few steps in another. The short escapade between the two ended with a more than confusing gesture to the Wavemaster and a puppy-dog attempt to play off the waste of time. His head was almost forced off (to paraphrase the Queen of Hearts) by Kira’s spear, unfortunately she had missed. A couple more tries ended with Raquar and the female Long Arm staring off for a few seconds. The man chastised Luka (far, far too little a punishment ) for his behaviour before Sekai gestured to help him up. Instead, the bipolar tour guide yanked on Raquar’s arm, standing, before slamming the staff into the ground. A set of stairs formed out of the ground after massive amounts of shaking, prompting quite the profane assessment of the situation mentally, and Luka leaped down them merrily before beckoning them to follow. He then told Talal, Sekai, Raquar and Takua not to jump down, because it would do more than damage to them. His brow scrunching slightly in confusion, the boy followed the rest down the steps.

Lights flickered once they entered the cave, three pairs of torches illuminating three doors. One pair shone a brilliant blue, the others vivid images of green and purple. Their moron of a host spoke a riddle, one that had to do with the colours of the torches. The mini back-and-forth between Kira and Luka sparked a stream of muttered curses and insults from the Blademaster, albeit quietly muttered curses and insults so as not to offend their ‘honoured guest’. YOU getting screwed over? What about us? We’re screwed over by having an imbecile of a player controlling a bumbling Wavemaster just happening to be the one showing us through the Valkyrie hideout! You bumbling, totally useless piece of sh--

Speech from his commander stopped the ranting both mental and physical. People threw out their ideas after Sekai chose the blue door. Takua and Talal agreed with her, but Watorie chose to say something about a colour wheel, the sound of it making Kashi think he picked purple. “Well, as long as it’s not green,” he uttered. [color=indigo]I have a bone to pick with the crap that happened last time I went through a green dungeon. As a little aside, he said (barely audibly) ”I’d rather go through a room smeared red with Luka’s blood right now more than anything, quite honestly.”

To say that tensions were running a little high was like saying that a category 5 hurricane was a mild thunderstorm.

Nervous and highly sensitive to the overall mood of the group before her, Sekai listened attentively to each suggestion and, by common vote, found it in favor of the room she'd pointed out. Meek and feeling as if she'd just been given a kick in the ribs by something impossibly large and stone-like, the young commander took charge and headed to the door first. Pale light gave her a haunted, ghost-like appearance as she appeared to read something on the door and placed her hand against it to try and push.

With little success and no apparently handle or lever, the young girl turned to speak to her fellow team members and let them know they'd need to choose a second door... when it suddenly swiveled and sent her tumbling into the shadows beyond with a single, terrified yelp.

Luka found the entire matter hysterical. The Wavemaster was on the ground, clutching his stomach and almost howling with laughter... right up until Talal gave him an “accidental” kick upside his head in her haste to try and reach the door.

Raquar, by some odd twist, beat everyone to the door, his serious expression still in place, save for a slight tightening of his jaw and the tension in his extremely tall frame. One large hand skimmed the surface of the door, searching for any trace of what trap had been triggered before he scowled, set his spear against the door and turned to threaten Luka with bodily harm if he didn't knock the immature crap off...

and nearly got hit in the ass with the revolving door that stole his spear in that instant.

A shocked silence filled the room before a very, very muffled “Ow!” came through the other side. Brows furrowing in contemplation, the tall Long Arm stood in front of the door and pushed against the side, quickly moving out of the way as it turned once and closed like nothing had happened. As fairly interesting- and slightly humorous as the muffled sound had been- the rest of the Army of Darkness- and Luka- slipped through one by one, Raquar bringing up the end of the line to keep an eye out on the suspicious Wavemaster.

Sekai was in there and appeared unharmed, save for the spot on her head she kept rubbing with a wince and Raquar's missing spear leaning against her tiny shoulder. Upon seeing that Kira still had her weapon and, with a distinctive lack of other Long Arms around, she gave a sheepish smile to the white haired man and struggled to hand it back to him.

“It's a little too big for me to hold with one hand,” Sekai began apologetically and noticed the strange way that some of the other members of the group were staring at her. Unable to restrain himself from the urge to play the high school joke, Takua found himself blurting out the inevitable rather loudly. “That's what she said!”

Sekai gave Takua an odd look, as if he'd lost his mind or something by saying such a thing and glanced over to the strange color Kira's face was turning and the way the AI refused to look at her for any reason. “Yes...” She replied slowly, missing the point entirely and probably went looking for it in the wheat fields of Kansas. “That is indeed what I said, but-”

“We're going on ahead. Move out people!” Kira managed from between clenched teeth and rushed on ahead, much to the small Archer's annoyance. Choking back laughter was a very, very difficult process; especially when the individual in question honestly had no idea whatsoever about the innuendo behind the seemingly innocent phrase.

Raquar just closed his eyes and followed after Kira. If she asked, he'd make Kira tell her. Or better yet, have Takua open his big mouth again and explain it himself; considering it was his fault and all.

...but dear God how sheltered she must have been, he thought with a shake of his head.

Sekai scowled, following the others somewhere in the middle of the group as Kira stopped suddenly and took a step back, looking rather uncomfortable with something she saw in the small doorway ahead. Concern filled in the eyes of those who knew the rather standoffish spear wielder at the sight of the slender woman taking another step away from the room that lie ahead.

She didn't turn to meet their eyes, but there was a noticeable edge that even Luka picked up on when she spoke. “It's... not good.” Strained and almost like she didn't know whether or not she wanted to laugh or start swearing vehemently, the amber eyed princess shook her head and tightened her grip on her spear.

Four IronBall Freaks were in there... or, what looked like them... if they'd been fused like siamese twins at the hip and back in addition to a pair of conjoined at the tail Cyclo Sharks and a lone Mimic.

Luka giggled, an obnoxious and disturbingly high pitched sound, as he turned to face the group. “Well well well now, dungeon crawling is part of any adventure, it's okay though. It's just this room and we'll have the real challenge for this area come hitting us from above!”

Sekai turned to her clan and gave them all a very tentative smile, bowing ever so slightly to the them as she rummaged in her inventory. “Ap Vorma!” Bestowing the magical defense blessing on each of the people fighting- including, she assumed, Luka- and glanced back into the room. “Well... how do we want to do this,” A pause as she studied their opponents.

“IronBall is... high physical attack and maybe defense based, good magic might knock them out of the way... though there are technically four of them and no chance for a sneak attack... not really, anyways.” The young girl mused, her brain already trying to churn out some sort of strategy. “Cyclo Sharks may be easiest for those with speed or magic too... and the Mimic is what we need to really be careful with; it can confuse you and make you think your friend is actually an enemy.”

“Just be careful and I suggest grabbing someone who'll compliment your strengths and cover your weaknesses in battle; yell if you need some healing or someone to come yank your ass out of a tight spot.” Kira cut in, nodding to the young Archer before heading into the room herself and going for the sharks to see if she could find a weakness or a way to split them without getting bit.

((Better late than never, right?

With the IronBall Freaks, double their HP; everything else stays the same, they only share HP. Same with the Sharks.

Have fun?))

Watorie stood back and watched as Sekai walked to the chosen blue door and tried to open it in vein. There was not a knob or handle to be seen, so given the circumstances it was obvious that she’d try to push it, though still nothing happened. Suddenly as she turned to face the clan the door swung and pulled her into the unknown area ahead. Waotrie gasped at this, and along with everyone went for the door, of course beaten downright by the rest of the clan. Talal had even taken the opportunity to kick Luka stabbed the door with his spear getting it lodged in his attempt to open it, but again the door didn’t open when wanted. When Raquar turned to go after Luka though the door swung again, taking his spear with it. From the other side came a small grunt of pain that was undoubtedly made by their leader.

Everyone in the room looked as thought they were trying to figure out how it worked, it only took moments and Raquar tested his theory by pressing on the side of the door and jumping back before it swung. A little pressure one moment will make the door turn once it’s relieved, Watorie thought to himself. Slowly everyone in the group was able to get through the door one by one, with Raquar last so that Luka was never out of sight.

They arrived in a dark room with Sekai ahead of them holding Raquars spear, it was so much bigger than her that it made her look even smaller, when Sekai made a comment about it being too big for her to hold single handed Takua made a vulgar remark any middleschooler would know, yet surprisingly it went right over her head. Kira noticed however and did her best to get the group off of the subject by commanding everyone forward. Everyone obeyed so Waotrie fallowed along assuming that Kira was Sekai’s second in command.

The clan was once again on the move, all going deeper and deeper into this unknown dungeon. Watorie stayed at the back of the group thinking, he wasn’t able to help at all with the last part of this area, he barely did anything outside other than run frightened and scramble to stay alive… he was practically useless… His chain of thought was cut short when the group headed by Kira with commander Sekai in the center of the party stopped short before the next room ahead of them. Kira had halted them, taking a step back from the next room. “It's... not good,” Kira said shortly. Watorie peeked around to see what was going on, the next room was filled with more powerful monsters, seeing this he gulped harshly.

“Well well well now, dungeon crawling is part of any adventure, it's okay though. It's just this room and we'll have the real challenge for this area come hitting us from above!” Luka had said, Watorie got worried by this, from the sound of it he imagined that it was a trap and as soon as the monsters were dead the ceiling would collapse on them.

“Ap Vorma!” called out Sekai, as she enchanted all the members of the party. She started to ponder what was the best way to take care of the monsters. She started speaking facts about the monsters and ways to try and defeat them, looking in the door Watorie knew that the only thing he’d be good for is healing, nothing else. He targeted the monsters and wasn’t surprised when the Cyclo Shark came up as water but was when the IronBall Freaks showed up as thunder and not earth. The only spell he had that would damage one would be his fire magic against the shark but Takua was probably better at that, though the stronger IronBall would probably take all his effort. As he was thinking this Kira launched herself in after the Shark. If he would be able to do anything it would be support her.

Walking slowly through the door he aimed at the shark, “Vak Don!” When the meteor hit the beast it did a small amount of elemental damage, but more than that it diverted it’s attentions from everything but the little wavemaster, leaving it completely open to an attack.

((OOC: I’ll re-write that for you if you’d like Seki-seki. But I figured that this would be the best way for Watorie to help other than constant REPTH REPTH REPTH! And he doesn’t know enough about Kira to know if making the opening she was looking for would piss her off or not… ))

Takua wasn't too surprised that they ended up going into the door that Sekai had recommended. After all, she was their Commander, and it's a fairly good idea to at least consider, heavily, what said person says. Sure, they could disagree and pick a new path, but the Wavemaster hadn't any more of a clue of where to go than she did. That said, he could say, with absolute assurance, that he couldn't trust Luka for as far as he could throw the other Wavemaster. Which wasn't very far, considering that his physical strength was about zero. Between what the man, or boy, had said and how he was acting, Takua saw no real reason how his natural paranoia was wrong. There was something...strange about how he acted. Happy and giggly one moment without a care in the world, cruel and calculating the next. Not something that he could bring himself to ignore, and as much as he didn't want to listen to the whispers in his head, he couldn't just throw them away out of hand either.

And so he watched the other Wavemaster carefully, even through the antics of the door. Of course, he just couldn't bring himself to ignore what Sekai said though. It was right there...so blatant that he couldn't help but say the joke. He had half expected to get smacked by Kira, but instead the AI was trying not to laugh, as, possibly, were a few other people. Sekai didn't get it though...and that killed that amusement as quickly as it had come. He had known that she had been somewhat sheltered, but not to that degree. That was...a little disturbing. He'd come to know her far more than he had thought possible in such a short time, and still he knew almost nothing about her. That was because of the situation forced upon the Freedom Fighters...but still. He could have, should have, asked for more information about who she was outside of The World.

But so far, he hadn't. Mostly because there hadn't really been all that much opportunity to do so, especially since he'd been seeing...well, way too much of them. He didn't really want to be there so much that they got tired of him and told him to go somewhere else. Which might not be something that Sekai would say, but it's something Kira could. And might speak for both of them, although Sekai wouldn't say it unless prompted. Ah well...here he was wandering again. Probably a way to get his mind off of the sight of one of the newer people, he couldn't remember his name right now, jabbing a sword at him. One that he couldn't believe was real, and was so happy and relieved when the blade cut into him...and then vanished, the boy back to where he had been before.

But still, he was sweating. He'd be revived, but in the middle of a fight would never be good. Especially since the next room disgorged four fused Ironball Freaks, a pair of Cyclo Sharks that were put together in the same way, and a single mimic. Leaving the lower level monsters for the newer players, he went straight after the Ironball Freaks. He wasn't really sure how their stats were affected by becoming...in essence, a single monster with eight arms and eight ways to hit you. Not the best thing for a Wavemaster, who didn't want to be hit and didn't want to feel the pain of a crushing blow. That was the hardest part of fighting for him, although his...training with Kira had helped to some degree.

Some.

Taking out his Ocean's Rod, he quickly cast an OrRue Rom on the giant before anyone else could charge to greet it. Although he could have used Ani on the things to get elemental criticals, there was a little Archer there who he did not want to freak out at the moment, and that certainly would do so. In a really bad, bad way. So instead of dark spider legs from the earth, a roaring torrent of water and ice tore into the combined monster, shredding its health and dropping it rather nicely for a single spell. Oh, sure, it was also ten levels or so under him, which meant that this was a cakewalk.

Or was, until every figure in the room blurred. Blades whipped at him, an Ironball Freak loomed in the distance, charging at him from eight different directions, and Ondine's screams for him to...do something suddenly became very distant. A single thought hammered in his mind, pounded in his blood, and fear gripped him. Defend himself before he was killed. The quicker that he killed everything, the more likely he was to live. Eyes wide and hyperventilating, he turned to find the closest one of the Ironballs, only a few yards from him. His voice broke from forced fear and panic, but the words still got out even as he changed staves to end this quickly.

“Merrows Ch.”

((Yes yes, Takua got confused by the Mimic. One person currently has a second level summon boosted by several accessories flying at them. Have fun~

Oh, and nobody actually attacked him. Hallucinations are hard to write in a way that makes sure everyone knows they are, at least from my perspective >.>))

Kashi watched quietly, stopping his approach. Within moments, a disgruntled sound echoed mutely from the other side of the door. With only a vague idea of what could have happened, the Blademaster waited, slightly worried, as Raquar experimented with the door. He found that the door swivelled open quickly after something touched it. Watorie proceeded through the door, and Kashi followed suit, looking back at Luka with an annoyed expression.

The next room housed their small first-in-command, rubbing a spot on her head and holding Raquar’s spear against her shoulder. Relieved that the only damage done to the Archer was probably a bit of blunt, Kashi watched her hand the spear back to the Long Arm, commenting about the size of the weapon. Takua instantly let loose a redundant comment, something about what “she” said. Kashi felt a sort of mood take a few of the members. Assuming it to be some sort of school joke (which he would have missed, not having gone to such a building for many years), Kashi simply observed where the conversation went. Sekai’s response was along the lines of what his would have been, and he could tell that Kira and Raquar had some sort of opinion on the matter. They quickly moved on, into the next room. Almost. Kira doubled back, ahead of the group. She said something, but Kashi didn’t catch the words so much as he caught the tone. Great, already we’re getting bullshit here?

The next room housed two absolutely mammoth pairs of ball-and-chain-wearing monsters the Blademaster hadn’t seen before. Something seemed slightly wrong with them, but since he hadn’t fought that kind of monster before, he couldn’t tell what it was. What he could discern, however, was that there should NOT have been such a brand of Cyclo Shark in existence. Their red tails were fused together, making them look like more of a blue boomerang-esque shape than two rabid marine hunters. Almost going by unnoticed, the treasure chest with a freakish maw stood slightly behind the Sharks and freaks. Sekai sized up the foes quickly and Kira gave a general strategy for the group before dashing off towards the Sharks. Kashi knew that two of their foes were within his level grasp, he just had to make sure that he didn’t get flattened like a pancake by the freaks of nature. Watorie unleashed a Vak Don, dealing chip damage to the Cyclo Sharks and focussing their attention on him. Kashi looked at the Wavemaster for a moment. Are you nuts? Let us distract them before you go provoking to avoid getting shredded, he mentally ordered while swapping his Noble Cloak for the Ring Mail. It looked like the boy would have to go for the Mimic, he didn’t remember what the thing’s spells were, but treasure chest enemies in games were always annoying one way or another.

He twirled his Souleater in one hand, watching the gigantic pair of watery tornadoes crash down upon the Ironball Freaks. The spell dealt great damage, and Kashi looked over to the one who cast the spell. Well, we know whose way I’m going to have to stay out of. Something looked weird about Takua, though. A giggle from the Mimic coincided with a pulse of red from the Wavemaster. He then aimed his wand at the group. What?!? A blue shine emanated from the rod, signalling a spell. Kashi wasn’t waiting to catch which one it would be. He targeted the Mimic, naming one of the skills on the Souleater.

”Crack Beat!”

His character rose quite highly into the air, head forced around to watch his target. He heard something from behind him, but couldn’t twist his neck to see what it was. Coming down from the peak of the jump, the boy’s sword smashed into the lid of the Mimic. Small splinters of wood showed the less than preferable amount of damage done by the skill. Something chewing into his side knocked the Blademaster’s health down by a chunk, and he turned to the attacker, one of the two Cyclo Sharks. Switching to his Komura, the boy wound himself up slightly for the basic skill on the weapon.

”Revolver!”

The boy hopped up into the air slightly, spinning like a top. His sword smashed into the face and lid of the Shark and Mimic six times each, knocking the two monsters away from him. He snapped out at the Shark, sword clanking off of its teeth. Skipping to the left, he sidestepped a head butt from the Cyclo Shark, smacking it down with the flat of his blade. Something came hurtling into him from behind, and he found himself flat on the ground, the Mimic hopping up and down on him. When the bugger finally bounced off of him and he looked over his shoulder, he found himself staring up at two spiked weapons of one of the Ironball Freaks. It was all he could do to try knocking a couple of monsters down some with spells before death.

”Rai Rom! Juk Kruz!”

The tornado of electricity crackled out around the Mimic as branches and foliage formed a giant cluster around the treasure chest. The Juk Kruz hit at the same time that the Blademaster’s body was turned into semi-pureed blood ‘n bone pudding. by the twin spiky weapons of death His ghost rose from the ground, an annoyed and frustrated frown glaring up at the Ironball Freak. ”Pick on someone your own size, dammit!”

Blue candles, blue portal, it always seemed to be blue when it came to him and the AoD. They moved through the passageway and the door with social incidents but nothing extremely detrimental to anybody’s health . . . yet. It could get there but it wasn’t quite over the top. What greeted them in the next room however drove all other thoughts from his mind. It looked like somebody had been playing with mix and match dolls with the grotesque fusions that greeted them. The boy waited as others sprang into action trying to analyze and think about what the best course of action was. That idea soon went to hell as Kashi went down, Watorie did whatever Watorie did and Takua managed to get himself confused. He muttered a grunt about idiocy or stupidity or something along those lines before he dove headfirst into a boosted Merrows Ch. Apart from their leading archer he had the best chance of surviving the summon so he did what would hopefully have protected the lower leveled members. Kashi made part of it a moot point by already being dead but there was time to worry about that later.

The pressure was crushing and his body threatened to collapse under the weight of the water, but it was only for an instant and then he was freed from his watery prison. A La Repth helped alleviate some of the damage done and would hopefully help any teammates in a near enough vicinity. The immediately necessary things having been taken care of he turned his attention to the annoying box. A Dek Anid followed up immediately with a Wryneck slowed the creature down enough so that a pair of slashes from the Archspear reduced it splinters. That took care of the most important threat in his opinion and left him free to pursue other options. Switching the Archspear out for the Berserk spear he moved toward the freak shark.

His spear went alight with flames and heat as he whipped into the shark, small flaming crags opening up on the thing’s body. It howled at him and managed to beat him a couple times with its tail before he lit into it again. This second skill netted him an elemental critical and it was enough to make one of the shark’s heads go limp. The thing looked even weirder now with half of it limp and dead but theoretically it should be a little weaker now. His diverted attention was ill-fated as he took a giant metal wrecking ball to the ribs. He heard the crunch before he felt it as he staggered sideways coughing up blood. This was going to take a while, hopefully Luka would pitch in a bit.

The roundabout decision in the end was unanimous; they were taking the blue door. With no apparent handle, Sekai turned back to the group only to be swallowed through the door like some horror movie. Talal instantly bolted for the Archer hoping to catch a flailing arm or hand before she disappeared. Luka’s laughter did nothing but cause instant anger in the small framed girl and she gave him a boot to the head on her way by faking a few unbalanced movements to make it look like she hadn’t seen him and tripped. It only felt good for a brief moment but then she was disgusted with herself for allowing her anger to get the best of her.

Raquar beat her to the door but even he was too late to reach Sekai before the door closed. The search for a trigger started again and failed which was when the dark clad Long Arm’s frustrations with Mr. Rolly Polly took a more threatening turn, which made the girl smile a little on the inside but didn’t dare let it show. Another test of the door and the trick was found allowing the group to meander through one at a time.

She followed Kashi through the door and watched the brief comical tort unfold at Sekai’s expense which warranted the slap on Takua’s shoulder with the back of the Twin Blade’s hand followed with a half scowl half smirk. On the move, Kira was the first to see what lay ahead and from the moment that she backed away from the door, the Twin Blade knew it wasn’t good. After the Juk prison, Talal couldn’t honestly imagine what could possibly be bad enough to cause such a reaction. Luka’s cackle didn’t help matters either, making the girl wished she would have tripped a little harder and perhaps knocked they guy unconscious.

It was to say the least, odd to hear Sekai speaking allowed of the monsters characteristics and trying to formulate perhaps some sort of plan. Maybe she was doing it for the newer member’s benefit. Either way, the Twin Blade didn’t really mind as it was rather informative and she didn’t have to figure it out on her own. The additional magical defense would come in handy as well, sending a polite thankful nod back to the small Archer.

Watorie followed Kira into battle. He looked anxious to help and do his part which Talal understood rather well. She could remember feeling that way a lot when she first started questing with Takua, even if the help she was trying to provide was more of a friendship style mental support than anything. Still, being so anxious made her make some wrong decisions along the way. She watched while he cast a Vak Don at the shark which diverted all of the creature’s attention on him. Not exactly something he should have done considering his level and low physical defense but then again, diversion wasn’t a bad thing for the group either. How did that saying go? ‘Three parts brave, one part fool’ or maybe it was the other way around.

Getting her bearings on the best way to jump into the fray, the girl noticed Takua didn’t look quite right. His eyes looked like they were straining to focus or perhaps it was more of a confused look. Good God, if that’s what she looked like when she was confused, she’d better learn to hide her expressions. Kashi took on the Mimic; yet another brave soul in the midst of chaos. Sadly for the Blademaster, he became the center of attention and was in deep trouble. That was it; Talal knew where she needed to head first. She popped a Speed Charm and charged into the room. Even with the added speed, Raquar was still beating her to the punch. It said something for experience she supposed. When Takua cast the Merrows, she dove for cover. There was definitely something up with that boy.

When the flames and smoke cleared, Kashi was a ghost and Raquar was in some serious need of healing as well as a certain Wavemaster needing to be put back in his place and she knew just how to do it. Still with the Ap Do effects in place, Talal took off first towards the dark clad Long Arm and casting a Repth as she went by. Next up was the Wavemaster who looked like he was getting ready to cast another nasty gram and since she was the closest to him now, guess who the target was. The girl decided to attempt at making him dizzy and ran circles around him a couple of times. Perhaps it’d throw off his targeting as well. On the last circling she tossed a Restorative at him and hoped he wouldn’t manage to knock it away.

Last but not least was Kashi but he’d have to wait while she did what she could in her speed round to the enemy. First was a Gan Don sent at a pair of the Ironball’s that had grouped up. Talal wasn’t sure it’d do any damage and didn’t stick around to find out. If anything it would hopefully serve as a distraction long enough for the others to coordinate an attack against it. Once that was done, the Twin Blade quickly switched out her armor and sent a Vak Kruz at the Mimic. Finally, she sped by the fallen Blademaster and tossed him a Resurrect.

There that should get us back into fighting mode and…

YIPES!

The dark haired girl had completely forgotten about the half limp headed Cyclo Sharks who thought it apparently would be fun to sweep a girl off of her feet in the literal sense. Using their conjoined tail, the sharks swept it at the Twin Blade’s legs like a jump rope only she forgot to jump and got knocked down landing on her back with the same said tail coming in for a body slam of sorts. She tried rolling out of the way but got tagged at the very last moment in the legs and could already feel the bruise starting to form.

That’s gonna smart later on.

Front flipping back to a standing position, Talal regained her stance and prepared for round two!

((First and foremost: My apologies to all who I made out of character. I needed to get this done and I tried to take into account what to do and how to go about it in a short amount of time. Secondly, my apologies for, you know, taking forever and a day. Grades will come up shortly; I believe Watorie is the only one who needs it, if not? Let me know.))

In the midst of the heated battle between unfairly leveled opponents versus the rather random hodgepodge of people that made up the Army of Darkness, the two leaders exchanged a single glance; amber eyes meeting a soft, tawny brown as they met in the middle, Kira’s spear piercing the midsection of one of the Ironball Freaks just as an arrow shining bright pierced through and quivered in its eye socket. There were no words exchanged between them, a curious display of their utmost faith and trust in one another as a single nod was given and the two turned into a miniature display of death and seemingly effortless power.

Takua’s confusion was cured, as far as it could go anyway, with the aid of one of the Restoratives and the Wavemaster, furious and embarrassed at being taken advantage of, didn’t take long to catch on to the pattern woven by the two women. Slowly but surely, the three drew the others, lower leveled though they were, into a similar dance and pattern with their enemies. Takua and Sekai, ever the watchful ones, threw out a series of healing spells, rejuvenating the party and those who’d been injured so that their wounds were little more than a tender, unpleasant memory.

Magras and Raquar figured it out first, Raquar giving a slight signal with his hand to follow as he went in high, trusting in Magras to figure out to go low- the Blademaster’s sword scraping against the armored hide but proving to be an effective distraction as swirls of shadow exploded from the scarlet eyed Long Arm’s blade. Watorie, confused and wondering why everyone suddenly changed tactics, soon caught on and dropped a spell here and there, clutching his staff and waiting for a chance to strike- a timely Vak Don knocking an Ironball freak off its balance long enough for Kira to trip it up and continue luring it away from the lower leveled party.

Talal, figuring that things needed a bit of speed to move things along, kept a wary eye on everything going on around the “low leveled” of the bunch, nimbly utilizing her class’ speed and dance-like attacks to draw the shark’s attention away after a jaw had sought and found purchase in Raquar’s shoulder, ripping it to ruined meat. A kind Repth from Watorie managed to help some of the damage, and the comatose player sent him a nod of polite recognition even as a second wave of more powerful, potent healing surged over the party once more.

With Kira being ensnared by the wicked Mimic’s confusion ability and busy going through a comical, deadly dance of death with Sekai fending her off and placing herself into the path of any she tried to hunt down, Takua sought an end to the conflict once and for all; dropping a dual summons right on top of the foul thing. Ice and Flame exploded in all of nature’s fury upon the animated treasure chest, obliterating it so completely that all that remained were melting shards of ice and smoldering embers sending tendrils of smoke into the air.

Cured of her fury and with Loki chortling in amusement at the entire matter, Kira nearly decapitated the PC who was playing with them as if they were puppets, chess pieces in some silly, dangerous game that was liable to get five of them killed and the rest over their heads. Dancing all the while, the group followed him further into the dungeon, the man grinning like a loon the entire way as he waited eagerly for the next trap to be sprung, for the playthings in his hand to suddenly turn and savage each other when no one expected it.

Raquar took Sekai by the arm, leading her off while Kira and Takua played distraction with Loki in a fierce, nonsensical argument that even left Talal baffled by what on earth had gotten into the two. Kira was a short fuse for sure, but Takua getting into a yelling match? That was something different entirely. Magras and Watorie both helped carry the illusion by trying to break the two up before someone- or all of them, as Takua’s spells were likely wont to do- wound up dead and ghosted beyond belief.

**

”You sure?” Sekai’s smile was pained, the unhappiness in her eyes at having to have Talal, Raquar and the others drop out of her sight- where she could see they were safe- was clear and her anxiety incredible. She fidgeted a little in front of the taller warrior, tucking the longer tendrils of her snowy hair behind her ears before looking up shyly through her bangs. “Yes.” A worried gaze was sent to the rapidly escalating shouting match between Takua and Kira. She hoped they weren’t saying anything too nasty to one another.

A reluctant but honest smile was given to the six and a half foot tall- or nearly so- Long Arm. “We were stuck in the nightmare of recruitment s twice now,” Shadows haunted her eyes for a moment, the image of Raquar being pierced by the nightmarishly bright orange code screaming in her memory, as well as a slightly more cheerful, comical brick themed dungeon crawl they’d both learned to hate in the long run. Shaking her head to clear the memories, the young Archer tentatively, hesitantly touched Raquar’s arm. “I can trust you to get them out safely,” Her eyes landed meaningfully on Talal and Takua especially. “…you’re an old, um, ‘pro’ at this kind of thing by now. It’s why I’m asking you to do this.”

He didn’t like it, one could tell he didn’t like it and was fighting against his better judgement to tell her to elect someone else to do the job. With a long, weary sigh, he gave her a stern look. ”Once they’re safe, I’m returning as back up. You and Kira won’t do this alone.” Without waiting for her response, but giving her a steady, firm hand resting on her shoulder for a brief moment before he headed over to break up the little fight club going on.

**

One hand grabbed the back of Takua’s neck, hauling him off despite the clear level advantage as Talal caught Watorie by the shoulder when he stumbled back, almost crashing into Magras in the process. Takua’s hand reached out, balance lost as he grabbed hold of the Blademaster’s shirt, nearly ripping it in the process as a comical look of shock appeared on his face.

Kira grinned as a result, she’d been spitting out a bunch of circular nonsense to confuse the hell out of the poor kid, she’d have to, well, maybe she’d apologize to him later. If there was time. With the way Loki was watching things, he was about to be too distracted to notice that- there! Suddenly, the mental display that revealed a party member was in danger was gone; an absence of sound and warning in her mind that signaled they’d been dropped from the party itself. In a heartbeat’s time when Loki’s face turned from amused and almost excited to wary confusion, the rest of the party was gone; leaving only Sekai and Kira behind.

“Y’know what the biggest pain in the ass is about being a Trickster?” Kira asked him as the sound of an arrow drawing back in its string was heard from somewhere behind her, a slow, evil intent filled smile curving her lips. He’d begun to back away, looking around for someone else to use as a shield as energy and light filled her body once more, the feeling of fading vanished to be replaced with strength. The arrow sang as it zipped off, cutting into the meat of the man’s thigh as he turned tail and tried to run, knocking him to the ground with a howl of agonized rage.

Kira stood over him with her spear, Sekai already drawing up a scroll to hold him in place with a grim look on her face as the silvery-blue haired female studied her prey carefully. “You run out of tricks too damn soon.” And brought the blade down, into the other leg with a splash of blood and a howl of pain that echoed throughout the cavern.

**

Milling confusedly about in Theta’s sky filled city, each of the members of the Army of Darkness suddenly heard the tell-tale chime of a flashmail being delivered. The contents were vague and… concerning, as if Sekai were not willing to give much information aside from what was necessary. Was it a letter of farewell? No, not by the way she’d spoken about seeing them once again someday. Perhaps it was an old grudge, an old battle that became personal and she had a little too much pride to let it be shown? That seemed likely, the girl was pretty stubborn, and Kira tended to take a lot personally anyways, so that was a reasonable explanation, if not a stupid one.

Soon enough, Takua, Talal and Raquar received another message, one that seemed to ease the strain on their faces and the worry and confusion in them as well, though the very last of the three still looked angry about it all. “Good work.” He informed the members remaining and gated out, heading to the meeting place intended in the message only three received. Takua followed shortly after with a wry smile and a, “No worries, everything’s alright now” comment. Slightly paraphrased, but along those same lines. Talal, ever the confused but still faithful one, chose to remain behind for a few moments to chat with Magras and Watorie before, eventually, taking her own leave to return to those who also shared her secret.

So many lies had been made that day, the army was still shrouded in them and there was nothing they could do to really figured out what was a lie and what wasn’t; not unless the rather secretive higher ups of the clan were willing to spill their secrets.

…or unless the rest of the clan chose to go looking into what made them so secretive to begin with.

Watorie: 1200 EXP, +Electric Wand, x1 Health Drink.

Thar ya go spazzmastah. You has your grade and your epilogue to the clan quest. Go insane (more so than usual) and explode with writing on the site. If you single handled bring back activity in quests, I am going to laugh. Hysterically. And probably have to figure out something to give you.

Everyone else, sorry it took so long and thanks for your continued patience.