Green Sailor Inn
"Oh! Ah, umm.." Usalia realized that Matilda had been in a group. She saw this guy in line didn't she, Kled. She didn't know the guy with apparently unattached extremities that seemed to still function normal. Weird body types might be the norm for average demon species, but this ranked up there on the scale. She vaguely caught their conversation, being so close, but with her focus on the curry Usalia only heard a word here or there.
Being considered a lady was not very unusual as a princess, but Usalia didn't like to talk about her past so she hesitated before giving a general answer. "There is something I must do, and to do that I have to become stronger.." She trailed off a bit. "This just seemed like a good direction to go for now." It was away from the land she called home and the Koopa Troop, but not far away. Still within the USA, Usalia hesitates at taking the big leap away to very foreign lands and cultures.
Green Sailor Inn, Akane's Room
Allowing Conan's hulking, bestial form to answer Mollymauk's question for itself, Tetra followed the troupe in to Akane's room. A quick scan of its modest belongings was all the young girl needed to saunter through it as if it were her own, stepping to the wall opposite the door and turning to place her back against its worn wood. With the entrance now in her sight, she crossed her arms and took in the eclectic group that had, somehow, been gathered together.
She had been right earlier. Christie drew the unusual towards her in a way that almost seemed supernatural. Unfortunately for Tetra, her jaunt with the robber in the streets left her less privy to information than those gathered around her, which was never an enviable position to be in. Once Akane had finished with her stream of questions, Tetra continued the thread, trying to wrest a little control of the conversation. "A quick summation of whatever you told the brute there would be best, Miss Christie. Leave no pebble unturned."
Her foot kicked up from the floor and pressed itself against the wall as well. She flung her eyes about the room, pausing briefly on Akane's covered creature before coming to rest intently on Christie, her friendly facade towards the women peeling away ever so slightly to reveal the pirate leader underneath. "And if you'd be so kind as to tell me why Syrup considers your cargo- or perhaps, yourself- to be her 'property'?"
they/them || "Forgive me, regent of queer amphibians" - Lt.BGob"Trollian, sensitivity?" Tavros blinked, but seemed to accept this bit of information quickly enough. "Uh, o-ok, then here's..." The troll shuffled through his coin bag, trying to guess how much a room was supposed to be, before drawing an amount slightly above what was necessary. "Is this enough?"
Edited by Oceanstuck on May 10th 2019 at 4:55:10 AM
i guess you can watch me shitpost i guessThe wounded man's wails gradually slowed and quietened, taken aback as he was by Caitlin's unexpected grace and care. Staring his unexpected saviour, he nodded timidly, and slowly lay down, breathing heavily but trying to keep as still as he can.
The smirking Moonbow merely shrugged, and readied her bow again, only to have it knocked straight out of her hands by the first of many icicles coming her way. The bow clattered across the rooftop, far out of her reach, while the archer clutched her smarting hand and ducked and weaved around the rest of the frozen projectiles. Caitlin might have heard her excited laughter as she dropped to the floor of the roof and crawled out of sight towards her weaponry.
"More than enough," the barkeep said, pushing back a couple coins and taking the rest. He passed over the guestbook and bid Tavros to take his pick. Once that was done, he'd hand over the key and wish him a nice stay.
Christie was hardly able to form her words as Akane laid into her with relentless hospitality. The most she could do was smile at her for the most part, until the point where Akane just had to remind her about the unsettling hunchbacked dragon sat staring at her on the desk. Christie glanced over to the lifeless thing, her smile a little more nervous, and she managed to murmur "ermmm...perhaps a little unnerving-" But now the end of the questions were here, and it seemed that an audience had gathered for Christies interrogation. Feeling that there was no more waylaying the inevitable, Christie gave a weary sigh, and sat down on the bed to address the present company.
"Where do I start... Well, I suppose it was my own fault for setting out on that voyage. You see, for years, I'd dreamt of setting up an enterprise of the kandams, a trade route between Atlantis and Kumari Kandam that would avoid the waters controlled by the Elaeans or Californians. Yes, trade route. Maybe not as exciting as ancient questers, conquerors, or whoever discovered the world is round, but it was my dream all the same, and I took it to all the vassals of the empire I could. The island Antilla turned me down flat, and I had even less luck at Londinium, but finally the king of Royllo was willing to hear me out. Last year, in the middle of summer, he granted me two caravels and a carrack, and I set off with the easterly winds on my back and the gods on my side. For a full five weeks- and not a day less -we sailed across open sea, until at last..."
Christie went quiet, suddenly very self conscious of what she was saying.
"...until...in the end, a-we never did find Kumari, not even the side of Meropis, but we managed to discover...something beyond imagining. For many months, I collected research and evidence of our discovery, until at last, at the start of spring, I was ready to bring back my findings. Our carrack ran aground, so we headed home in the caravels. We made it back to Atlantean waters in time, but a storm separated my boat from the other, so we were forced to dock at a little islet off the coast of Sarasaland. The governor seemed accommodating enough, so we thanked the gods at the temple, stocked up on supplies, and spent the evening at the tavern to blow off some steam. That was where it all went spiegazzare.
"I confess, I had a drop too much at that place, as did my fellow sailors, so I don't remember too much, but I'm fairly certain either I or my colleagues started rambling at length on what we discovered, so loud the whole place could hear us, if not the streets outside. Still, nothing seemed to come of it when we woke up nursing hangovers, and spent the day packing up to set sail again. But that night, as we sailed onwards to Royllo, there came a booming sound in the dark. I was below deck at the time, and thought maybe it was another storm. We should have been so lucky. The next thing I knew, the decks were shattered by cannon fire, the sails were set ablaze, and my ship was swarming with pirates and beast-men of every shape and size. In spite of my panics, I managed to grab a parcel of rations, three chests of souvenirs, and load it up into a small lifeboat...of all the nightmarish visions that night, I think my clearest memory is of me, alone with my belongings in a rowboat, paddling away from the flaming wreck like a coward...
"Days passed, maybe even weeks, as what little food I had ran out, and without enough strength to paddle, I was left at the mercy of the ocean currents. Eventually, a passing fishing boat spotted me and loaded me aboard. They fed me and nursed me back, before taking me home with them at Gdonya. They were very kind to me, the crew, and the captain offered me sanctuary at his family house. I agreed to a day's stay or two, but after that I had a job to complete, and I couldn't risk them getting hurt if the pirates ever found me. As soon as I was well enough, I borrowed the captain's rowboat and took with me the three chests, holding the last remaining evidence of my discovery. With the chests in the boat, I led it upstream along the Dead River, right up to the canal at the Great Mill. I remembered how it used to be staffed by slavery until the new reforms, so I snuck inside, and just as I suspected, the old sleeping quarters and work spaces were still there, closed up but not filled up. I hid the chests in three separate spots around the building, to make sure no two would be found at once. That done, I took the boat back, said my goodbyes to the captain, and started my frantic campaign to find an escort to the capital."
Edited by LizardOfAus on May 16th 2019 at 12:12:17 PM
And a Strange Figure Emerges.Shoto didn't waste much time getting out of the inn and to the market, especially once the screams finally reached him. Once he realized people were panicking, he started to sprint as fast as he could, ducking past people trying to get away from whatever it was.
Eventually, he stumbled across Caitlin and some guy who had clearly been badly injured. He caught the tail-end of someone laughing and ducking out of the way of Caitlin's attacks.
"Is someone attacking?" he demanded, the air around him already growing colder as he prepared his magic to help fight whatever was going on.
I say that aloud too sometimes, just: "man, no life."After giving Conan a look over and a twirly little wave (which consisted of emphasizing the way his fingers wiggled back and forth, letting a tiny seductive smile rest on his lips as his eyes scanned the brute seriously- as if every single aspect of that expression had been designed to confuse and bewilder the man) and acknowledging with disregard more of Akane's creatures ('oh, great, more' he muttered with enough visible disgust that made it clear even a daredevil like himself did not enjoy having a turtle-beast-thing latch onto his face), Mollymauk leaned against the wall, hands clutching his belt, listening intently to Christie's explanation.
"Ah." The demonspawn snapped his fingers once she finished, pushing off the wall and smirking. "You see, my friends, our Christie here has taken the clever route of answering the question posed by you two without answering the true question underneath. It is as if I answered the question 'why do you have all these scars' with 'because people attacked me'- technically true, but not the piece of information we are looking for."
Mollymauk steepled his fingers and focused all of his swagger onto Christie. "You occupy a position very few have occupied before, Miss... you have peaked my interest. And I believe the same goes for the Madame and my Captain." At this, he gave Tetra a nod, as if that would make the fact he had just barged into her crew without permission any more easy to swallow. "So I will give you the chance of re-doing that explanation by uncovering the true question we all want to hear the answer to... what did you find, why is it valuable-" He placed his hands in his hips again, smiling. "-and where can we find it?"
Long Market
A familiar voice pulled Caitlin's attention from the fracas, asking if someone was attacking. She hadn't known the kid long, but she was beginning to grow rather fond of him. She made a mental note of where she last saw Moonbow reach for her weapon, blew some flurries into that general area to buy some time, and then moved closer to Shoto. "A woman with a bow tried to shoot me. She missed and hit this man by mistake," Caitlin replied. "I treated his wounds, but I could use some help making sure no one else gets hurt."
Her shoulder's still bleeding, leaving very obvious stains on her cloak.
>^owo^<Green Sailor Inn
[OOC]Well, I certainly had a lot to catch up on![/OOC]
Damar nodded in agreement with Shoto and 'Louise' about how shape-shifters were nothing but trouble, before turning around, his attention focusing back on what was left of his meat rolls. After finishing his snack, he turned to see if the two were still there. Upon seeing that they weren't, he started to gather his things before noticing something in the corner of his eye - and found himself looking right at a "Wanted" poster. One with Louise's face on it, and a name underneath. Louise - or rather, Caitlin Snow - was a wanted woman. As he focused in on the text under her name, he caught a glimpse of a warning. Most of it was covered by bits of grime and spoiled food, but he did see one thing in particular that caught his interest. "Proficient in Ice Magic." He sighed, pulling out his arcane flintlock, just in case things didn't go quite as planned.
"Well then." he thought out loud. "Today just got a lot more interesting."
And with that, he turned out of the Inn, and headed towards the market place.
Blue-collar mad scientist, at your service!Green Sailor Inn, Akane's Room
As Columbia rounded off her story, Tetra could only think that, in a different reality, she was the one who boarded the woman's ship and made off with its wares. She rather envied her other self, for having such a simple time of things while she suffered under a heavier mountain of obstructions.
First off was the purple-skinned demon and his ever-so-witty tongue. "It's not the place of a cabin boy to assume the thoughts of his captain." Tetra was quick to snip back, her expression teasing but the slight clip of her tone indicating that she wouldn't play nice for much longer if Mollymauk kept it up.
That said, he had managed to voice much of her own thoughts. Rather than acknowledge as such, however, she continued on with a further barrage of questions. "How much would Syrup's crew have learned from ransacking your ships? Would they know the origin of these wares? And also..." With this last query came a dangerous spark in Tetra's eye. "Would this cargo be the sort that they'd want to pawn off immediately, or could we assume that they still have it on hand?"
they/them || "Forgive me, regent of queer amphibians" - Lt.BGobGreen Sailor Inn Akane’s Room
Akane’s expression soured at Molly’s comment, and she turned her nose up to the side even while she courted a private smile at his expense. “If you’re not careful, you’ll hurt his feelings~.” She said, punctuated by Utsumi following them all in through the crack in the door and using its tail to slam the door shut just behind the mouthy demonspawn in a hopefully-startling fashion. Lingering amusement would have to wait, however, as Christie launched into her tragic tale, and Akane began following along with an engrossed, steady-eyed stare before her brow abruptly furrowed downward, and she climbed up to her feet to move over to her pack in the corner. Kneeling down and depositing the demonspawn’s earlier gift of zloty into one pocket without trying to be obvious about it, she then quickly opened up a different pocket, drawing out a sheaf of parchment bound together loosely with string. She began mumbling under her breath as she sorted through the pages, flashes of country borders and landmarks apparent throughout, until she eventually came to a document in the middle of the stack which she drew out with a series of firm, but gentle tugs.
Making her way back to her seat, Akane spread out what appeared to be a rudimentary map of the world scrawled on simple parchment in her lap, then used her finger to trace the approximate path of Christie’s journey. When her finger alighted on the sight of the merchant girl’s supposed discovery, her expression stilled, the faint wrinkle to her nose the only indication to her thoughts (“Nothing but wilderness and savages, about as far from godliness as one can get.”) before allowing her finger to finish the journey to Sarasaland, poking it twice as if marking it as the origin of their latest enemy. She sat in silence while Christie finished recounting her narrow escape and even narrower survival, before the priestess’s expression bloomed counterintuitively wide while she folded the map shut with a single, loud clap. “Why, I believe Miss Tetra might be on to something!” Akane said, climbing to her feet in a flourish. “Having the Syrup pirates here is a scary business, no doubt—but it might serve to be a mixed blessing, if they still have your cargo on-hand!” Sweeping over to where the pirate leader was leaning against the wall, Akane would attempt to tenderly place her hand onto the girl’s shoulder—keeping the younger girl’s earlier shark metaphor in mind all the while—before sweeping the hand with the folded-up map out toward Christie herself. “Whatever it is,” She said, taking a moment to glare in Molly’s direction, “I’m sure that Miss Tetra here has the contacts to figure out where in town they’d be trying to sell it. And from there, it’d be just a matter of taking it back! It’s not stealing if it’s yours to begin with, right?” Akane would then scoot away from Tetra and back toward Christie, once more making to take the merchant girl’s hands into her own. “And more treasures would certainly make a better impression on King Niezbadane, would they not?” She said, the innocent flair of her words betrayed by a peculiar, flickering hunger from within her exotically-colored eyes.
Edited by Uncandescent on May 20th 2019 at 3:57:33 PM
If I had that kind of power, I'd have dropped a meteor on your house ages ago~Rayman-Green Sailor Inn
"Thanks. I'll find him-or whoever's behind this-sooner or later, believe me." Rayman said to Kled with confidence.
The little group seemed to be converging at the bar, next to a girl sitting at the bar eating some dish they called curry. As Rayman made his way towards the bar himself, the scent of the curry began filling Rayman's massive nose. "Name's Rayman, and man does that smell good," Rayman said with a wistful sign, answering Usalia's question.
Honestly, food sounded like a fantastic idea right now. Aside from the occasional fresh fish, all Rayman had had to eat for the past week was, blegh, dried foods. He needed something fresh and warm, pronto. As Rayman took a seat, he called out to the barkeep with a vigorous little wave. "Hiya! I don't suppose you serve anything with plums in it, d'ya?"
Shoto remembered Caitlin mentioning that people were after her for doing something she wasn't proud of. When she brought him up to speed, he pretty quickly deduced what was really going on.
Villains didn't help people, but some "heroes" were willing to hurt people. If Caitlin was willing to endanger herself to heal someone while being attacked, she couldn't be a villain. On the other hand, even if the person attacking thought she was a villain, they were willing to shoot into a crowd, injuring a civilian.
It was obvious to him who was the villain and who wasn't in this situation. So, he immediately nodded at her and focused on where she'd been attacking. "I'll help," he replied, trying to find any signs of movement to shoot some of his own ice at, or form a small wall between his group of three and an arrow if that was going to start flying at them.
I say that aloud too sometimes, just: "man, no life."Caitlin's flurries managed to buy her a moment or two more than she'd otherwise have. It may also have helped to throw off Moonbow's aim, for when the next arrows came flying without warning, one whistled over Caitlin's head, while the other embedded in the post of a stall on the other side of the street.
At Rayman's question, the weary barkeep scratched his chin. "Could still have some Placek z Sliwkami stored in the icebox. That's more of a whatyoucallit...dessert sort of thing."
As if Mollymauk leaning close wasn't enough to make Christie nervous, he also had to ask some decidedly pointed questions regarding the mysterious treasure. Christie quickly went pale and scrabbled backwards, as if one of Syrup's men had just appeared right before her eyes. "NO!" she cried, "Nononono, that is for royal ears only! I am not making the same mistake twice. No one gets to hear of what it is until I speak with the vassal king!"
Then Tetra took charge of the situation, and Christie cooled down just a bit. Akane chiming in certainly helped to ease her spirits as well. She thought for a moment or two, then said "I'm fairly certain I kept held of all my maps and notes in the chests. As for the things too big to make off with...well, if the pirates have them, I suppose it's possible they'd want to sell it. It'd certainly be incredibly unique and valuable looking." She looked over to Akane, hope flickering in her eyes. "If you say you can recover those items from the pirates, then if you succeed, I'd be greatly indebted to you."
And a Strange Figure Emerges.Long Market
In a rare moment of warmth, Caitlin smiles at Shoto. "Excellent." When the two arrows fly past, she realizes she's bought herself some time and begins creating a dome of ice around the three of them. It won't last long, but should at least keep the group protected while Moonbow regains her composure- enough to at least keep them shielded from her next move. "Think you can help me with this?" she says, looking in Shoto's direction.
>^owo^<The next thing Shoto knew, the person attacking missed Caitlin twice, very badly. Even though they were being attacked while shooting, Shoto was less than impressed with their abilities.
Before he could act, though, Caitlin suddenly erected a dome of ice around the trio. Blinking, he turned to look at her, then said, "we can't just hide in here until they're out of arrows. We should fight."
I say that aloud too sometimes, just: "man, no life."Long Market
"We're not hiding," she explains. "We're buying ourselves a few extra seconds so we can think of a plan. Though now that you mention it..."
She allows the ice to fall in small, unobtrusive shards, crumbling around them. Kid's got a point.
"Alright. Wait for her to come into view. Then we fight."
>^owo^<"Just stopping by, eh?" Kled said to Usalia. "Well, hope you get to be strong enough to do what ya wanna do then." He turned around to the window...and didn't saw Skaarl outside the inn.
That darn flea bucket. He hates walking, and now he'll have to go find her?!
"Gaaaaaah!" Kled groaned. "I told her to stay there! Where did that stupid lizard go?!"
Skaarl, meanwhile, saw the white haired woman leave the inn. She didn't paid much attention to that, but then, it heard quite a ruckus going outside. The lizard, curious, went to the source and found Caitlin and the kid her master thinks has a stick up her ads dealing with some kind of unknown assailant.
The lizard stayed in the sidelines, as if waiting for the perfect moment to act.
Edited by Darkomega245 on May 23rd 2019 at 10:41:39 AM
Rayman-Green Sailor Inn
"That sounds perfect!" Rayman exclaimed to the barkeep. "I'll have that!" If it was in an icebox, it probably wasn't fresh, but hey! Rayman was never one to pass up dessert!
Next to him, Kled began complaining about a lizard. "Something wrong, Kled?" Rayman asked. A lizard...Oh! He'd been more focused on the tavern itself, but he had noticed Kled from the corner of his eye while he was approaching the entrance, and he had been wrangling a large lizard at the time. Must've been the steed Kled had mentioned earlier. "Want some help tracking down your steed?"
Though his tail did shoot up at the slamming of the door, the demonspawn managed to hold his serious face even after Utsumi's attempt at bothering him. "You'll have to do much better than that." He whispered low enough so only Akane would hear, following it up with a much louder speech directed to the whole room. "I understand the need for secrecy, my dear, but if you want us to recover these items, then we need to know what they look like, what they feel like... what they do, perhaps. The more information, the better."
Green Sailor Inn, Akane's Room
The sound of wood slamming against kind brought Tetra's hand to her firearm, her fingers slipping instinctively around the handle and trigger. Upon sighting the source as Akane's rocky little friend, Tetra rolled her eyes and relaxed back into her leaning stance.
It was perhaps because of the minor startle that Tetra caught Akane with a glare as she lay her hand on the pirate's navy-blue vest. Though, there was only so much annoyance that she could convey before it started to bleed into a child's petulance. "Pawnbrokers have a better memory for the wares that pass by their hands than the people who put them there." she said, all but agreeing with Molly as she brought her attention back to Christie. "'Something unique from a band of pirates' won't be enough on its own to narrow it down."
That said, this might not be the time to try and pry the details out of Christie. She was too high-strung; her tentative trust in them would risk fracturing further if Tetra joined Molly in pressing the woman for details. For now, she'd offer her an out, present herself as the more tempting side. "If you wish to keep it private, then I'm afraid you'd have to come along with me to pass the details to the pawnbroker yourself."
they/them || "Forgive me, regent of queer amphibians" - Lt.BGobSigning in and then taking his room key and extra change, Tavros opted afterward to look around the port town with Tink to figure out where to stock up on supplies, making a mental note of where the inn actually was. But only a short way outside, he stumbled upon the remains of a giant ice shield with that mage from earlier and some lady inside.
"Uhh..." He looked at the two, before glancing around for some kind of context. "You look...busy..."
i guess you can watch me shitpost i guessMarket Street
Damar raced down the street, trying to find Caitlin and Shoto before someone else did. Trying to avoid drawing attention to the aforementioned duo, he didn't mention their names. In fact, he rarely said anything in this chase, with the exception of the inevitable "sorry" when nearly colliding with random people. It didn't take long to find Caitlin and Shoto, though unfortunately, someone else had gotten to them first. A female archer with what looked like a crescent moon tattoo around her left eye stood on a rooftop, aiming her arrow right at Caitlin's heart.
"Ah, shit." Damar uttered under his breath. Looks like he'd have to take a more... covert approach.
For most of his life, Corat Damar could not have been considered a "sneaky" man. As a high-ranking officer in the Cardassian Army, he'd always been one for using overwhelming force, whether through numerical superiority or the raw, arcane might of the sorcerers of the Jade Order.
This was before he'd founded the Cardassian Liberation Front two years ago. Since then, he'd learned (in the early days, often through costly mistakes) how to sneak around, and operate like one of the spies of the now-defunct Obsidian Order - his people's secret police force. He'd learned the hit-and-run tactics which had made him such a huge thorn in the occupiers' side. He'd learned that sometimes a few drops of poison in the right glass could be just as effective as an entire battalion. And he'd learned that a little black powder charge placed at just the right spot could sew as much chaos, if not more so, than an invading army.
And now he found a new opportunity to put his hard-learned skills to good use. Calmly strolling through an intersection (after all, a man trying to sneak in such a busy street would certainly draw attention to himself), he eventually walked into the alley behind the building on whose roof the archer stood. To his pleasant surprise, a large amount of assorted debris lay behind the building - old furniture, empty barrels, and discarded crates all stood around, waiting to be used. With a slightly evil grin, he ducked behind some of the debris, and carefully pointed his pistol at the archer. As he did so, he adjusted two knobs on the side of the pistol. The first controlled the type of arcane blast the pistol would fire - a small pulse, or a continuous beam. He decided that the pulse option would be best. The second knob controlled the strength of the beam. This too, he adjusted, going from its standard Setting 3 (Kill), past Setting 2 (Thermal), all the way down to Setting 1 (Stun). Lining his pistol up right with the archer's back, he pulled the trigger....
Blue-collar mad scientist, at your service!Moonbow wasn't exactly one to let opportunity slip through her fingers. When Caitlin erected her ice barrier and let it drop again just as soon, Moonbow hurriedly let fly three shots: one for Caitlin, one for the half-red kid, and one warning for the dumb little troll kid just to send him scuttling off. So preoccupied was she that a concussive burst from the alleyway took her completely by surprise. Damar's burst struck her in the small of the back, and she collapsed on the side of the roof. Shocked and winded by the blow, she nevertheless managed to catch her bow by the corner before it clattered off the roof entirely. From her prone position, she struggled to muscle her way through the shock and crawl into a more upright position.
Though Christie was far from comfortable with Molly and his prying ways, the pensive look on her face showed that she knew he had a point. Nevertheless, she looked far more comfortable by comparison as she looked over to Tetra, and nodded at her suggestion. "All right," she said, "I'll let you take me to a pawnbroker's. Maybe along the way I'll figure out how to even begin describing what was on our ship. Oh! But if we recover it, do you think we'll find a way to transport it? It would take a broad cart just to carry the wheel- oop!" Her hands jerked to her mouth, her eyes suddenly bulging.
And a Strange Figure Emerges.Shoto was keeping his eye on the villain as the dome dropped, and didn't hesitate to raise up another wall of ice once he saw the arrows start flying. He much preferred his solution, though, since that didn't leave him trapped.
Once he heard someone else shooting at her, he moved around the ice wall he erected and used a wave of ice to zoom over to the building she was sitting on. Placing a hand on the building, he started freezing it, focusing on getting the ice up the side before freezing the entire roof (and hopefully most of Moonbow) solid.
I say that aloud too sometimes, just: "man, no life."

Green Sailor Inn Second Floor
Akane was ready and waiting to seize on a notion as ridiculous and uniquely demonspawn as ‘honest emotional manipulation’—but as she formed the words on her tongue, she unthinkingly raised her hand as well, and his dropping a series of zloty into her pale, exposed palm with a cheap magician’s trick suddenly entranced her as surely as if she were a magpie constructing her nest. Utsumi’s unique abilities had spoiled her for so long that she legitimately couldn’t remember the last time she’d had to call on a tailor, or a blacksmith, and her first instinct was to dismissively give the currency back—a knowing smile on her face, safely ensconced within the cradle of her god—with the second instinct being to let her hand tip over entirely and send the currency scattering over and between the floorboards. But as she held the cool metal in her hands, all at once it seemed to seep into her, quelling some of the low-burning intensity that had been raging since this man had first interrupted her faux-drunken schemes. She felt her craftsman’s fingers closing over it almost automatically, before jerking her head up and to the side. “I’ll have to ask you for pointers, then.” She said cavalierly, before focusing in on the door as it creaked open, thankful for the distraction.
So thankful was she that the priestess didn’t even pay mind to Tetra being entirely correct in her claims, instead sweeping forward in an attempt to graciously snatch up Christie’s hand. “Oh, thank Alexis! You’re not hurt, are you? Was Rikka of any use?” The stone creation seemed to spring to life as she crouched down next to it, tilting its head back to let Akane begin scratching under its chin, the Meropian girl making cooing noises all the while. “Ghoulgilas didn’t scare you, did he~?” She asked Christie as she scratched, in a doting tone generally saved for children and small animals, before glancing up into the unseeing eye of the carved creation lurking on the nearby table. “He is terribly shy, so we keep him up here, that way no one gets spooked!” As if to verify her own claims, Akane smoothed her robes as she climbed back to her feet and moved over to the desk, taking a lightly-dirtied white cloth before lifting it up and gently draping it over the clay sculpture’s frame, covering up the bulk of its long-necked, vaguely jagged silhouette. Then, after pulling out the desk’s chair, she turned it around to face the room, before demurely sitting on top of it and crossing her legs before resting her elbows in her lap, cradling her chin in her palms. “Are you sure you’re alright? And why are those ‘Syrup’ pirates after you? What do you have that they want so bad?” Looking between those gathered in the room, she lowered her voice to a whisper, and leaned in with half-lidded eyes. “Did you know they were pelicans this whole time?”
Edited by Uncandescent on May 7th 2019 at 3:37:23 PM
If I had that kind of power, I'd have dropped a meteor on your house ages ago~