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open | Caps, subject headers are your friend.
Who: Kain and various and sundry other people who exist, I guess.
When: 7/26, though I like to think of it more as 'ambiguously timed'
Where: The majestic outskirts of Lasker.
What: Gratuitous train adventures.
Rating: I'm still the worst at giving shit a rating. I'll adjust accordingly, but it'll probably have the standard PG13 'not entirely wholesome but still vaguely wholesome' bent to it.
In which they get lost at some point:
[Two hours ago there had been a conversation which led to them marking a tree, in some deliberate and hard to ignore fashion - an X carved into it, paint, whatever - after the subject of them possibly going in circles had been raised. Two hours later, whoever had implied it turned out to be right. They were standing there. Staring at the tree. Probably bleakly given the two hours in which they had gone in a gigantic circle, but who knows. Maybe someone was fucking thrilled by it.
Kain was resigned as he stared at whatever deliberate mark they had made.]
What now?
[Obviously they keep on walking so it's kind of a rhetorical question, kind of not because they just made a giant circle and if they had a map it was lost in some hilarious yet tragic fashion, like the river took it.]
Because I couldn't figure out a way to work this into the train log:
Hold this. [And without further preamble the small and pampered (up until recently, at least, the last few days were harrowing) Pomeranian that was literally dogging Kain's steps and getting in the way of them searching the boxcars was handed to whoever he was talking to.
The dog seemed thrilled by the attention. Woof. (The dog was Saint von Andeloga the Third, owned by a Lasker merchant called who may or may not have nagged the heroes until they promised to go look for the pup. They may or may not know this.)]
Obligatory escort mission:
[And then he asked the most ominous of questions, the sort of question that led to awkward situations typically involving not dying.]
Do you hear that?
[It's either the sniffling of small children or they've got some people they're shepherding and it's the prelude to a bunch of bandits demanding their GP or their HP, so to speak.]
When: 7/26, though I like to think of it more as 'ambiguously timed'
Where: The majestic outskirts of Lasker.
What: Gratuitous train adventures.
Rating: I'm still the worst at giving shit a rating. I'll adjust accordingly, but it'll probably have the standard PG13 'not entirely wholesome but still vaguely wholesome' bent to it.
In which they get lost at some point:
[Two hours ago there had been a conversation which led to them marking a tree, in some deliberate and hard to ignore fashion - an X carved into it, paint, whatever - after the subject of them possibly going in circles had been raised. Two hours later, whoever had implied it turned out to be right. They were standing there. Staring at the tree. Probably bleakly given the two hours in which they had gone in a gigantic circle, but who knows. Maybe someone was fucking thrilled by it.
Kain was resigned as he stared at whatever deliberate mark they had made.]
What now?
[Obviously they keep on walking so it's kind of a rhetorical question, kind of not because they just made a giant circle and if they had a map it was lost in some hilarious yet tragic fashion, like the river took it.]
Because I couldn't figure out a way to work this into the train log:
Hold this. [And without further preamble the small and pampered (up until recently, at least, the last few days were harrowing) Pomeranian that was literally dogging Kain's steps and getting in the way of them searching the boxcars was handed to whoever he was talking to.
The dog seemed thrilled by the attention. Woof. (The dog was Saint von Andeloga the Third, owned by a Lasker merchant called who may or may not have nagged the heroes until they promised to go look for the pup. They may or may not know this.)]
Obligatory escort mission:
[And then he asked the most ominous of questions, the sort of question that led to awkward situations typically involving not dying.]
Do you hear that?
[It's either the sniffling of small children or they've got some people they're shepherding and it's the prelude to a bunch of bandits demanding their GP or their HP, so to speak.]
doge
The pomeranian--this pom she remembers tailing after Kain for some time now. She only holds onto it... Uhm. It yaps happily at her and she can only make a perplexed face. She has no idea what to do with it, but she has to hold it. ]
Is this not your carrier?
I wanted to play dogeball but the doge deserves better.
No. Actually, I was starting to wonder if it was yours given how it persisted on following us [Him, but allow him his denial.] about. My own carrier is...
[...
Words. Words.]
Mechanical. [That's the word he said, but the tone was more like, "I am unsure about it."]
that's rude but doge appreciates anyway
I see. This one is not mine, either.
[ Her carrier is actually hiding somewhere because the pom scared it. It is a scaredy cat unlike the fluff ball in her arms. She looks down at it before petting it once then looking for a collar. Is there even one? It doesn't even feel like a carrier now that she holds it. They usually follow their owners 24/7. ]
Perhaps it belongs to someone in Lasker. [ What a brave puppy, she thinks. ] We can look for its owner after we're done here.
[ "We" because you dragged her into puppy duty and because she doesn't think the pom will leave without him. Speaking of here-- ]
Have you found anything out of the ordinary?
gdit dw, gdit
This is why you need to be careful with your puns.
This. Is. Why.]
What isn’t out of the ordinary here?
[But he knows what she means, and nods his head in a direction which is known as ‘over there.’ Over there happens to either have a slightly singed door with…well. A handprint, implying the grim fate of the inhabitants of the train car. Or it happens to have the tasteless contents of someone’s luggage strewn over the forest and what will assault them is the world’s most ugliest underpants, among other things. (Shades of neon green and puce, perhaps, like hideous tinsel decorating a tree.)
Or both.]
shh hshshhh i love these puns
She's quiet at the the hand print on the door. Her expression falls a bit, obviously morose over the incident especially with such evidence. The pom is only happily panting in her arms. She has brought a bag with her, so she carefully stows the pom in there, making sure there's a large opening for it to peek out its head. ]
It looks like they were locked in.
[ They suffered long until their end, unable to even move from cart to cart. Only trapped to such small confines. ]
If there is nothing else, we should at least clean up this half of the forest...
[ you know bears can strangle themselves with those ugly sweatpants, bro. you gotta believe me. She looks at him with bright green eyes--pom is also looking at him. Always looking at him. ]
Oh, nah, it fucking ate the tag because of server errors hence the gdit.
dw was screwing up last night too
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gdit i knew i was missing a thread SORRY
How very dare you.
don't judge me
I can judge whoever I want.
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Shoves you here.
stop
disowns harder
owie...
...now I feel bad. :<
it is okay i will survive
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9/9
goddamnit
When will my chair return from the war.
never
Fuck me, I'm tired, you get the copout.
they're never getting out of this forest
He's still a little drenched from the river and, upon staring at the X-marked tree like it's stolen a little bit of his soul, looks down at the soggy, crumpled fistful of map remaining in his hand for a sign. Any sign...
It's mostly just the white border that doesn't show anything.
Goddamnit. ]
Perhaps if we went left this time... [ Because they went right last time, right?
...Right? ]
They can whip out carriers, leave a last will and testament on the network.
In other words he had absolutely no fucks to give, having deliberately drove them all away. (It helped that they were trying to do something more meaningful than pounding down shots of something less metaphorical, and that Allen would probably round out to okay company in the end.)
All of that said, he did stare at the mark for a moment, hoping that some random other group of people were passing through and decided to mark a similar looking tree with a similar looking cross.]
I thought we went left the last time.
[He’s sort of angling left anyway because at this point, again, the Fuckery ran out of fresh fucks and the fuck harvest is a pitiful one - the land is barren - but…didn’t they?]
"Day 6: walked for hours... still no food or signs of others... found The Tree again around noon..."
But for sake's sake he just wants to punch that tree right now. ]
...
[ Slowly—oh so very slowly—Allen rubs at his face in a way that suggests he'd half like to just scrub it right off. His carrier, perched (or flopped, rather) atop his head droops a little further with his mood, its golden wings hanging down around his ears. This is giving him a headache..
This is how he dies. ]
I wasn't really paying attention. [ Said as if the words physically pain him. Which they sort of do. ]
"Day 12: Bosses called, told us there was a war, asked where we were."
Ngh.]
…same.
[That admission hurt him. That admission actually hurt him. If he didn't have as much control he'd be bleakly staring at Allen; since he did it was a carefully flat expression which was almost too flat.
(Turns out he had a fuck or three to give after all.)]
We both were so certain of where we were going. And we did hear that noise. [Like some kind of wild animal or dramatic cry which sounded important and turned out to be nothing (unless there’s too much of a lull in which case it would turn out to be something after all.)]
1/2 "Day 12 part 2: Realized we could have called for help all along. *Goddamnit*."
Allen doesn't drink.
He casts a likewise very sidelong glance at his companion in return though. Peeking through the hand on his face. ]
... [ Kain why.
Why.
Why are we in this situation. Sure, it sounded like it could have been human though. And that's half of why they're out here, right? To find survivors. People that they could still save. That they should have probably been able to save in the first place. That they shouldn't have found out after it was already too late they could have but didn't get to.
...Or the wreckage that remained of them
Haah...
So that's why Allen stops for a moment, removing his hand from his face and taking ever so deeply a breath... ]
2/2
commiserationcamaraderie.And genuine faith. Now that he's shrugged the rest off.
Maybe also to reassure himself a little. But he doesn't let it affect the wattage of his stitched-together smile. No sense in being down forever even if his pride is in tatters and his soul feels like it's scraping on the ground...
That's what makes his unflagging positivism real, after all. ]
Then we'll just have to go straight.
We definitely didn't do that before, right? [ We'll just.. weave slightly around the tree and keep going.. So as not to walk directly into it..
The funny thing though? Is that Allen's carrier seems to perk up a little on his head and swivel about, the most alert it's been in hours since the golem decided to languish and mope on top of Allen's snowy white head. Kind of like it's decided to...
Oh. To go that way now, bobbling off quietly on wing before Allen's even really noticed. ]
"Day 12 part 3: Verdoni told us to find our own fucking way back and hung up."
Dog
... That is the face of someone who's trying very much to not panic, but is very much screaming on the inside. It's not that he hates dogs or is afraid of them, but he thinks of dog familiars owned by someone he had known and they remind him of something unpleasant on his part.
Also it really wants to lick off his face and paw at his hair. There is a futile attempt at putting up resistance against that. ]
It is well-cared for, but I would still hope its owner didn't purposely abandon it.
What an... affectionate... pet.
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And he seems to rather like you. [He said with the confident, relaxed tones of someone who’d just walk away if the dog was offered back to him.]
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[ Gently correcting Kain because he had less of a choice in whether to bother or not. Alchemists care about accuracy and whatnot because even the slightest inaccuracies can lead to disaster. ]
I suppose I'll protect her in my care then. Some consider pets to be like their children, after all. This does leave me preoccupied, however.
[ On his end, P sounds like he's rationalizing this into something that'll endear him to the situation at hand. Kain is right though, the dog can sense a nervous victim that shall soon come to love her like the rest. After a mouthful of pom tail, of course. ]
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[While it’s said with some sincerity (because, after all, it’s difficult to lift doors and move things when there’s a tiny dog in the way) it would likely be more convincing if Kain wasn’t clearly enjoying this. He had enough diplomacy - hard earned diplomacy through moments like hearing stupid orders and not being in a position in which he could directly call them stupid - to not make it too obvious. He had some tact. But there was a slight quirk to his lips that wasn't there previously, and the perceptive could probably tell that he was doing the subdued version of settling in with a tub of popcorn to watch the show.
So to speak. But he clearly was in a better mood than he was fifteen minutes ago.]
We can hardly work with…her shadowing us about. She’s likely to get in our way. It’s better that you mind her. I will only need your eyes. And you do seem to have a way with dogs.
phone browser, y u no tell me i fucked up closing the html
[ [ He wants to say something like "it's karma", but refrains. When Kain tells him it's an important role, he at least can accept the idea calmly- at this rank, he's only useful for supporting, and this is technically support. Dogsitting in a dangerous situation... The other servants would probably find this hilarious. ] ]
She seems more of a breed for companionship rather than hunting or tracking, but I suppose wealthy owners wouldn't mind that. Anyway, do keep us safe in exchange. I'd appreciate it.
*I* could've totally told you but I didn't.
oh my god
"I could tell Pea- nah," I thought.
（╯°□°）╯︵ (\ .o.)\
/(.-. \)
uwaahhh....... the top drg... escort mission!
Aye. [ Apart from the lance (and his... icons...) Estinien doesn't look much like a dragoon—there's only so much he could do for his appearance; which was a moot point to even consider, because he couldn't be bothered to do much more than find somewhat adequate clothing to serve in combat. ] It's the sound of someone attempting to make no noise whatsoever.
[ And, obviously, failing to do so. ]
In this case, let us hope that they're simply shy.
[ Ishgardian kids usually aren't. They throw snowballs at outsiders. ]
If manpain was weaponized between the two of them they could end the war.
His carrier, which he wanted to talk about even less, was a two foot tall robotic chocobo clanking after them. They probably had a conversation about that, or, if they didn’t have a conversation, would have a conversation about that after they dealt with the noise. Which, speaking of, that extremely accurate observation got a noise in turn from Kain. It sounded like an extremely resigned bastard child of a sigh and a hn.]
I find it unlikely we would be that fortunate.
[And sure enough, there was some sinister chuckling from the woods. As if they were villains from a bad play, some appropriately scruffy men emerged from the darkness. One of them was obviously the leader, as he was larger and had bad hygiene.
The leader- leader needs a name, so he can be Havasi. Havasi sneers the two heroes, twirling a knife in a fashion which was clearly supposed to be intimidating. “I don’t suppose you two fine dandy-folk know where you are, but this here’s the territory of the Blue Sword Gang.”
The Blue Swords all sneer and do the generic 'here here' nonsense. There’s five of them. (Kain has, meanwhile, gone from hn to SIGH at this point, veiled by a thin veneer of flat neutrality, though he's five minutes away from just spitting out some threat of his own and getting to work. It's hard to take this seriously on multiple levels.)
“And since you’re new here I figure you don’t know the rules and all, but-“
This would go on with the formalities - threats, a fight - but that was when a boxcar tumbled from a tree not that far from there and distracted everyone with a large, metallic, booming crash.]
it's true, someone needs to get on that
Look, he can name them too—grunt one, grunt two, bad teeth grunt... wait, more importantly: ]
Blue Sword Gang? [ ...that chocobo is a monstrosity, and he has to pause to consider it as such. He didn't think it could get much worse than the slobbery dragon he was gifted. ] Then why are you wielding a kni—
[ Okay, he's surprised. But now the Blue Lance Gang has something more important going on, and Estinien's dropping his lance into his hand. ]
How that got up there is beyond me, but the timing was nigh impeccable.
[ He's steady, but the other gang sure isn't. Looks like they didn't expect some giant metal horror of craftsmanship to fall out of a tree. Though it's not like Estinien himself is used to it, either. ]
I want you to know I stared at your tag, THEN stared at mine, and went, "wtf was I doing"
[Because gift chocobos, beaks. Sometimes what you needed to do was worry about fighting a badly named band of bandits. Sometimes you didn’t have the time to question how large that chunk of metal was or how it ended up way up there.
However...every puzzle a solution. Riddles have answers. It wasn’t a properly whole boxcar, only a decently large chunk of one: at first glance (much like personality sections) it appeared to be one, but upon further investigation (which Kain wasn’t doing because they’re going to be doing something dashingly heroic) it would be quickly revealed it is but a portion of it. And what happened was a very violent explosion, a rock, and ricochet. Which is a pointless digression, but mystery solved. They’ll likely find the rest of the grim tale embedded in trees about them once they looked.
But that? That was later. For now it was the Blue Swords. (Why.)]
Let’s get this over with. [It’s not the weirdest shit he’s seen. (Meanwhile, one of the grunts - bad teeth grunt - is saying something like, “Smoke and piss, boss, those uniforms! They’re those heroes-...!”) Dashingly heroic nonsense time.]
IT WAS REALLY CUTE THOUGH
So, anyway, that clearly means it's time to fight and watch for screeching shadows of oncoming traffic; he's a fighter more than a questioner.
He's already sized up his target—grunt number two, standing close enough to grunt number one that he's actually aiming for the both of them—and without a word he's charging them. While it seems reckless, he knows what he's doing, and the two of them are still far too stunned over the suddenly rain of metal and who their new opponents are to do much against him. Number two manages to squeak out something that Estinien assumes is a weak curse, but then he's there with his lance up—
They're lucky he's in a good mood, and landing on their heads out like a light is the worst he'll do to them for the moment. He's spinning around to check on the rest of them, readying himself. ]
Don't encourage me.
:>
:/
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But now that I talked to you I can give you casual shit.
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1/3
2/3
3/3
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Dog train
Play. Make friends.
[The maned wolf looked all too eager with her new task. Unfortunately, it doubled the amount of barking as they both chased each other. He massaged his temples but it did nothing to ease the headache.]
How'd we get talked into this shit again?
[That merchant had better be thankful for putting them through this.]
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Was it a judgmental look? No, at least not at first, when it was pointed directly at Rory. But Kain’s gaze shifted from him to a vaguely Laskeresque direction and it became more judgmental, as if he was imagining staring at the merchant and caving and going, “Why.” There was judgment, but it wasn’t thrown in a Rory direction.]
Do you really want me to answer that?
[Because he’s going to.]
Because among other reasons… [This being that the merchant had a talent for invading personal space and wouldn’t let it go in some literal ways, there’s a pause here so they both can remember that, don’t make him say it.] …the alternative we were also being encouraged to do was…how was it put? Give aid in The Shield? I’ve no talent for that. [Nor inclination and in fact he felt really uncomfortable with the idea.]
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Just like its owner.
[The Pomeranian had taken to weaving around Rory's legs to escape the larger animal. Rather than risk kicking or stepping on the animal, he stood still and let Kain do the investigating.]
Tell me if you hear anyone.
[Because he could not hear his own thoughts over the barking. As he could not investigate with him, he instead tried to control both animals.]
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Hm. I will. [Heh.] If I can.
[He nodded towards the dogs as he said it: hard for me to hear shit too, in other words. Still, he wasn't the one who was dealing directly with the dogs. Challenge accepted, in other words.
But the challenge and the request turned out to be moot, as a few moments into the search the sound of wood snapping echoed in the woods, like a too-dry branch (or something else) had broken beneath the weight of something approaching them, like some large, likely many-fanged thing had heard the sound of the dogs and was seeking dinner. It was loud as noises went and hard to miss.]
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I might've just gone with the shitshow option.
Clearly the only option to choose. Also apologies for the late response.
S'all good.
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