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Who: Mouse, Dayo, Chloe and Roux
Where: The partially reconstructed Lab building
When: April 22nd, 2008; early evening
Weather: Spring-warm with cool breezes.

The ferry from Barton to Gambino couldn't move fast enough.

After being twelve seconds late for the first one, Mouse's anticipation for what lay ahead of her was becoming so strong that she gripped the guard rail of the pristine white boat she had managed to catch so her hands wouldn't shake so much. There was a distinct rattly ringing noise in the long bars of metal that became increasingly erratic as the vessel they belonged too inched along the quiet stretch of ocean that connected the two Gaian cities. Its pace was far, far too leisurely. The green girl had the mind to go find the engineer of this damn thing and beat him upside the head until he picked up the pace a bit. Didn't the Gambino Ocean Transport Co. realize that some people had important places to go?!

Dammit. She was late. It wouldn't be good for her standing at all that she was tardy for something so important. Whipping her cell-phone out of a pocket, she dialed the Lab to tell whoever was at the receptionist's desk that she was going to be a little behind because the ferry schedule was very poorly put together.

---

A soft blue cloud of glowing fog barely managed to illuminate one corner of one of the rooms of the Lab that had been fully rebuilt. Besides that and the waning sunlight slowly but surely abandoning the window, it was completely dark -- there wasn't working electricity everywhere yet, and this happened to be one of those unfortunate places with no artificial light. It was probably the friendliest and most effective place to keep this newly-born Frei until she was picked up so she wouldn't end up wandering away through a half-built wall. Which was something that had already almost happened since she emerged from her tank a mere day and a half ago... twice. Either she had an extremely short attention span, or she just plain decided she didn't like being inside once she made the discovery there was more to the world than the glass cell she was created in.

It was really too soon in her life to tell and too much of a risk to try and find out, especially with Dr. Kyou having to go off on one of his mysterious excursions and leaving the Frei to the care of the people on staff who had the time to make sure she hadn't figured out how to use the doorknob yet. Right now that wasn't an issue at all: she was content to tap at the glass of the window with a fingernail with a confused and disappointed look in her yellow eyes. What kind of mysterious force was keeping the wind from reaching through this hole in the wall?

With each passing second with no would-be guardian in sight, the room couldn't have been getting any more comfortable for the pink-haired receptionist. Especially since, almost as if for the lack of a clock, there was that persistent and irregular tapping on the window caused by the current youngest Raevan. Nearly every square centimeter of the glass pane was tapped at or had a finger dragged over it until the eagle girl decided that it was no longer worth trying to pass through.

That left her to bring her attention to the other living bodies present. Or at least, to the one with the pink hair.

Even though his appearance was strikingly similar to her own, the wild-haired Frei seemed as interested in the silver roc as he was in her for the time being. A small flutter of her broad wings broke the uneasy silence for a moment, almost as if it were her way of clearing her throat in order to draw attention, and the winding dark clouds on her ribbon bobbed and swayed a bit as the body attached to it started to move across the room.

The shadows cast by her gloomy-day light stretched and flickered, until the Frei was close enough to lean down and rest a curious hand on Chloe's shoulder.

This new Frei was one of the ones that didn't seem to keen on being talktative right away. That didn't, however, stop her from trying to piece together the receptionist's emotions and mouth-noises in an attempt to understand what she was saying. It ended a bit more difficult than deciphering the words of the white man with the black hair who had been there to guide her out of the glass case she had been 'born' in... that one's voice didn't shake nearly as much as this one's did.

She ended up returning the lab assistant's smile with a soft one of her own that expressed and just about radiated a tranquil kind of optimism. If she had the motivation and the ability to speak at that moment, her words would have undoubtedly been something along the vein of "Don't worry, be happy."

Clearly, the eagle girl was too happy to be alive to worry about something like a person she was supposed to meet being a little bit late, and that attitude somehow made the flickering shadows in the room a little less scary and the passing of time a little less stressful. The small drop in temperature in the room went all but entirely unnoticed by her, besides a reflexive folding of wings to keep her bare shoulders warm.

---

Finally, the sound of a foreign pair of footsteps echoed past the walls of the incomplete building. Mouse was more than a little irritated and upset at the series of vehicle-related mishaps that had caused her to be late for what was probably her most important appointment in a very long time, but she was able to straighten her mood out with the knowledge that she had at least been able to show up. She could only hope that her lack of punctuality on this occasion wouldn't reflect too badly on her later on.

But where exactly were the receptionist and her Raevan? Deciding it wouldn't hurt to wander down the unfinished hall as long as she was careful, she tentatively called out: "Anyone here? I came to pick someone up..."

"I am so sorry I ended up being this late," Mouse apologized, once she had turned towards the receptionist and stepped over a couple of irresponsibly abandoned power tools and rolls of blueprints on her way to greeting them. "Traffic sucked more than I thought it would - really, I should have been smarter and left a little earlier. No harm done, I hope?" She smiled, albeit a little bit nervously. If being late somehow affected her Raevan, she would never be able to forgive herself. At least there was a familiar face around to make her feel more at ease--

"--oh, Roux! I haven't seen you since Halloween, have I?" she remarked, becoming instantly more cheerful. Turning to the other human there, she couldn't help but bring a finger up to thoughtfully stroke the side of her face. She certainly fit the description that had been all over the Missing ads last year... "That means you must be Chloe. It's really nice to finally meet you and oh my god..."

That was the third time the new Frei had seen a change of expression from the new, small green woman, but this time it had a direct correlation with her drifting out of the room to have a closer look at how things were going after Chloe had called her over. Her own expression was still that infectiously calm smile, but there was the tiniest twinge of curiosity lighting up in her eagle eyes as she drew closer. She couldn't quite place it, but something about the shorter girl was curiously familiar. As if she were someone that she knew she could trust her life and happiness with.

The new guardian didn't respond beyond trying to say something and instead ending up just mouthing those same three words again. She was not expecting something this... this gorgeous.

Well, this was a pleasant surprise. It wasn't very often that Mouse came across someone she could relate to on the subject of height... were it not for how busy she currently was being awed into speechlessness, she probably would have made one lighthearted comment or another about that similarity between the two of them. Along with how if you combined their hair colors, you would get a watermelon.

It took her several seconds after the fact to realize that Chloe had asked a question. Shaking her head to try and knock her composure back in place, she tracked Roux and holy crap that's my raevan with an eye as she answered. "Oh, that... The soul was an eagle... it was kept as an illegal pet most of its life..." It was a relief to see the reborn avian so happy and carefree, too. The mechanic felt assured that she had made the right decision with that one... "And the essence I got was called the Cloud of Despair. It was literally this tiny little raincloud that had the power to make you miserable if you let it."

Thank whatever powers that may have existed that the sum was the greater opposite of her two parts.

It was only a matter of time before the wild-haired Frei would notice Roux's look of cold disdain boring into her blue-tipped feathers. Her wings fluttered involuntarily as if she could feel that specific intent, and there was a papery shuffling noise when she turned around and her winding ribbon shuddered and brushed against itself from the sudden motion. She met Roux with not a smile, but an inquiring little frown, lips slightly parted. The pink-hair being nervous was something that made sense to her limited knowledge of the world, but why was the silver roc so annoyed?

The eagle girl tried drifting closer to him, carefully sampling his negative feelings while trying to find an answer to her silent questions.

"Heh... yeah," the mechanic was quick to agree. She was glad she had gone with her gut instinct with this decision. The combination of the soul and essence had turned out to be a phenomenally good one, and who wouldn't have liked the idea of giving a broken soul a second chance at life? As hard as she tried to process it, it was still quite a surprise to see the reborn eagle so inexplicably happy. "I'll do my best to make sure most of them are good ones."

And silent as Roux often was, it was hard to miss him speaking. Even though it was meant for the unnamed Frei, Mouse still felt the need to respond: "She doesn't have a name yet, Roux." She winced guiltily at that. How could she have forgotten about something so important?! The eagle girl certainly did not look like a Charlie...

The young Frei, however, all but ignored the silver Roc's question. She could not formulate an answer to it, and that secretly caused a tiny twinge of sadness. Names were important, from what she had seen. Why wasn't she called anything?

It surprised her a bit when the older Raevan reached out for a lock of her wild hair, but she quickly became calm again after sensing nothing threatening alongside his annoyance and curiosity. And... well... if it was acceptable for her own hair to be appraised like that... a tentative hand of her own reached out, with the intent to meet with a few of the ice roc's silver strands.

It pleased the eagle to discover that the older Raevan's hair proved to be every bit as smooth as it appeared to be. Her tranquil little smile returned as her fingers continued their gentle stroking, down a mirror-colored lock and back up to do the same for another, encouraging him to feel as relaxed and contented as she was at that moment. It was enough to make this moment of interaction feel just that much more mesmerizing, with the blonde-to-brunette's pleasant calm spreading out of her own being and across the room that everyone was standing or floating in.

"Your name," her guardian pondered aloud, but not in a tone that would have broken the current mood. "I think it should be... Ekundayo."

Ekundayo lifted her head and her eagle eyes shifted over to meet that of the mechanic. "Da...yo?"

"E...kun... dayo."

She gently broke contact with the older Raevan and drifted backwards toward where her guardian stood, feeling a slight sense of euphoria at being given a name. It was a series of sounds just for her and her alone. Ekundayo liked that very much, even though she didn't possess the words at that time to express her gratitude. All she could do was smile.

Which, honestly, was more than enough for her guardian.

"Well... I really hate cutting this short, but I should get going so I don't miss the last ferry..." Mouse said, checking her watch and adjusting her glasses. "We'll definitely have to hook up again sometime soon, though. Just call me anytime."

With a beckoning hand towards her new charge-- who was more than happy to follow-- the mechanic stepped out of the half-formed building, starting the walk back to the port. It was going to be a long trip home.