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Outside Ryanna Rindell's office, MMHQ

"Is he going to be all right?" Joel asked the unnamed girl, concerned. "He got hit pretty hard. I can't believe I didn't notice those injuries." An old man in a gray jumpsuit passed by on his way to the portal room, closely followed by a impatient-looking kid in jeans and a T-shirt.

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Walking to the portal room, MMHQ

Mr. Forgle led the way to the portal room, pointing out several important locations along the way. "Here is the entrance. There are a couple of guards, but they don't ever stop anybody from coming in." They passed through the security checkpoint. Mr. Forgle produced a badge from somewhere, and the guards waved them through. "Over there is the mess hall," he said, pointing to the left. "My daughter works in the kitchen, and she makes an amazing meatloaf..." He rambled on about the meatloaf, blending seamlessly into a description of one of his grandchildren. "Anyway, up here is the training room. It's really for the squads to practice, but anyone can use it, you know? So, you can come here whenever you want to practice your karate guns, or whatever you it is that you do." Pointing right, he said, "There's the infirmary. If you ever get injured, the doctors there can fix anything." They passed a dark-cloaked heading into the infirmary. He was limping, and his side was a mass of charcoal. "Absolutely anything," Mr. Forgle repeated.

Finally they went down a long hallway. At the end of it, Mr. Forgle opened a thick metal door. "This is the portal room." he said, and said nothing more.

The portal room was huge. It might have been bigger than the rest of the building put together. Giant bubbles protruded out from the walls, each showing a different scene. Some showed snow-covered mountains, some showed tropical islands, and one showed what must have been the surface of a star. The scenes changed frequently, and their changing lights casted weird shadows on the steel floor. A shimmering circular patch at one end of the room was clearly the main portal. Next to it was a leather sack, which must have been the promised climbing equipment.

"It sure is awfully pretty, you know?" Mr. Forgle said quietly.

((Ok. I have good news and bad news. The good news is that my aunt is going to have her baby. The bad news is that I'm not going to be on for the next couple of days. I might be on to speak to my cousins. We use Gaia to transfer details. I think youguys should try to keep going with out me. I'll try and post a few times though I can't promise it will be good.))

She watched Riku dissappear down the hallway into the infirmary with a slight frown before looking back at Joel. Belatedly she shook her head and sighed. "Well, not to worry. He will be patched right up here, without a doubt. They have the most advanced care available.
By the way, the name's Agrotera. All I know is that I am suppose to stick with you, so, is there anything your suppose to be doing. Your not hurt too are you?"

Ryanna sat in her large office chair. Her pale hands fiddled with the edges of her teacup, anxiously wiping away any lose drops or grains of sugar. Kairin and Xinrie sat before her looking nervously at each other. In all their years together, they had only seen her this stressed possibly three times before…and she had been without tea then. Furrowing the edges of her brow, Ryanna raised her pale blue eyes and scanned over the report that lay on the organized surface of her desk. “Xinrie, Kairin. I have a…special mission for the two for you.”

Kairin automatically tensed up. She only used their real names in either very casual or very personal situations. This wasn’t casual. This was personal….and this was bad.

Xinrie, who had for the past ten minutes been chipping the finish off of Ryanna’s wooden chairs looked up suddenly. “Special? As in “short bus” special, or I-should-turn-in-my-resignation-now-while-I-still-have-the-chance” special.

Ryanna straightened up and passed her report forward to Kairin. “This request isn’t going to pay us any money, but it’s still of the utmost importance to us. You see, it was sent in by…my brother.”

Xinrie snorted into her own cup of tea. “Brother? Ha! I could of sworn you were the prissy, only child type. He must be a real - I’ll shut up now….”

Ryanna’s right eye twitched slightly. Normally she was much more composed than this. However, today had simply not been her day. “As I was saying, my older brother has asked me to do him a favor. He’s needs my help in retrieving…my niece.”

“Your niece?” Kairin asked with concern. “I thought she was supposed to be in boarding school.”

“Exactly!” Ryanna said in exasperation. She tossed her hands up in the air and brought her head down on the desk. “They sent her to learn how to be a healer in one of the most astute boarding schools this side of the country has ever seen, and what does she do? Runs away to join the circus!” She brought her hands up and made a twitchy finger gesture as she said this. Finally, she ran her hands through her hair and latched onto several key locks. “And to become a freakin’ acrobat of all things…”

Kairin and Xinrie looked at each other. Oh dear, Ryanna had actually broken from her usual manneristic talk....this was bad. “Um…wow.”

“I’m asking you to take care of this. Locate her, capture her, and bring her back here for a good scolding.”

“Y-yeah, no prob!” Kairin shot up, grabbed Xinrie’s hand and dashed out. Ryanna was going to explode any moment now. Best to leave now and not get stuck in it. “I’ll get the details from the report!” she called over her shoulder. Once she was outside, she turned to Xinrie. “You just had to pick today to let a squirrel lose in the tea room, didn’t you?”

Xinrie grinned sheepishly, her eyes darting from side to side. "What she doesn't know, won't kill us."

Kairin smacked herself in the forehead, letting the hand drag itself down, pulling her eyelids. "We are so screwed."

Ooc::: YES! The cat Mission! Oh man is that one a classic, wonderful Job Frogtaur.

Anyway all, here is the post as promised, Ryanna and Kai coudln;t get on cause it is there last week at SLU and they have dorm room packing and finals out the wazoo so we worked this out over the phone. Anyway, full rping time will resume next weekend. (Thats the days I now have off)

Also I was thinking about getting rid of the squads all together. Since it appears to be that people work better on thier own, or paired up randomly for missions. We'd still keep the ranks of course and the codenames. Its Just a thought, what do you guys think?

Riku sat in his room, his equipment layed out next to him. He looked down at where the burn had been; the area was lighter, thanks to the new skin that had grown there. He sighed, then stood up. "Better get ready".

He picked up his armor; actually, it wasn't really armor. It was actually an outfit woven from enchanted spider silk, tough enough to deflect all but the strongest attacks. He then strapped various belts onto his waist and shoulders. He raised his crossbow, loaded a bolt into it, and folded the bow, sliding it into it's holster. Finally, he picked up his katars. He looked at his reflection for a moment. A handsome young man, with dark black hair, red eyes, and a scar on his right cheek frowned back at him. He then sheathed them in the holders on his thighs.

He picked up his cloak and slung it over his shoulders, then pulled his mask on and pulled his cloak over his head. He began to walk towards the door, but stopped for a moment. He looked back at the dresser. A small pendant sat there. He walked over and picked it up, turning it in his hand. The center held a strange red crystal, almost like a ruby, yet not quite one. He placed the amulet in a pouch on his belt, then walked out the door.

((Wherever the heck Squad Phalanx went, my apologies a second time. My motherboard decided to explode. I've had a total of about ten seconds on Gaia for approximately a week. So... whenever you fellas are ready (if you ever are) I'm here again, hopefully for good. Life sucks.))

"Thanks a lot, man." Larry said, before arranging his fingers in the famous Vulcan salute from Star Trek "May the Force be with you! YEEEHOOO!!" Larry did a back flip into the portal, swinging his legs with all the precision and speed of a gymnast. Just as his body was about to break the mirror surface, he realized that his landing might not be the softest when he reached the other side. And now from the top of his eye he saw unfamiliar ground rushing up to meet him. "Oh GOODY!" he thought, quickly doing his best to correct his position and succeeding only in catching edge on his lucky Converses.

He landed smack on the ground but luckily was cushioned by the sack on his back, filled with metallic climbing equipment which jabbed him in the back. "AGH! Damn it!" he yelled, getting up and then tumbling back down, feeling like he might be sick. All his years of athletics may have kept his body young, but at the moment Larry was feeling too old to do that sort of thing again. After resting for a few seconds, he got to his feet and made way for the tree. That cat was all his...