Welcome to Gaia! ::

Isaac shook his head for a moment, trying to get back to reality. He moved his right hand to his ankle so he had something to squeeze when the pain crashed into him. Then he nodded, "Okay, I'm ready." Isaac clenched his teeth, hoping he wouldn't faint.

Amara had nodded in apathetic recognition towards Erec, the new face striking her as generally over-amiable in both her and Diablos's observations. She merely stepped back and watched as Rainer disposed of the Iron Giant, her body throbbing steadily with discomfort at every passing moment in her presence. The Galbadian watched the girl begin to bleed with a crude sort of smugness; she became both gleeful and repulsed at her sudden joy that the sorceress girl had been injured, and Diablos merely chuckled at the back of her mind.

Instinct versus logic. It's quite an interesting thing, the way your mind works against your body.

Shut up. I'm not your specimen, am I?

She felt the demonic guardian's lips curl into a sadistic sort of sneer, and her saffron eyes examined the battlefield around her with glazed fatigue. For a moment her eyes flicked over Rainer and Isaac being tended to by Erec, sought out Kino and Mimi, and then settled on James, fighting off any of the uncomfortable lurching in her stomach at examining the sorcerer. He was unaturally kind for his species, for being a magic wielder; and yet she knew she could not trust him, or Rainer, if only for the immense potency of their power. Power corrupts; that was what she had been taught since awakening, and that was what had enabled her to survive for so long. Why ignore such sayings when they proved time and time again to be so true?

They are all like Hyne, regardless of their faces. The blood is the same...the innards are the same. If only we could dispose of them.

But we can't. They're still...well...they're still my travel companions for the time being...and they fought against Leagh, didn't they? But even that could be a farce.

Better to do what you have originally sought out, rather than harm that head of yours thinking of frivolous things.

Amara nodded at the guardian's voice in her head, her raven and red locks whipping about her stoic face as she pulled her glaive into her hands and began to walk in a rapid pace towards the direction in which she had originally intended before encountering the Behemoth King. For a moment, however, she hesitated; her gaze shot back towards the group of recuperating SeeDs and her lips creased into a perplexed line.

"I suggest the injured get their rest for now, don't you think? The rest of us should stock up on a few things."

The Galbadian didn't like waiting for an answer, or anything remotely resembling permission; instead, she continued to walk in the opposite direction, her heels clacking against the hard, slick Estharian street, yet at a slow enough pace to be stopped if one wished.

Isaac nodded with his eyes closed and teeth still clenched. A small grunt exerted from his little body. He even rocked back and froth for a little bit until the pain subsided. "Thanks," he let out quickly before trying to stand up. He was almost successful, he wobbled a little and feel to his knee. The second try was much better. He was standing and looking at the others. "Looks like we didn't get beat up too bad..."

Rainer watched as Amara walked away, stopping only to impart with them a 'suggestion.' No matter what, Rainer had the distinct feeling that Amara didn't like her, and was not to be trusted. Wiping her bloody face with the back of her hand, Rainer glared after the girl. James followed. When the other unknown SeeD stirred, Rainer huffed impatiently. She'd live. There were things she had to do.

Setting off in the opposite direction, Rainer swiftly headed toward the center of the city. This city was almost like a second home for her, and she knew it like the back of her hand. On her way, curious, afraid citizens slowly approached, assessing the strange girl covered in blood and the damage to their beautiful blue city. Rainer ignored them.

Rainer stuffed her hand into her pack, feeling around for the items she'd need for her weapon refinement. Coming upon a crossroads, she took a left. People didn’t restrain themselves from staring openly at the white-haired girl with white-gold eyes, covered in blood. Again, Rainer ignored them. Why should she explain? Better yet, how would she explain? Yes, good people, I suppose you may remember me, but a Sorceress took possession of me and I accidentally stole her powers. I’m covered in blood for some unknown reason and your beloved city was damaged because some monster appeared, and I accidentally turned it into an Iron Giant. Yes. That would go great. Except for the part where they called the city guards and chased her down. Rainer shook her head ruefully, earning alarmed glances from the citizens. Resentment bubbled up within Rainer, finally making her stare at the citizens in turn, glaring at them angrily. Several quailed and backed away. Huffing, Rainer continued on.

For reasons unknown to her, the anger and resentment and hurt Rainer was experiencing at the hands of the citizens was multiplying into unrestrained rage. Power coursed through her. Why shouldn’t she use it? If she wanted, she could very well level this whole city with absolutely no trouble at all. These stupid people certainly deserved it. Rainer paused in the middle of the street. She lifted her blood-covered hand and stared at it. With one hand she could destroy half the city, with another hand, destroy the other half. Why not? She was the one with the power. She was the one who held the very lives of these rude people. Maybe she should teach them a lesson.

Shaking her head, Rainer grimly chastised herself. What the hell was she thinking? Her job was to save people, not destroy them. Besides, what would James think? She already caused him enough pain by forgetting him. No need to give him an ulcer. And the people of the world didn't need another reason to fear and hate Sorceresses.

Finally, Rainer arrived at the Junk Shop. The shopkeeper, a muscular, stout woman, smiled at Rainer in greeting. Rainer nodded and smiled in return.

"What model?" the shopkeeper asked, holding her hands out for Rainer's weapon.

"Coroleas," Rainer replied. She unbuckled the blade and hefted it, taking it in one last time before handing it over. The shopkeeper clucked her tongue as she inspected the blade.

"Ah, yes," she said knowingly. "A few other gunblade wielders have come in looking for a refinement from the Coroleas. Can't say I blame them; the new model is much better." Rainer nodded. The shopkeeper continued. "While the Coroleas is good for hacking, the new model, DragonStar, has better accuracy and a sleeker form, plus the obsidian in it enhances the magic power you junction into it." Rainer raised a brow.

"Really?" she asked. The shopkeeper nodded that it was so. "Well, how much exactly is the DragonStar worth? I saw the new weapons magazine, but they never tell the price."

The shopkeeper smiled knowingly. "Ah yes, well we can't always discourage customers with just the advertisement. It runs for about one thousand, six hundred fifty gil."

Rainer raised a brow again. "That's not that much."

The shopkeeper gave her an appraising stare. "Not everyone has a living that earns them thousands of gil in one month, SeeD."

Rainer's eyes widened as she blushed. "How did you know I was a SeeD?"

"Well, you act like such a figure is nothing to you, and few gunblade wielders aren't SeeDs."

Rainer scratched the back of her head sheepishly. "Sorry about that. I didn't mean it like that. But I'll take the DragonStar."

The shopkeeper nodded, though her warmth from earlier was gone. Rainer bit her lip and waited at the front of the shop while the shopkeeper took it into the back.

"This will take a while, Miss," the shopkeeper yelled from the back. Rainer sighed.

"That's okay. How long do you think it will take?"

The shopkeeper shuffled back into view. "An hour at the most."

Rainer nodded. "Okay, I guess I can wait. Here's your money." She fished out the gil from her pack and handed it over. She also gave the shopkeeper the items needed to update her weapon: Fury Fragments, a Chef's Knife, the Energy Crystals and the Screws. "I'll be waiting nearby, so just call out, okay? My name's Rainer."

The shopkeeper nodded. "All right, I'll see you in a bit, Miss Rainer."

Rainer smiled and watched as the shopkeeper disappeared from view again. Turning, she sighed. Nothing to do. She sidled over to a bench and leaned back, closing her eyes. The exhaustion of fighting finally caught up with her. Rainer supposed it wouldn't hurt to take a little nap...

She was asleep within moments.

Isaac nodded at Erec, "Okay. Thanks. I'll be there soon, I just have one thing to do." Isaac waved for a moment before turning around and walking to the other end of the city. "Finally, now I can go see what's happened. Maria, I'm home for a little bit." He broke into a run and stopped in front of a small door. Hardly a foot above his head. He knocked, carefully. A creek was audible, followed by a little squeal.

"Isaac! You're here! Come'ere!" Maria screamed, diving out the door at him. She landed with her arms around his neck and leg popped, squeezing him.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow!" Isaac half yelled, Maria was pressing on his arm. “Don’t do that, please.”

Maria leaned off him, but still kept her arms around his neck. “Oh, why? Oh, your arm! Get in here! Let me fix that up right now.” Isaac was more or less dragged in at that point. She sat him down and took off the shirt that acted as a brace. “This isn’t that great of a job… Did you try to pull it back into place yourself?”

“No, it was-”

“That’s not set. Close, but no! Isaac… I told you not to try and fix everything yourself… Do have a Cura left in you?” Maria asked as she started to inspect his arm, she lifted it up and was looking at it. Isaac winced and nodded, he regained enough energy for that already. “Here,” Maria said as she quick thrust her palm at Isaac’s arm. A sickening sound was heard and Isaac gnashed his teeth. “There, now Cura it.”

“Fine, why are you so worried? You see this all of the time.”

Maria flicked her hair out of her face as Isaac used a Cura. “You have to ask?” She smacked him in the back of the head. “You should know by now.” She got up abruptly, snatching a medical brace from a small cupboard. She even went to grab some drinks from a cooling unit. She didn’t have room for normal appliances, so she made due. “Now… Tell me everything that’s happened so far.”


(If you want to know what Maria looks like… Go here! Maria Oh, and she's more or less a medic.)

Zzzzz.... The young swordsman would sit AND sleep on a chair in the lobby of an Inn, Kino never did pay attention to the signs or names of places and/or objects. His head facing the ceiling and his mouth slightly open, it only attracted attention seeing as people people normally slept in their rooms. "Mmmm...." A faint smile would etch its way to Kino's face and a even more faint mumble was spoken, "Strawberry-kiwi..."

RING RING RING! "Ack!" Kino would fall backward, taking the chair along for the ride with a thud to the sound of his head hitting the floor. "Hmm..?" His eyes, lazily opened halfway as he reached in his pocket to pull out a communicator. Placing the communicator to his ear, Kino would sigh before stating. "This is Kino..." Tiny responses made their way to get the message across and... "Oh?" His eyes would now slightly widen with interest...

[Scarlet, I'm impressed. That single post outmatches any other post in the RP, I think. You've matched, and outstripped the posts from the attack on Balamb Garden. Well done.]

The only thing Amara would have seen were the heals of James's boots as he leaned against a wall on the upper landing. Everything else was concealed by a well placed pillar and a handful of shadows that he had manipulated for his own purpose. He had followed Amara all the way to the lab. And he was actually rather surprised that she had not stopped some where along the lines and made him leave, or at the very least tried to lose him.

It had been a truly informative endeavor as well. He knew now what he needed to know, although it certainly came at a great risk. And likely at a great cost. Would she dare trust him now? She knew it was him. James was sure of that, without a doubt.

She lets you go unnoticed? Doomtrain speculated, curious as to what the girl was thinking. If he dared, he may have even opened a conversation with Diablos at the time, Interesting.

You see Doomtrain? James answered, keeping the mocking tone from his voice, I choose to have faith in humans. Even those who few consider to be human.

James slipped further into the shadows, masking his feet, and disappeared across the landing. Odine and Amara both would be able to hear the clicking of his boots across the glass, but they would not be able to see him. To Amara it would be almost taunting. James wanted her to follow, actually. What better way then to infuriate her?

Amara cursed internally as Odine's withered flesh began to pale and recede of any inkling of color; his bulbous gaze flicked from her taut composure to every inch of the room before him, frantic and confused at the scuffling noise that seemed to reverberate across the laboratory.

"What eez thiz...an intruder?! In my laboratory?! Only my studiez and aidz have zis accez from my security syztems..."

"Systems that are designed to repel human beings."

Saffron eyes met the beady stare of the crippled scientist. Amara's gaze seemed to burn with authority, the very same eyes of her guardian staring down at Odine for mere seconds, long enough for the doctor to gasp loudly and flounder into deathly stillness. At once the girl felt her lip curling involuntarily, Diablos shrieking with rising ire and revulsion at James' obvious choice to taunt her with his presence.

The sorcerer plays games as if we were his pawns.

Amara merely knitted her brows beneath her black veil of hair, her almost constantly stoic features twisted into perplexity. She walked across the floor strewn with shards of glass, her boots crunching into the ground, glaive in hand, head raised up towards the impossibly high ceiling of the laboratory.

"If you had meant to hide yourself, you'd be better off playing the ghost, rather than the poltergeist."

Her whisper drowned in the otherwise silent laboratory save for the frantic humming of the complex wire tubing punctured into Odine's sagging flesh, keeping the scientist alive for fruitless seconds more. His clawed hands clenched with obvious excitement as he watched Amara prowl from her position on the ground, shifting to and fro to try and catch sight of James, yet constantly failing every time due to obvious magic on his part.

Amara watched the shadows looming above for any sign of shifting, any sigh of life within; she knew he could hear her, knew that it was her only way of communicating without giving away the identity of the SeeD who had so stupidly chosen to stalk her. If he was acting upon hostility, she didn't much care; Odine could die, the old fool, just as he had been meant to for years, and she wouldn't flinch save to ransack the laboratory. Yet if he were acting on the part of an enemy, he certainly would have attacked already; she and the old loon didn't pose much of a threat against a sorcerer, after all.

Cat and mouse. Are you willing to resort yourself to such games?

Do I have any other choice?

If it were Diablos in control of the matter, he would have destroyed the laboratory himself to weed out the threat; even then Amara could feel the flames within his brooding mind lick painfully at her thoughts, could see just how the guardian so sorely fantasized about mutilating every detail of the sorcerer.

Why not try it, at least? It would be worthwhile, to your health, if not only for the pleasure of it.

Why not reduce myself to a beast, just like you? Shut up and guard me.

"Amara, what eez it?! What eez this entity?! Eez it...ze girl you were speaking of? Ze one who haz stolen ze power of the sorcerezz?"

The girl froze, bristling slightly at the breaching of her thoughts. She whipped around and gave the scientist, shaking with excitement, a fierce snarl of warning, her golden eyes alight with Diablos' frustration.

"Shut up!"

The Galbadian hissed, and as if to emphasize her point a single bolt of electricity burst from her glaive, the Thunder spell thrusting straight through the tubing on Odine's chair. At once the man emitted an agonizing, high-pitched screech of pain; his clawed hands snapped frantically as the metal of the chair crackled and shuddered with the raw force of the electricity, one of the many tubes snapping cleanly in half to release a burst of hissing oxygen. Odine's face was purpling as he gagged and wheezed in heavy gasps, desperate for air; tense seconds of coughing and struggling and he lolled weakly against the side of his chair, blood-shot eyes gazing at the girl with a steady, pathetic fear as his breathing regulated.

Satisfied by the degree of damage, the girl turned on her heel and followed the trace of James' footsteps as far as she knew he had gone...where ever he was going. The fact that she was so helpless to tail his tracks was further frustrating to her, especially considering that he was not an ordinary human. With every step she took, a feeling like lead compressed itself deeply into her heart, ribs, lungs, taking hold and jerking every fabric of her insides as if she were on a chain, each breath laborious and painful like pinpricks in her very blood at the unconscious knowledge of a sorcerer's presence in her wake.

"What are you getting at, James? Why kill my trust in sorcerers forever?" She whispered slowly to the air above, raising her head and clutching onto the chain around her neck; a nervous habit.