Welcome to Gaia! ::

Kasai looked over at the stack of books on his desk and grumbled. Cin kept making him study and learn things, he wasn't sure why it seemed so important but she kept laying it on. As least she stopped giving me that horribly easy stuff, now that he thought had been horrible. Kasai went through the texts, finding the math and galactic common easy enough to do. He did find his history to be somewhat amusing. Cin was making him learn about not only Gaia, the closest planet to Masquarade that had a long history, but also about her home galaxy. She provided two histories for him to study, one from the Empire and one from the People's Republic. They were two opposing forces and had both put out histories to be taught in their schools, the information in these histories made for interesting reading - especially when you read from both perspectives. But after sometime Kasai got bored with them and threw them aside.

Then smiling slightly he started opening files on the laptop, Cin still underestimated his intelligence level so he would have plenty of time to work on his own private project before she came looking to see how he was doing on his homework. Once everything had booted Kasai started typing, concentrating on the work at hand. From the moment Cin had given him this laptop he had found it's workings to be fasinating. Then he had started talking to Mycroft and realized that the workings of an AI of Mycrofts grade, were even more interesting. Once he realized his guardian didn't know his true mental capacity, because he was in the form of a child. Kasai had started teaching himself things, with the help of Mycroft at times, Cin gave him pretty much free reign over the house, so it wasn't a problem to make off with the primary AI intelligence files.

These files were the start of an AI, with them he had a clean slate to work with, and had to do the rest of programming himself. With the help of manuels he had started on his project, soon he found it to be rather easy. Today he was going to finish up the last parts of his AI, the image persona. Staring at the screen Kasai started his script, giving the AI a female gender, it only made since they already had a male AI in the house he reasoned. After he worked for sometime, Kasai realized that his AI's persona looked alot like Fauve would...if she didn't have a mask. Fauve did have to go and grow up on me Kasai thought...pushing the more disturbing thoughts from his mind he finished up on the image portion of the AI, now all he had left was what to call her. Seras...he thought.

Celcius came to quite quickly, looking through and optic eye she found herself looking at a boy wearing a mask. She had not had this kind of visual control since that b***h of a pilot had inactivated her. The words came to her through the keyboard: Hello...

Celcius wondered why he didn't just use the auto device, so she decided to ask.

Hello, why aren't you using the microphone to speak with me?

The response came as: I can't speak like that.
Great, so I have a mute that has reactivated me, Celcius thought.

Kasai wondered what the AI was thinking, the face that look painstakingly like Fauve's as a child looked thoughtful. Personally Kasai was just pleased he was able to get his AI running so well.

Smokey incense filled the air, Cin sniffed the air experimentally, vanilla. With the confirmation of the sent she grew slightly leery of this place, it had to be a dream she reasoned - because she knew she was on the planet Masquarade at the moment, and the incense reminded her of a place far from that planet. Walking through her dream realm Cin moved forward and opened a curtain blocking her path. Sure enough she knew the household she was in. A molten silver creature sat on a slightly raised dais, her two sets of arms crossed in concentration before her, she was meditating.

As Cin stepped into the room the silver figure opened her eyes and smiled, "I have not seen you for many years Cynthia. You have caused your father great distress in your disappearance."

Cin sighed it was Seras she should have known, it appeared that her dream was being invaded. Cin smiled ruefully at the treeber, "But I know he didn't send you, Savants creep him out. Mother perhaps, but I know you wouldn't have contacted me for her, you never liked vapors or tears." Cin grabbed a chair from nearby and turned it around so she could sit on it backwards, she knew this would piss the treeber off, but if she wasn't messing with Seras's sensabilities she might not recognize her.

Seras gave Cin a rather scathing look, but her look lightened as a male treeber entered. He carried a tray of fruit in one hand and a pitcher in the other. Cin watched him and started catogorizing him, it was the only way she was able to really keep up with the adaptations of the treeber species, he was of the two armed variety, rather prettily colored with dark reds, oranges, and some sort of yellow highlight over the other colors. Ah he was Geofry one of Seras's husbands, he layed the trays down and looked to Seras, "will you be needing anything else." Seras smiled at him warmly and pulled him to her with her right lower arm, kissing him softly she replied, "not at the moment." Cin restrained herself from making gagging motions in Seras's directions, it would only piss he treeber off, plus it would be rather childish. Geofry made his way off looking rather dazzled, Cin grinned slightly no doubt he would run off and tell the other husbands about the kiss. Relaxing slightly Cin grabbed an apple from the tray that had just been brought in, without a second thought she grabbed for her dagger so she could cut it, only to find her dagger missing. Cin sighed slightly, Seras had brought her here - wherever here was - and had taken away her weapons. Cin pulled her hand up and concentrated on it. In a few moments her dagger appeared in it, she smiled triumphantly this dream stuff really wasn't all that hard.

Seras watched the very young human in front of her, well to her Cynthia was still very young. "Please help yourself to the tray of food," Seras said this with only a slight edge to her voice.

Cin grinned and sliced a piece of the apple off, if she was going to be pulled around in her dreams she might as well be annoying about it. She then popped the piece of sliced apple into her mouth. "Don't mind if I do."

Seras twitched, she should have known that Cin would do her best annoy her, "you would have made a good canidate to be a savant, most would have not been able to make the dagger appear." Seras took a fruit from the pile with her bottom set of arms and started peeling the fruit, her top set was still crossed. "The help you gave me long ago proves that you do not hate the conclave."

Cin sighed, it seemed Seras was not going to get to the point anytime soon. "Yes but I don't want to be a canidate plus." Cin turns in her chair so Seras can see the back of her neck, she taps her implant, "I'm a pilot, a hyperspace entity would refuse to bond with me. So can we get onto something else," she let her words be scathing. As she finished she gauged the silver savant, she didn't like to play games but had also seen Seras pull a MU alpha apart in battle, using only her mind. This was not the sort of person that you wanted to piss off if you could help it.

Seras sat back in her chair, "I honestly do not know why I have connected to you through dreams. I have told your parents that I know you to be alive, though your father I fear doesn't beleive me. I do sense that you are going to be needing to learn patience. The fire one has much the same personality as you, so don't pull each other apart."

Cin blinked slightly it was strange to hear Seras talk about Kasai, who else could the fire one be, "So you don't know why you are here...strange."

The world shifted around Cin and she woke up in the dark of her room. She always hated dealing with Seras, it was like talking to a giant silver fortune cookie. Shaking slightly Cin got out of bed to get a glass of water.

~

Kasai turned in his sleep, the dream he was having was strange. He had never seen a silver four armed creature before.

-=A past of anger and death=-

A harsh wind blew over the uppermost tower of Wyvernspur keep. Madrigal Baltrathi stood upon the edge of the tower, a fine brandy glass in his hand was empty. He stood tall with a noble bearing though the robe that was thrown over his sleep clothing was starting to unravel along one end and the elbows were almost worn out completely. Upon his feet were only a pair of worn house slippers, as the wind continued to blow a few wisps of his steel gray hair flickered around his face, only a few spots remained the same fire red that they had when he was younger. "You know my boy," Madrigal starts to speak, looking over behind him to the young child half hidden in the doorway of the stairs. Kasai his youngest had followed him up on his walk, "I once had great dreams for this place." In his drunken state Madrigal gestures vaguely out toward some half finished building to the west of the main keep. The older man stumbled and caught himself against the parapet just barely keeping himself from falling from the tower. "Ah, I should be careful Kasai. Almost pitched myself over the edge with that one. But really what would it matter if I fell? They couldn't force me to sell off the edges of my estate if I were in the grave could they?" Madrigal looked over his shoulder at Kasai, there was a certain madness in the garnet colored eyes looking at Kasai. Eyes that were so much like his own that they made him shudder slightly.

Kasai as a boy of only thirteen years was the youngest in the household, his older brother had already joined the military. Though poor they still had a noble name and Daren had gotten himself an officers position from the start. Daren was sixteen and though he had Kasai had never been on the best of terms the latest letters seemed to indicate he was doing fine. In fact since Tessiana had died from the chills three winters ago; the males left behind had not gotten along well at all together. Daren and Kasai's mother had been the part of the household that got all the men to work together. She was the water that made all the fiery personalities of the men simmer enough so that they could co-exist. When she had died each of those left had gone into their own type of mourning and ended up alienating each other...the only ones that could have provided any comfort. Daren had gone out of his way to spend almost every waking moment training for the guard which he had dreamed of since his youngest years. Madrigal had turned to the drink, and shut out his sons from himself. Then he had started gambling and expensive building projects...most those projects were left half done not enough funds left to finish them. And while the other two found ways to distance themselves Kasai had been left to his own devices, alone and with a small resentment building in him. He watched as his father squandered their monies and finally started selling parts of the holding. As Madrigal's excesses became larger he seemed to forget more about his children content to rot away slowly. Watching his father slowly die out...Kasai swore to himself he would not become as his parent had; drunken and a fool.

Kasai knew that at his age and with his experiances he probably was not the one that should be speaking to his father in this mood but he might as well try. "Father, step away from the edge..." Kasai moved out from the door toward his last remaining family still at Wyvernspur. Seeing his son moving closer Madrigal turns and throws his brandy glass to the cobbles below, a harsh cry fills the air as the sound upsets one of the Wyvern's setting atop a tower lower down. The namesake of the keep the guardian creature tilted it's large head blinking a dark eye up at the two.

Madrigal set his jaw, lines of tears running down his face. Tears for his beloved now dead and for all the deeds he had done in the years since. "I've failed you Kasai, there isn't a copper left to pay for the damage I have done over the years and..." Madrigal trembled he wasn't sure how to admit to his son that without Tessiana he could not find a reason to live...."and Tessiana, my beloved...she's" Madrigal turns to look over the courtyard below his eyes drying from the tears seeing something far off.

Kasai gulped unease creeping over him as he was not use to seeing his father react in such a way, "I know father, I know...come inside. We can go downstairs and sit by the fir-" Kasai never got to finish his sentence as he had been speaking Madrigal had stepped out more and now Kasai's eyes widening in disbelief saw as Madrigal disappeared over the side of the parapet. "Father!" Letting out a yell the young boy runs to the side of the tower, only in time to watch has his last remaining parent is smashed on the cobbles below.

Kasai trembled and fell back away from the side of the tower, the cry of the Wyvern echoing the walls. He closed his eyes until a servant came and took him to his room sometime later.

-=Past: Oh Brother, Where Art Thou=-

The great Wyvern that had long been the symbol of the keep curled and rested among the warmed cobbles in the sun. Kasai and Ahren walked down the steps of the keep as the two brothers pasted it one of it's large eyes slit open enough to watch the two. The speech of humans was foreign to it but they seemed distressed; yawning the sight of it's maw opening caused the two to pause and move over away from the halfway napping creature.

"You can't sell the land Ahren. It's been in our family for generations." Kasai stopped and turned looking to his older brother. His hair was more brilliant taking on the color of their mother's. His brother stopped glowering at him although older he was slightly shorter and during times like this it seemed to cause him more then a certain amount of annoyance; his hair was also lighter as if their mother's fiery red had been tempered with the blonde of their father.

"You don't give a damn about the land and you know it. You want it for what it means. Well let me tell you - it doesn't matter; not ever. Sitting here and clinging onto it doesn't matter. The other nobles will only laugh and find mockery of it, brother." Ahren took a step along the stairs to the outer wall perhaps subconciously attempting to equal out the height differance. "You think having land gives you some status, it doesn't. The king can give you landless baron status easily and father did good trade business for him I don't see him refusing."

Kasai clenched his fist in annoyance, his brother had hit some nails on the head. But he was the one that had sat long hours within his father's study listening to the old man go over how he would attempt to slowly gather back the bits and pieces of their land he had been forced to sell off over the years. Plans that may have worked if Madrigal could have pulled himself out of his cups long enough to put them into motion.

"The crops are good this year, we have already caught up on the expenses of this month. We'll be able to catch up on the others if this keeps up. Sheep in the East pastures will also bring in good profit from the wool sales. The land is actually doing something, don't cut it loose before we have time to let it prove it's worth keeping." Kasai's voice rang with passion as he spoke, his eyes holding the fire they always did when he felt intensely about a subject.

Ahren let a breath out he was looking much less intense and passionate about the subject, in fact he was looking somewhat bored. "One or two windfalls is not going to take us out from under a lifetime of father's debts. And the debtors are not going to wait for however many crops or sheep we will need to give them what they feel is their own. Yes, for once we have met the expenses for the month. But what of next month or all the months in the past that we did not."

Kasai narried his eyes some the only reasoning he could find for his brother's actions were simple. Greed and laziness, Ahren was looking to find a bride as well; Kasai had a feeling which he had in mind. His brother wanted out of the debts and the ties that keeping the keep would entail it was as simple as that.

"This is the last I'm going to speak on the subject, now. I believe dinner was being prepared. I will see you in the dining hall." Ahren stepped down off the step and spun on his heel heading to the innards of the keep.

Kasai clenched his hand holding it up fire erupted around it, watching the fire for a long moment slowly the flames started to dwindle as he got a hold on his anger, "oh no brother...this is not over."

Cinder settled onto the floor cross legged as she did, she was wearing a pair of comfortably baggy grey pants and her long rather unruly hair was out of it's normal braid pulled up into a quick bun out of the way. Kasai peeked around the door of the small room in the back of the house, he was wearing a similar comfortable outfit and looked more then slightly reluctant to be there.

Cinder smiled in amusement watching his expression before motioning him to enter the room. The small room in the back of the house had long since become Cinder's room to practice various types of fighting and excercise. The padded floor was comfortable enough she hoped that they would be able to work on the meditation excercises in ease.

"Come and take a seat...try sitting with your legs crossed like I have mine."

Kasai walked across the floor pausing to eye Cinder as she sat. With a slight sigh he manuevered into a sitting position taking a moment to find a suitably comfortable cross legged seating as he did. Ezekial was already mocking me for this. Can we just hurry it along?

Cinder chuckled slightly and glanced to the door of the room, "well I have a feeling he's getting back at you for the grief you use to give him. Now don't pay that mind. You don't want to have everyday distractions wiht you here."

Kasai gave Cinder a doubious look, yeah right.

Having gotten use to Kasai's negativity over the whole thing along with how it seemed heightened by his lack of sleep Cinder didn't pay the attitude any mind. "Roll you shoulders slightly, relax them and your muscles. Take long slow breaths in and out as you do...as your body relaxes clear your mind."

----will finish the rest later on...need sleep now----