Welcome to Gaia! ::

Jordan set his pencil down on the desk again and looked up at the quiet voice. A woman he didn't recognize was standing just outside his room, looking a bit nervous. One of the new trainees, and, thank god, not one of the argumentative ones. "Hi," he said and smiled, relaxing a little. Part of him had honestly expected Leon or Tedan to follow him and demand some kind of explanation or reckoning; instead, a pretty girl. He'd definitely take that outcome. "You're one of the new trainees, right?"

Now that took some amazing deductive reasoning, Ferros drawled.

Uh oh. Was this about a grudge after all? Or - might it be something else? Jordan nodded. "I was Alpha One," he said, and waited for her reaction.

Jordan oofed as he was tackled, but hugged the girl back, a grin spreading over his face as comprehension caught up with him. There was only one group of people who called him Boss, and that was his Phoenixes. "Hey," he said. "Good to see you made it." He pulled back to get a good look at her, now that he could get a look at her face. "My name's Jordan Miller," he offered.

He shook her hand, then got up from his chair and went over to sit down at the small table that occupied the middle of the floor. "I guess saying come in is redundant, but you can sit down if you want," he offered. "Nice to meet you - again."

Ahem.

"Oh, right. This is Ferros," he said, holding up the heavy ring on his right index finger. "He insists on proper introductions."

"Besides myself, there's five others awake," he told her. "Z4, Jerry; A2, Madison; A3, Ennea;, A7, Robert; and Z8, Petra. They'll be glad to see you too. Sorry about that - uh - thing in the hall," he said, and rubbed at the back of his neck sheepishly. "Forgot that we've had a few months to cool down and learn to work together."

Jordan chuckled. "Guess I should be grateful Ferros was accommodating about it," he said, and stroked the band of the ring absently with his thumb. "She's pretty, though. Are you adjusting okay?" It had taken him some time to get used to Ferros's constant presence, and he'd gotten lucky enough to get a weapon he got along with well; judging by some of the other Strays' occasional comments, that wasn't necessarily true for everyone.

At Reine's question, he huffed a quiet sigh. "Quite a bit," he said. "We had to run a nasty psychological evaluation course before being sent to the Cove. You're not sorry to have missed that one, though, believe me. Er - golem training, we used golems to infiltrate a Halloween festival and get some firsthand experience with the freaks. That was interesting. You'll undoubtedly get that too." He left out the details on that outing. Some of it had been, well, pretty ridiculous.

"And the haunted house mission." The corners of his mouth pulled down at the recollection. "That was a little over a week ago. It started off all right, but ... " His eyes went distant, seeing again the huge thing that had been not-Aria and her weapon, cascading sheets of flame, Madison and Jerry injured and lying far too still. "It was a disaster," he said. "The division leads are still sore and on edge from that, too." He gave her a faint smile. "You might have already seen that Caelius and Dr. H are - ah - not the most pleasant of people to be around."

"Practical? Moreso than carrying them, I'd guess," Jordan said. "Wearing her unsummoned form means you won't have to worry about having a pocket to carry her in. You won't have to take them off to summon her - here, watch," and he pushed back from the table to give himself a little room, then held out his hand and summoned Ferros, the ring's red stone flaring brightly before it dissolved in a swirl of metallic motes, spinning outwards to rematerialize and solidify in his grasp as the massive hammer. He grinned at Reine, his pride and affection for his partner obvious in his expression, then let Ferros return to his unsummoned form. "I don't take him off," he explained. "Always right where I can reach him."

"It'll take some time to get used to it," he added, watching her expression change and guessing that she was also talking to Alynthe. "But it's hard to remember what it was like before."

Boring, Ferros put in. Can't possibly have been interesting without me around.

Jordan ignored the comment. "The golems range from lumpy things that don't look particularly human at all to very realistic. What type you're using will depend on what you're using it for." He paused; it seemed that whoever had woken up the hatchlings had neglected to explain this part. "This is going to sound weird, and possibly hard to believe," he said, "but Halloween isn't just a holiday. It's a world. The shadows' world. The monsters and horrors that are jokes and legends to most people are real. They're created from, and feed off of, human FEAR. That's what we're here for. We can see them, and as Hunters, we can fight back." He ran a hand through his hair. "It's a lot to take in at once," he admitted, "but you probably won't have to take my word for it for long."

At her question, he chuckled wryly. "If only. Caelius is the division head for the Death Hunters, but he seems to be in charge of the trainees. For the most part, beyond basic instruction like how to work with your weapon, training has been of the sort where he throws us in the deep end and tells us to swim." Jordan sighed. "He's highly skilled and knows what he's doing, and there's a lot we can learn from him, but try not to draw his attention, and don't take it too personally when he tells us we all suck and can't do anything right. Also?" He smiled slightly. "Don't comment on the haircut. That's, er, a souvenir of the whole disaster thing."

"Heh, thanks. It'll get easier for you, I'd imagine." Jordan hesitated a moment, decided not to mention that as far as he knew, Robert and his weapon didn't talk; most of the apparent mismatches had settled over time, and it wouldn't help to make Reine uneasy about it when she and Alynthe seemed to be on decent terms already.

"Practice is good. I'd be happy to help. There's not much to do around here, I'm afraid, but keeping in shape and training helps pass the time. Also keeps your weapon happy, if Ferros is a good example. He likes fighting." He smiled. "You'll get better at it."

Hey, you like it too, Ferros put in.

Did I say I didn't? It had been a surprise at first, but welcome enough; he guessed that if he was going to spend the rest of his life fighting monsters, getting some form of personal satisfaction out of the process was a good thing.

"I'm not sure about decent," he warned. "The man's a sadist. Just listen when he's telling you things and keep your head down. You'll do okay."