[Open] | They say goldfish have no memory

[sublimated]

Method: Action or prose
Who: Kanda and anyone who wants to run into him
Where: Byalan Island (various)
When: Feb 9-13
What: Kanda killing things exploring the island's waterways and caverns.

Comments

Feb 9

[sublimated]

Kanda made his way through the stone arch of the entrance pausing for just long enough to let his eyes adjust to the dim light, surprised to see that the interior of the cave--or was it some sort of water-filled catacomb?--appeared to be lit with a fire glow.

He let his hand rest on the hilt of his sword. This wasn't what he'd been expecting.

Feb 9

[presentarms]

Mary didn't know if she was comforted or uneasy about the similarity that Rune-Midgarts and her own Midgard had to one another. Byalan Island had been a familiar destination for Izlude natives where she had been from, and on the surface this iteration of it seemed very similar. Without the religious nutbags, though, she hoped.

As she approached the caves for her first day of questing, she noticed someone that she had seen a few times around the ship crossing into the fishy darkness, catching up with him unintentionally as he paused just inside. Though apprehensive about others, she ventured a conversation. Couldn't hurt, especially if they were eventually supposed to be working together on some sort of greater mission.

"First time in the caves?" She ventured, noticing that he looked younger than she had previously thought.

[sublimated]

It couldn't hurt...if she was talking to anyone else. As it happened, she was having the ill fortune of stumbling across the man who was probably the most short-tempered anti-social person on the ship, and at a time when one of the things he most valued about being off the ship was getting to be away from all the damn people.

On the other hand, he had a modicum more patience for most women than he did for most men. And she hadn't done anything in particular to irritate him yet. (Though there was something perilously close in the suggestion that he was some kind of novice who needed guidance in a cave, whether he'd been in it before or not.)

He looked at her over his shoulder, frowning as she came up to him, "This isn't my world." Hence, implicitly, everywhere the ship took them, it was his first time there.

[presentarms]

So he was like her, then. Another displaced individual from another place and time, pulled here by some demon - intentionally or unintentionally. It would appear that the entire guild was comprised of such refugees. There weren't very many from Rune-Midgarts around. Mary wondered if this was because off-worlders were considered dangerous, or if there weren't many people from Rune-Midgarts left.

Mary nodded, expression neutral. "It's not a difficult run," she said finally, stopping beside him and extending her hand out.

"My name is Mary Schroeder."

[sublimated]

He looked at her. He looked at her proffered hand. He looked back at her.

"Kanda," he said without making any move towards a further or more formal greeting. He didn't shake hands, just like he didn't waste his time or energy on social pleasantries. Unfortunately, for him that included basic common courtesy. But at least he'd taken his hand off his sword hilt for the time being.

Practically as soon as he had said his name, his eyes were trained again at the passage of cavern before them, and he began to move farther in to explore what lay ahead. If she chose to follow him, so be it. He supposed there was nothing he could really do about it here.

[presentarms]

She withdrew her hand, opting to nod when he spoke his name. He was from another place with other customs. For all she knew, she had offended him - she hadn't been trained as a diplomat, after all. At least she knew who he was at this point, and that had been the intention from the beginning.

Introductions over, Mary also continued her walk into the cave along the same path as Kanda - dipping into her pouch and taking out a bottle of icy blue liquid and sipping its contents and attempting to suppress the chill that it gave her.

[sublimated]

It was a convenient out, that notion of cultural differences and alternate customs. In truth, the practice was just the same where he came from. He simply didn't care about being rude. However the fact that she apparently didn't care about him being rude either actually won her a few points with him. Maybe it meant that she would be less irritating to be around than some people.

He glanced at her as she took out the vial of blue liquid, recognizing it from his conversation with that woman--the ship's captain, he thought--just before he'd left. He'd turned down all of the potions she'd offered, since to his mind he needed none of them. But it was, he supposed, interesting to see another taking them, leaving him vaguely curious as to what their real effects would be in practice.

"You use that stuff," he observed with a jerk of his chin towards the bottle. "Why?"

[presentarms]

Mary looked back at Kanda, plugging the bottle up to save the rest of the liquid for later and putting it back in her bag.

"If you have a way to dilute the power of your enemy, it saves you a lot of time both in battle fighting and out of battle recovering from wounds. I've found it to be a better investment than healing, in the long run."

[sublimated]

"Until you run out," he said without bothering to look at her. He didn't elaborate on what he meant exactly, since to him the implications were perfectly clear. But if they weren't by his words alone, his tone indicated that he found the justification, like the act itself, to be suspect and foolhardy.