Zetaark

Looking through the wreckage, outside of miscellaneous articles from the people who may have lived here, the place appears to have been stripped clean. Everything that remains has little value, and the rubble contains little of note. Idei also notices the lack of signs of a struggle, suggesting that the inhabitants left well before the house was sacked. ------------- "Hah, that's the spirit Belros. I'd love to see you and Rico seriously go at it but," Randel stops, indicating his wounds. "Chances are I won't be around to see it. At the very least, take him down a peg or two. For the true Silver Ravens. Alright?" he asks, looking at Belros once more. ------------- "You'd be surprised what knowledge you can find if you look hard enough," the shaman replies curtly. "Work with thieves for a while and you find tomes here and there in the strangest places. As for learning, older guild members who picked up a thing or two tend to mentor new recruits with the potential," he answers. ------------- "If I'm right, at the very least this won't be boring," he mutters before moving towards the building. "Madante, the three of us will be looking inside for a bit. Make sure to keep an eye on things here. We shall return," he crones before leading the pair inside the central building. The inside seems to be completely ransacked, though unlike the outside houses, nothing appears to have been taken. Instead, furniture, books, papers, and all sorts of objects were haphazardly tossed about the main hall. A fireplace is present on the back wall, and two staircases are present on either side, each littered with broken ornaments and papers. "They must have wanted the contents of this place rather badly, though I feel that they did not find what they came here for. You two can search the upper rooms. I'll look down here for a while."

Sasha didn't quite remember the name Wintermute, but she considered it might be a place to start. Then again, she did want to make sure this thing didn't end up in sketchy places. She didn't want to give people a new way to dispose of unwanted individuals. Before she could make another decision on the matter however, her phone vibrated. Checking the message, she sent a reply back. "Can you at least tell me what type of job it may be? I'll probably end up showing up anyhow, but I'd like to know what I'm getting into."

"Guess they made sure the armaments were decent enough. Still doesn't explain why they didn't use automatons instead of people but I guess we can figure that out later," she muses before compiling all of her notes and started to look up some Society contacts. The person she normally would go to for this is busy on another assignment, and the only other free person from her client list is...well she'd rather not get them involved with this stuff if she could help it. It's for the best really. And with those two options out, Sasha decides to look through her contacts for someone able to properly examine the more magical functions present in the exoskeleton.

"For the love of..." Sasha groans after running through the scan. Everything about this exoskeleton screamed of being a cheap job. And to make it worse, the things could have simply been automatons if whoever made them really cared enough. Putting aside her frustration for the needless sacrifice of life, she decided to focus her attention on the armaments present on the exoskeleton. She was half curious if corners were cut here too, or whether or not there was actually something of note present.

B7, Jav the troub, canto to B9

"Sheesh. Guess whoever made these really didn't want the users to be talking after," Sasha frowns as she takes note of her observations. The exoskeleton seemed less like armor and more like a glorified death trap for whoever was in it. It seemed to be powered by spirit energy primarily, and the spikes appeared to be positioned so that the wearer would almost certainly die from using it. The next question then was whether the spikes were stuck into the poor soul who had to wear it or whether they were run through the body mid fight. Preparing her equipment, she started to crack open the armor to see where things were attached, along with any other oddities she could find.

Before Madante could respond to Idei's request, the shaman who had watched everything spoke. "You won't find anyone else here, dead or alive. Most of the civilians fled when Rico and his group first came by. As for the houses themselves, most of them were cleaned out, but you might still find something they overlooked," he informs him. "Is that right? Well Idei, if you still want to search around and try and find something, you're more than welcome to," he tells the nomad. ---------------------------- "Trouble? Not at its current state, but it could become trouble later. Provided it's what I think it is..." he replies, trailing at the end.

"Heh, I guess that's fair. Even so, will you really hide behind the others when things get rough from here? Are you going to run away when you have to confront Rico? Or will you face him, like you did me?" he asks, looking Belros in the eye. As Belros and Randel continue their talk, a cloaked man appears again between Myrdwyn and Cadence. "It seems that things here have been resolved. Now then..." he trails off as he looks at Cadence, then Myrdwyn. "Would you two be willing to help me look into something here?" he crones.

"Guess my schedule's free. Perfect," she grins as she grabs the exoskeleton from its hiding place and heads into one of the back rooms in her garage. This place was sort of like a personal studio room, except used for more of her volatile tinkering. Though this time its less volatile and more corpse, not that it bothered Sasha that much. Once she set the exoskeleton on the table, she grabbed an assortment of tools, some for machinery tinkering, others for dealing with human anatomy, and started too look over the thing, checking for any glaring details before poking into the thing.

"Aaaamd he's gone," Sasha mutters as Tony makes his leave. Now that he's left, Sasha goes through the checklist of what she needs for his bike construction and looks around the shop to see what she does and doesn't have on hand. Following that, she checks her schedule to see if anyone else is coming by in the near future.

"Well, I was planning on making a few modifications to it to better fit me at all points. As it is now, the armor functions quite well and is surprisingly compatible with me in terms of ability. As for its form, it's no trouble to me like this but you see..." Ritsu pauses as she transforms into her beast form. "As you could guess, the armor doesn't fit this form nearly as well, which is something I intend to remedy," Ritsu explains in a more mechanical voice than when she was in her normal form. After circling around the armor once, she transforms back and nods her head. "I do believe it is possible to reformat this armor in such a way that it can accommodate both of my forms, and while I do possess the ability to actually handle the machinery, having some help would be of great benefit," Ritsu finishes.

"Tuesday huh? That should work out, barring any odd occurrences. Helps that I have more than a day to get everything set up too," Sasha chuckles, thinking of a past request. "So, anything else you'll need with the bike? Or will the mentioned things be enough for you," she asks, confirming his request.

"A custom order huh? Is your old bike too busted to fit that one or do you have plans for it still," Sasha asks as she starts writing a list of the aforementioned parts and starts looking around her garage. As she looks around, she's then reminded of a previous incident regarding Tony and a rush job she had to pull. "By the way, when exactly do you need this thing by? Just out of curiosity," she asks, hoping that it isn't something ridiculous like last time.

"They've wasted no time in engaging us it seems," Yuel sighs as she readies her tome in retaliation. "Now then, let us begin." Zap Spearman B

Getting back into her garage, she stows the exoskeleton somewhere it wont be seen or noticed before checking which clients would show up. "Tony huh? Here's hoping his bike didn't blow up on him again," she chuckles before getting out various tools. Most of them were for adding or tweaking modifications on a bike, but a few others seemed ill suited for it. Those were for something else, in the event that his request wasn't for yet another bike mod. Once she got settled, she decided to wait for her client to arrive.

"Sticking together would be a good idea, especially with one more to look after," Yuel mutters, seeing the group of enemies before her. Considering her options, she decides to group up with Bea and go from there. Move to Y8

Sitting at one of the tables reading some sort of tome, Yuel looks up as she hears Cassidy and Bea make their remarks and head towards the door. "I understand you two are ready for action, but you two aren't going anywhere without me," Yuel states as she gets up, closing the tome in her hand. "It wouldn't do for something to happen to either of you and for me to not be around. That being said, if the rest of us are going towards the harbor as well, we might as well all go. Any objections?"

"I see. I was situated in the battle against Lancer, which...well..." Ritsu trails off, wondering exactly how to explain what happened. "Well I guess the best way to explain is simply to show you," she says before bringing out the plush version of Lancer. "It seems that Dackly has the ability to turn enemies into plushies under certain circumstances, and this is the result," she finishes, before turning her attention back to her armor. "Incidentally, would you happen to have skills with tinkering with equipment such as this?" Ritsu asks, pointing to her crusader armor.

"Is that so?' Ritsu responds in a rather dull tone, noting Hiroki's slight trembling. She didn't recall which group she was assigned to, and she had no idea what may have gone on with the other groups. Setting her crusader armor to the side for a moment, she begins looking it over before talking to Hiroki again. "Remind me again, which squad were you assigned to again for the most recent task? And how did things go?" she decides to ask in an attempt to learn more about how the other squads fared.

Ritsu: Deciding that the courtyard was too busy for her to do her maintenance work, Ritsu decided to go into the armory to work. For starters, she needed to re-calibrate the armor that she received. Though it suited her abilities, it suited her actual form less so. As she prepared to begin her adjustments, she noticed a familiar face present in the armory. "Hiroki? How are you faring?" she decides to ask. Though the two had only previously interacted once, it wouldn't hurt to converse with the other people in the group. And besides, having some conversation during work tended to make the time, and work, pass by rather quickly.

"Quit calling me boss. I'm not the boss of anything anymore. When it comes down to it, I couldn't keep Rico from taking over the guild, and in the end I got reduced to just another one of his pawns," he groans, thinking of the past. "At any rate, Rico's not the same guy you might have known before. Apparently he's been making deals with all sorts of people for a while now, which apparently brought him here. Supposedly there's some hidden secret in this place, but he couldn't find squat. His frustration is half the reason this place is as wrecked as it is, but the locals managed to escape, though I have no idea where or if Rico went to follow them. All I know is that we were sent back to see if we could find anything out about that secret before we bailed," he explains, gasping through his words at times, but still managing not to drop dead before all that needed to be said was said. "Tell me Belros, when we fought, were you satisfied with yourself? Answer honestly."

[Enemy Phase] "Got to say, Belros found some interesting fellas while he's been away," Randel remarks as he looks towards Madante. "You. I don't think I got your name when you came up here along with Belros. Care to tell?" "I am Madante, captain of this group. What of it?" "You're the captain?" he asks in mild astonishment. "Wouldn't have pegged you for one personally, but shows what I know I guess. Not that it matters too much now," he shrugs before readying his magic once again. "So then...captain. Think you can take me on?" he goads before striking. Randel Attacks Madante Readying two orbs of dark magic, Randel sends them flying towards Madante. Using his magical sword, he cuts through one orb, while sidestepping the second. "Well well well, you're better than I gave you credit for. Though dodging will only get you so far," he remarks, staring down Madante. [Ally Phase] "Well I'm glad to know I'm better than your clearly high expectations of me" Madante sneers, annoyed with Randel's remarks. "And yes, I suppose I'm not the greatest captain in the world. But you know," Madante pauses, pouring magical energy into his sword. "At the end of the day, I'm still the captain of this crew. And as its captain, I'm going to take you down here and now!" Madante shouts as the magic surrounding his sword becomes blinding. Madante gets his weight on and Attacks Randel Readying himself, Madante infuses his blade with large amounts of magic, causing it to form a large sword of light. Putting his entire being into it, Madante brings the sword of light down on Randel, who cannot dodge or defend against the attack, causing him to collapse on the ground, defeated and wounded, but not quite dead. [Victory] Final Results "Hah...ha...looks like the captain really can hold his own," Randel wheezes, collapsing to the ground. "Boss!" the shaman, who had previously watched the fighting, had now come Randel's aid before being stopped by him. "No no, don't interfere. They bested me, and what happens now is up to them. Just like before..." his voice trails off as he looks to the crumpled Belros, then back to Madante. "Hey, would you do a dying man a favor and pick Belros back up. There's some things I need to let him know before I kick it." "Alright," he replies, as he moves to treat some of Belros' wounds and sit him up in front of Randel. "Bel, you back with the living?" he asks once Belros is leaned back up, hoping to make sure Belros can understand what he will tell him.

Riding forward, Rayne and Randel exchange blows, though the javelin is knocked off course by the magic, which fades from the impact. Selia rushes forward to strike Randel with a blast of light magic, which connects. In response, Randel unleashes his own magic, which somehow manages to hit Selia, dropping her to the ground. Cheat Sheet:

Idei takes a shot at Randel, but the distance causes the shot to miss its mark. Cheat Sheet:

Moving fast, Selia rushes in and blasts the scavenger, taking him down. Stumbling but still resolved, Belros moves to strike Randel, only for him to sidestep his strike. Completely open, Randel envelops his fist in dark magic and lands a direct hit onto Belros, once again taking him down. "Good resolve, but you couldn't drive it home," Randel says as he looks towards the now crumpled Belros. Cheat Sheet: