Franco

IC: An Ussalman. I put my hand back at my side and stand straight, replying with a nod.

That sums up the series rather nicely.

IC: I move my hand on the shell, scratching behind Samu's stalks to calm him. I think Ussals were one of the best parts of the Ussalry. They're good animals. I would ride if I wouldn't crush them. I stand up, keeping my fingers in contact with the crab's back. I don't know about spending all my time kneeling in the street, but I can give advice. "Reward him for discipline more than you punish him for breaking it." Everything likes to be loved, and this Matoran loves Samu. Samu may not understand that yet. Be good to him, and he will understand love and show it back.

IC: Cero considered his options. Kyle's argument was fair, and it also would allow him to observe any more intriguing accidents, perhaps even giving him a greater insight into the strange behavior he had recently witnessed. On the other hand, Cero had always bonded with captures alone, and he wasn't comfortable with publicly training yet. "We split," he agreed with Esen.

Oh, I have a new boss. Would you look at that.

IC: Ussals... Haven't worked with those in a while. I slowly kneel on the side of the path and feel its shell with my hand. Smooth, clean. Taken care of. I don't reply, but I look at the Matoran. "This one is yours."

Then the partnership between Luroka and Chambliss is a very unique one, indeed. I'll watch to see what more is to it.

How did I come to know Luroka? Over a steak in Le-Metru. Though mind control and/or advertisements in the Villainous Yellow Pages seem more likely.

Belatedly... -Post-Ko Musings- Reidak l Sulov

IC: God, why didn't I get the Hiko? I know you're busy. I know I shouldn't complain. I'm trying to focus. But I don't know. We won, I thought, we did it. We solved the big problem. We were cleaning up what was left. I saved Kol, I killed Rahkshi. Good. Great. Close to the end. Then the Lavapool blew up and Piraka got into the Vault and Ko got attacked. We are so far. God, I know we were going to win. This was a good line of play. What was wrong with it? I didn't get places fast enough. I knew about Echelon, I thought I could handle Hiemalis first. Wrong. I knew about the Piraka, I thought I could meet up with the others and we could move quickly. Wrong. There was no time. I had to do as I did and do more. The Kimi didn't help me. I saw Thok, hunted him in my territory, couldn't catch him. What good is seeing the target if I can't move quickly enough to hit it? It was a misplay. I promised I would fight for the village and it wasn't good enough. So I promised I would fight for the island, and it was good enough then, not now. Now one of their masks would do better. Auporo to discern them or Tauhaka to fight them or Hiko to catch them. What good is responsibility for the world if it doesn't come with that power? ...Except the Hiko wouldn't be power. The Hiko couldn't tell me how to locate Hiemalis or Echelon or anyone else. I wouldn't have known the Piraka in the Vault, I wouldn't have saved Joske, I wouldn't have met up with Reordin and Leah and talked about a plan. I wouldn't have been able to solve-- No. Words. Getting stuck in them. "What if"s kill. Questions are for later. Don't think about it, really. Yes. Need to get back on track. Focus. When I was old enough to go around by myself, that was something I did. It lets the body and mind wander. It gave the dark parts in my mind the rest they needed to figure things out. Watching made me see things in the ways other people would. It freed me from my world. I think it's time to do that again. I walk past my reflection out the door and close it behind me, trying to find sense in the city. OOC: Sulov is open for interaction as he walks the streets.

IC: You escape an empire. You eat a leviathan. You fight off a bounty hunter. You attack a village, fight a few heroes, and then you break into the biggest cache of busted items this side of the universe. But you take one village and everyone loses their minds. The Makuta-worshipers made a temple. The Koros pooped their pants. And I'm pretty sure Thok and Avak just built a store and tied the knot. Something is wrong with this picture, and I'm pretty sure it's not Avak smooching a woman. See, this is nothing new. You conquer a place. You strut around in it. You sit around in it. You get a setup there, maybe you start thinking about your next. You draw off everything it has to offer, enjoy the finest morsels of life, et cetera. Things look good. They are. Then someone else comes in and takes the place. And presto, it's gone and so are you. By staying in that place, by just sucking out what it's got and coming back for more, you're attaching yourself to it. You give your enemies something to sever. That's why the refugees have their unmentionables in knots, that's why the Koros are afraid of the big, bad evil: they are what they live in. Their nests allow them comfort so that they can get fat and waste their miserable lives whining about economics and imaginary villains. Decadence, stagnation is to a vulture as shelter is to a fresh carcass. Seeing nothing but a vulture will make you a vulture, too, and then you'll be content to eat whatever scraps the big cat left behind. You won't know what to do when the big cat decides to eat it all. Settling kills a man. He's a shark, you know, one of the ones that needs to keep ramming water through its gills; stop moving, stop living. And you know how sharks live.

IC: Cero did not sit as much as he fell and stayed perpendicular to the floor. He felt the bed beneath him. He reflected that it was good to have a foundation. Lately, that had been absent; when he spoke to Kyle first, it had been prompted only by common courtesy. And since then, his actions had been, likewise, without precedent. Entering a tournament? He hadn't prepared for that. Joining another traveler? He grew stronger alone, not with others. Talking? He tried to avoid it. He didn't want to waste anyone's time. Yet he'd taken the leap. Now he saw the consequences. Aridez had evolved, and if Kyle was right, that meant a beast worth his weight in trouble. His traveling plan, and his regimen by extension, lay at the mercy of two strangers. He had witnessed extremely private behavior in public. Where his discipline had once reigned was now a web of intrigue. He was at a corner between strands. Before this, he learned of the world through observation. He traveled without changing what was around him, and though he always stayed by people, he rarely talked to them. He only spent or earned to survive. He had friends, they were simply a notch beneath on the totem pole. At present, he wasn't sure any of that was true. He wasn't sure that was good. But looking at the prize he'd earned for the tournament, and thinking of Kyle, he wasn't sure it was bad, either. He quickly smiled, then summoned Buitre, Piedra and Sombra. He needed to catch up with them while the others rested. They deserved something for their fighting, too. Perhaps he could give them a gift. One of Buitre's feathers fluttered to the ground, and he eyed it, remembering the molting he had kept to track her growth. His companions were still a notch down, but from this perspective, they looked even enough for an exchange.

IC: She was a tease, this danger, a piece of work if Gyn ever saw one. She lured with soft rustling that stirred his Rahk blood for the hunt, danced in the pitch black just beyond sight. Yet she showed nothing. An accursed , he thought, an amateur who never learned how to entertain, thinks escalation has to be up and not diagonal and the story has one writer. I have news for Miss Danger: love is a game made for two. We write it together in the pounding of our veins and the narrowness between breaths. Action must not merely elevate us but move us forward so that we climb the mountain of greatness. For now, we are all that exists in the world, Danger; the dust beneath my feet and the cowards at my back, the mint webs at my side and the licorice air before me, none of it means anything but you. You, stepping at my pace, are me. Do you understand? We are not two ships passing in the night, we are the sea in their middle. We are the indivisible common denominator. We may not meet again in this way but we are timeless, for we have existed as long as the hunt, and we will find each other in some future. See that as I do. And if we are the ocean, then let our wave, my Danger, crash and swell again. Let us break at the pinnacle above the base. Love needs no context but love, so let us love fiercely. As Gyn said this silently, he was listening, growing accustomed to the droning motion of the others behind and himself and hearing nothing except the sound in the blackness before him. He isolated the slight vibration and reset his heart to match. He mapped its progress and shifted his head, triangulating its position. He found himself where it had been and smiled. He flicked his crossbow, and its mounted light, toward the place he sensed the sound originated. Gyn thought: Danger is mine. Let us love fiercely.

B for Onu-Wahi and a dungeon crawl.

Blood will always be copper to me. What else to make pennies?

IC: Cero saw and did not move. Those eyes were all the more reason to do as Esen said. He had never seen her in any state except troubled or sleepy, and if finding a place to stay was what it took to change that, then he would do it. He needed very much to restore the happiness he was sure she once had. He needed to administer justice. "The center."

I wouldn't go into online roleplay, because the Gate was what hooked me on the idea of interaction, via digital proxy, with fellow weirdos also having keyboards. I'd probably practice writing in another way entirely.

Chambliss: putting his life at steak since being shot at, putting others' lives at steak via utter disregard for the speed limit. Very nice.

IC: Cero looked up from contemplation and shrugged, emulating Kyle. "Maybe we could carry her out," he offered. His medical knowledge was limited, and his social savvy even more, but Esen's behavior made him feel like waking was not the right call.

B: A Whole New World. Have fun.

IC: He nodded, returning to the visible ease of linear movement.

IC: "No...I mean, yes--no. Wait, I mean..." Cero inhaled deeply, coiling. He saw a better future in one discrete thought at a time. "I mean, no, that's not rude of you to ask, and yes, I am a trainer because of that. I had nothing after that, and I was dying." He talked with a fervent energy and one eye on that. "But Team Magma saved me. So, I would like to do what they did."

Speaking for Sulov here, this is certainly his case. The Kimi is obviously unique, but its passive nature and his tight lips mean that the Maru and, perhaps, Onepu have an idea of what it does.

IC: Cero laughed and stopped with the same suddenness. He relaxed, folding back into the tight box of discipline. "Aridez is proud, I guess. But he's always known the world doesn't revolve around him." So I hope. "My oldest friend is my Probopass, Piedra, and it showed Aridez the benefits of working with others instead of working over them. "We," he said, thinking of his team, "know we need benefits." He smiled slightly. "We're started at the bottom, so we must go up."