Steel shrugged at Aux' question. "It's not like I have much choice if I want to be in public. I do have other options, I grant you, but they all come with a con of some kind." It was then that Steel's eyes brightened as if in realization, though to those who could not see his face he sort of just... straightened his posture in what was undoubtedly an 'oh yeah' sort of manner. It seemed he had remembered something. From out of seemingly nowhere he pulled... the surfboard Aux had asked him to hold onto earlier. "Did you still want this?"
Steel heard Stratos shouting something about him and ice cream. Really, he'd probably just make a mess. Processed sugar was also sort of horribly bad for canines. He should probably let everyone know where he was at... even if he was like to draw attention the second broad daylight hit him. He headed out of the tree's and toward his party members, but he was thinking more about the 'dog' at the moment. It hadn't really hurt anyone yet, but that didn't mean it wouldn't try, but the fact it was doing anything else was points against the story told by the two gentlemen on the beach. If it was really hardwired for pure destruction with no other instinct, it probably wouldn't be engaging in experiments like dancing in the market. Still, flawed observations did not for an innocent individual make, and Steel continued to keep a close eye on the subject as he stood silently by his party members.
Seeing that her companions had put up their own defense, Chrys continued her assualt on the Demon Plague. She also found herself shaking her head at her friends' antics. "Oh come on Zeno, we can only do so much at once!" She fired the comment his way in a relatively good natured way as the battle continued. OC: AP: 4/64
I'm gonna +1 Speed to get me at 50. That's 30 crowns out of 44. I've got SPD: 50(+3) and 14 Crowns
Steel sighed, having been left by himself some time back. "Well, I did very little good there." As he came within view, he saw that Ananta and Kaida seemed to be getting along now. Aux seemed better too. Good, they had taken care of their own problems. That made things convenient. He supposed he had probably gone off a little too soon. He always was something of a control freak though. He smirked to himself as he leaned back against a tree. He stayed out of sight and took to observing the 'dog.' They could have their moment while he kept a close eye on the target. Well... possible target.
Steel... was feeling an awful lot like he just wanted to kill everything. Sure, Ananta was kinda clingy and didn't always know how to read the room. But then, she came from a very different society and grew up by herself as well. Of course, his personal justification for her actions didn't mean he didn't understand where the others were coming from in being irate with her. But to once again jump to the other end of the spectrum, Ananta by herself was not what made this so far brief mission feel like the longest babysitting job in history. Aux wasn't helping anything by being so down about everything. True, he had every right to feel upset, but if Steel was waiting around for the moment he had his big revelation that moping was just going to completely waste Hikaru's sacrifice... well the Eye might be left waiting till the end of time, and as he was now he'd probably just die. Kaida was also contributing a fairly large amount. Out of four other people on the team she had already found it fit to go off on two of them... out of the three that had interacted with her. Maybe she wasn't on the best terms with Aux, and maybe Ananta wasn't always as aware of personal boundaries as she should be, but that wasn't a reason to go around being hateful. So far as Steel could recall from the Echoes, Kaida had just sort of awkwardly put up with Ananta before abruptly yelling at her. A polite, 'I'm sorry but I want to be alone right now, could you please go away?' seemed to have never occurred to her. Granted, she was upset. That was the problem, wasn't it? They were all upset, and three of them were not coping with it as well as the other two. Ananta was trying too hard to be supportive, Aux was being mopey, and Kaida was being demanding and hateful. Which again leads him back to the fact that this had barely started and already felt like babysitting. Steel stopped rather suddenly in his tracks, thoroughly going over the facts in his mind and trying to really think about what to say here. The two were still a ways away from the others, but he figured it would be best to talk to Ananta alone first. Sure, he was ticked off at all of them to some degree, but none of them were really bad people, and he had to find some way to get through to them and try to save them from themselves. Heaven knows he had needed someone to do the same for him before...
"You there, sir!" Steel directed to a nearby citizen... who was no longer there. Huh. Well, seeing as how he had no one left to experiment with, he gave the young boy some munny and muttered "Go buy yourself something sweet." before heading motioning to Ananta that he was ready to go, and the two set off. "I don't suppose we should address the obvious signs of tears in your eyes?" He asked her. "I mean, I know what happened because of those creepy echoes, but do you actually want to talk about it, or...?" So many people on such short fuses really shouldn't be interacting so soon after the event that cut said fuses so short in the first place. Unfortunately, it wasn't as if they had much of choice right now.
Steel you see, was incomprehensibly curious about two things: The first was whether or not a call to rise up against oppressors would rally anyone, or if he'd just get weird looks and called into the police for making a disturbance and the second was whether or not the populace even noticed him. There were hardly that many locals around, what with this being more of a tourist area, but it would do well enough for his purposes. "People of Hawaii! Do you truly wish to remain bound by the chains of something as paltry as tourism?! Rise up with me against those who oppress you!" ... ... Nothing. Not a single dadgum thing. Well, with the sole exception of a blank stare from the boy who had been poking him. But other than that, not even an annoyed look. "There's something odd going on here... I can't put my finger on it, but I get the feeling it's three capital letters, and the first one is an N..." The boy continued to stare up at him and asked in the most polite and adorable whisper possible: "Are you some kind of evil emperor?" Steel only stared down blankly at the child for a moment before responding with: "I'm going more for the rebel alliance." He waved a clawed paw in front of himself in a 'meh' sort of gesture. The boy seemed to think that was cool.
Yes, Hawaii. The King of tourist traps. Mostly because the locals were just about as trapped. Sure, most people got annoyed with tourist that traipsed through their homelands, but in Hawaii, the whole thing was just on a much higher level. The whole mixed population was annexed by America after some interesting events regarding the mixed ethnicity of the natives. After that, the Islands weren't given official statehood until nearly a century later. Since then, it had become a popular vacation spot... and most of the cultures most sacred ceremonies had been refashioned into parties for tourists to attend. America liked to ruin everything, didn't it? Though he supposed that was hardly the citizen's fault. Plus, who was to say that the tourism had been strictly on them? Other countries took vacations here too after all... He supposed he didn't have enough of the story to judge anyone. It was at that time that Ananta came to drag him away, muttering in a rather somber mood that the group had found their objective. The echoes had told him that, but unlike the others, he was in no rush to move on just yet. He had... something of an experiment to conduct. He stood his ground against her urgings and held up a finger in motion to wait a moment. She seemed to have been crying, but that would have to wait a moment as well.
While the voice projection was certainly a neat and interesting trick, he honestly wondered why such a thing was even occurring. All the hurtful comments and yelling at old ladies echoed around him, but the tourists around him seemed to pay no notice. Did this always happen? How had they evaded detection so long? Well... detection from the locals anyways. Having identified the locale as Hawaii, Steel's mind went off on an entirely new, though not entirely unrelated, tangent. He had been to facsimiles of earth before, both as the Eye of Storms and as... the Hunter Magus? He'd have to work on that one. The point though was that he had a small amount of knowledge to the area's history. If memory served correctly...
Steel shifted slightly, prompting a gasp of elation from the boy who had taken to poking and prodding at him with a stick. Convinced of his success, the boy redoubled his efforts in an attempt to replicate the effect. It was perhaps worth noting that Steel was, in fact, not with the others at all. While they all had gone into a much calmer town away from the rowdy beach, he was still standing at the boardwalk, having not moved an inch even as the crowds swarmed around him. However, the voices being projected to him from seemingly nowhere seemed to imply his companions well and truly thought he was there with them as if the island were no larger than a postage stamp. Interesting.
As Aux commented on his noteworthiness in comparison to the blue fluffy alien and walked off all depressed, Steel found himself contemplating how it wasn't really all that simple. After all, the alien wasn't exactly supposed to be hanging around here either. Really, the two of them were two needles in a haystack, except the haystack was like to run screaming from the two needles at any moment. He briefly considered just wandering off to somewhere quiet to remove his clothes and act like a wild animal crawling on all fours... except he wouldn't easily pass for most breeds of dog and would attract negative attention even if he accompanied someone. So standing there with a surfboard in his hands and about two-thirds of the party gone off to either have a mini-vacation or wallow, Steel found himself just... taking in the beach. He sighed as he considered joining Kaida and Stratos for Ice-cream, wondering briefly if they had sea-salt, though he discarded the possibility rather quickly. He also wasn't really sure how good an idea it was to leave Aux to himself at the moment. Kaida seemed to be doing a much better job at coping currently, which wasn't at all helped by her own blatant anger towards her friend. Unsure, Steel just stood there. A figure clad in heavy clothing on the boardwalk with clawed hands and feet, a scarf and sunglasses covering his face, and holding a large surfboard. "...Dad gum it."
Steel was honestly at a loss as all of his companions started going shopping as soon as they reached a populated area. While they all went in to browse merchandise, he could change into nothing, and essentially stuck out like a sore thumb whether he went in or not. As they filed out of the shop looking like something out of a surfer movie, Steel mourned the loss of any subtlety he once held. "Maybe I should just try to stick to the shadows..." He muttered out his idea from earlier as Kaida and Stratos started discussing tourist traps and ice cream, really only figuring Ananta or Aux would hear him.
Chrys steeled her resolve as she stared up at the monstrous wave of heartless that confronted the group. It probably wasn't good that the master had to heal them already, but she in particular had been unlucky enough to take a nasty beating. It was needed, and this was still only training after all, though she had momentarily forgotten. The entire point was to improve, and there was nothing wrong with a quick pick me up before such a powerful group of opponents. Attempting to start off more defensively than before, Chrys took the opportunity to cast a stone spell, and being mildly surprised when it came out more powerful than before. Now imbued with Stonega, Chrys rushed in to begin the fight with a few basic attacks. OC HP: 120/120 AP: 4/64 MP: 27/40 DP: 3/3 Effects: Stonega - 5 turns
As Kaida tried to re-purpose his outfit for a more covert form of operation, Steel got the general idea of what she was doing fairly quickly and tried to follow suit by adjusting his scarf to go over his muzzle. Ultimately, he wasn't sure it really helped all that much. Sure, he could almost pass for a tourist who was insane enough to wear hot, heavy clothing in tropical weather, but his hands and feet- or rather, his paws- left him quite noticeable still. He trailed after the group as they made to head for civilization, talking about various things like clothes and world climate. "Go ahead if you want, just don't expect me to follow suit." He deadpanned in response to Ananta's mention of swimsuits. "I'm already having a bit of a disguise crisis here as it is." It might actually be wise to just try and search from the shadows in his case. A thought for later, when they had actually found the town. He jumped back into the topic of world atmospheric conditions since he had yet to contribute there. "My world has a sun, but we don't see it much: It rains all the time there, and there are plenty of clouds to go with the downpour. The temperature is usually either temperate or cold." He shrugged as he listed off what he knew most would consider rather dreary skies. "I've always been fond our weather conditions, myself."
"Well, that wasn't suspicious at all." Steel muttered as Pleakley was dragged away shouting. Frankly, the alien should pipe down a bit if he was aiming to remain undetected. "Still, it didn't sound as if the 'smaller, fluffier, me' is exactly a nice guy. I recall them saying something about him using a little girl as a shield?" He was also vaguely interested to learn that there was an alien he could readily be compared to, although that was cause for another concern entirely. "Sounds like we can't do much more than play along for now, at least until we know more. So... how should we go about this? I mean... I've never really fit in all that well in the first place and now I can apparently pass for an alien."
Nothing really happened much during their long boat ride. Everyone seemed content to keep to themselves and, he assumed, wallow in horribly depressing thoughts. Not that he wasn't having a few horribly depressing thoughts of his own of course. They all had a lot to think about, and that was fine. It was the prospect of being alone with such thoughts for too long that bothered him. He shivered as he recalled his primary example of that particular kind of psychological trauma. As they cut through the ocean waves toward their destination, Kaida would carve from time to time as the others were more content to stare out at the waves or perhaps brood with their eyes shut. His companions would only look at each other when another wasn't looking, and the various amounts of anger, guilt, and pity were... worrisome. It was quite clear to him that his teammates would need his support on this. He had stayed relatively clear of his companions affairs up until this point but considering just how similar a case he held within the memories of his past life, he couldn't sit back and do nothing while Kaida and Aux suffered. Ananta he would just have to support because she was Ananta, who was a bit too naive and needed to just cool her jets sometimes. Something she proved quickly when she jumped in front of Kaida and began a rather provocative interrogation of the locals. He sighed as he stepped out of the boat just before Stratos, who... may have been stable enough to be on the support with him? Whatever the case with him at the moment, Steel chose to analyze the situation at hand. The green creature seemed to think they were locals, and the fact that four out of their group of five looked like normal humans meant that such was the general populace of this world. The two out of place were worried about being spotted, so... maybe it was best to get information out of them. Since he himself wasn't all that... standard in appearance, he came forward with a question designed to be as broad and ambiguous as it was misleading. He turned to the green one, hoping to divert attention away from Ananta's statement as he addressed him with: "Excuse me, sir? Can you tell me where we've landed?" Landed could mean so many different things after all.
Alrighty, I guess I'll start by spending a level each on both HP and AP. HP: 120 AP: 64 I'll pick Spark as my new spell, cause... well I needed an attack spell, and that one, in particular, fits pretty darn perfectly with my stratagem up to this point. Now for the harder bit... upgrades. First I'll upgrade Cura to Curaga. I just think it will help a lot. Next I'll boost Reflera to Reflega. Then we promote Stonera to Stonega. And I'll finish it all by upgrading my newly obtained Spark to Sparkra.
"Thanks!" Chrys called to Avra as the soothing wave of a Cura washed over her. With the wave just about over, it made sense to try and wipe out the rest of the heartless in one fell swoop. Charging forwards, she bashed a Search Ghosts rather hard. It made quite a loud thud noise as its head became the target of quite a bit of force, and it drifted slowly to the ground rather dazed. She crushed it with an overhead swing before moving on to another target. She took out another five opponents in relatively short order, crushing them decisively. With that, only two Search Ghosts remained. OC: Enemies Defeated: 6 Search Ghosts Effects: MP Haste Water has ended HP: 31/ 115 MP 4/40 AP: 0/62+10 DP: 3/3 Enemies Remaining: 2 Search Ghosts
Though Chrys was struggling at the moment, she refuse to give up. Swiping more MP from an opponent, She used Cura on herself as well as on Avra, as she was still in quite a rough spot as well. Having done that, Chrys leaped forward to attack two Search Ghosts. One managed to dodge as she came at them with an overhead swing, but she spun back around and obliterated it rather swiftly to cut off any chance of counter attack. OC: HP: 28/115 MP: 3/40 AP: 28/62(+10) DP: 3/3 Effects: Water: 1 More Turn MP Haste: +1 Enemies Defeated: 2 Search Ghosts
