[Sarai and Samiel]

Yume turned to watch Aidan as he headed down the scrapheap a ways, watching him thoughtfully. It looked, to her, as though there was something a bit wrong with or for him. In spite of two of the abruptly arrived three being, apparently, friends of his, they seemed to irk him somehow. The immensely prideful Lycrios not nearly so much as the extremely tall man. The last foot or so of her tail lashed slowly as she watched Dreiks alight a good hundred feet down the slope.

Meanwhile, Ancolyte had begun the welcomings, having noted that Yume gave no objections to the additions to the group.

"Well then," the priest uttered cheerily, "I am fairly sure we aren't waiting for anything in particular, so that would probably be a 'no'. May I welcome you to our monster-hunt?"

<Monster hunt?> Galen questioned, in his odd, overly-elaborate language. <What sort of a monster are you hunting? Is there any way in which I can help you? Serve some purpose?>

Most of those present had not even the faintest idea what the former Emperor of the land of Eternity was saying. Dreiks might have, but he was far out of earshot now, and Lycrios did not notably respond to the large man's utterance, instead cutting in with a few words of his own.

"This promises to be interesting." He half-muttered. Then, more audibly, "Sure. Nothing quite like beating the **** out of a big 'scary nasty monster'." This last was spoken in a slightly mocking tone of voice, and while Galen could not understand the words, the tone of voice and the mental impression was rather distinct. He did not notice, for whatever reason, Yume abruptly beginning to smolder slightly.

<I do not think it would be a good idea to dismiss any foe so easily.> He stated, cautiously. <Often we are sorely surprised by that which seems much less than it is- and even that which appears to be very great, can be far, far greater still.>

"Shut up, you!" Lycrios growled. "You have no idea-"

"You have no idea what you're talking about." Yume declared, her casual half-slur abruptly gone. Her voice, normally fairly quiet, was abruptly sharp and quite audible despite her facing away from the others. "You are welcome to help us, because I know that if the thing we are after still exists, we are going to need every last bit we can get, but trying to trivialize this only makes you look like an idiot, and an *******."

That said, she hopped down to follow Aidan's path, absently noting that he was putting away his flask- he must carry that thing absolutely everywhere. Then again, she wasn't one to speak, given how all that she owned was about her person. Her long, scaled tail trailed behind her as she moved, using different rebound points from the bare-chested man who had preceded her. While she was not able to prevent more than a few of her chosen landing spots from shifting after her passage, her motion was, impressively, smoother down the slope than Aidan's had been, though it gradually roughened out to about the same.

Lycrios was still blinking as Ancolyte shook his head, smile seeming a bit strained as he looked at the lycanthrope, then turned himself to proceed at a much more leisurely pace down the junkheap.

Ghona and Zado were much less circumspect about their traveling, not so much darting and bouncing from point to point as plowing their way through the mostly metallic garbage, trusting their respective armors to protect their feet. Galen followed after, hovering ever-so-slightly above the jagged metal, making it a non-issue.

As he also moved to head after the others, Lycrios glanced at the spot Yume had been standing in when she spoke, and shivered slightly. Something about her tone of voice.... He may have been very sure of what he could do, but his instincts, stronger in one more connected with their 'animal' side as he was, told him that he would have to be fairly stupid to continue making declarations about how easy this would be. Not so much from danger out of the 'monster' the group was apparently after, as from the idea that it would put himself on Yume's enemy list.

He did not know why, but as he headed down the slope, last of the group, he got the impression that said list was a very short one, for more than one reason.


Repster did not turn to look as first Yume, then the others, arrived behind him, instead staring off away from the junkheap peak at the edge of forest just visible in the distance.

"I saw some people here..." Zado mentioned, as the group regathered. "They seemed... surprised... at my appearance. The technology here is... woefully inadequate."

Yume nodded slightly, in affirmation, before turning to look at the others. "I think we should make fer th' forest. Anyone disagree with that?"

"I like it." Lycrios opined, not much caring for the odors of oil, metal, and rubber about the area.

Ancolyte tossed in his own two bits as well. "It is as good a direction to go as I can find."

"Awright." Yume declared, getting no contrary opinions. "Forest it is. This is gonna be a bit of a hike, so any o' you not used t' exercise might wanna stretch a bit." She paused, looking at the others, then nodded to herself.

"Floaty guy," She indicated Galen, "If you c'n unnerstand me, I want you to go up high a bit, about five hunnerd feet er so, an' keep a lookout. You see anythin' movin' around looks dangerous, you come down an' tell Aidan here. Werewolf," This to Lycrios, "Go ahead an' scout for'ard a bit on th' ground. Rest of us'll all move together. Walkin' speed, everyone, on account 'a we gotta let Ancolyte keep up."

Directions given, she turned, and began hiking down into the first of a series of valleys in the junkyard, not having to leap anymore due to the much more shallow slopes. Not once did Yume look to see if any of the others were either following or following directions, for two reasons. One was that she remained as alert as ever, and since she usually travelled alone, she would be more than able to take care of herself. The other was that she trusted that the others would do what they felt was appropriate.

Silence seemed to be the order of the day for a while, Yume not inclined to talk, Aidan occupied by his slowly growing bloodlust, and the others more or less doing their own things.

It was Ancolyte who began humming first, and then singing softly, though he soon found that Yume was quite energetically whistling along with the tune. It went a little bit like so:

Rova,
Madrigada,
Almapela
Dasadan tera.
O sin ko
Un pen da vo
La graja

Tran tro dran
Le guda perrar
Le rechu do se
Shu padu vendugrijo
Mas mentu
Bi kela
Ve tseoch
Grandu, grandu, grandu..

And onward. The whole of the thing lasted a few minutes, and then, as Ancolyte was preparing to begin another softly sung song, he was interrupted in his choosing by Yume starting to sing gently as she hiked. In fact, as he watched the nominal leader, she did not seem to even be entirely aware that she was singing.

Zado blinked a few times at the first song, but remained quiet as he moved, and Aidan simply smirked slightly, a bit amused. Ghona, on the other hand, was wondering if this was some sort of traveling ritual. Perhaps he should try to join in, but he was not sure at all of the song, and instead left the scaled woman to her singing. Even Ancolyte did not participate in this one, it being unfamiliar even to him. In fact, its language was unfamiliar as well.

A bo s'ka zha ikimali...
A bo aka zha mikimali...
A bo zhaka zha mikipani...
A bo toepani, toepani...

A bo s'ka yu toemali...
A bo aka yu toemali...
A bo zhaka yu toelali...
A bo toepani, toepani...

Toebae ipani...
Toebae ipani....
Toebae.... ilarnoi...

Yume sang, and it had pretty much no meaning to any of the others. Not that she seemed to care any. So it went, a long, and not particularly interesting hike, though occasionally there would be a scrape of metal at some distance (Zado kept looking, but did not see any other of the people he had found previously), or something of color and interest amongst the heaps of trash, but mostly it was a long walk through a lot of silvery steel and black plastic. Yume stopped singing after a song that could probably have been called 'K'fazho Kukyuma' for all the times the phrase was repeated throughout the body of it, but the walking continued for several more hours, mostly to a hummed refrain of 'I Would Walk' by Ancolyte, which precipitated a momentary growl at him from the mildly irritable Aidan.

It was excusable, after all, it took nearly an hour for the man to tire of hearing the tune repeated over and over.

Whichever way it was, it had turned out that their arrival was somewhere in the noontime hour, and as the sun began to go down, Lycrios returned to the group, as did Galen, and the seven travelers gathered in the lee of a small tower of what might have been industrial freezers and small dock cranes.

Looking around, Yume found herself at a bit of a loss. "Um. Anybody got any firewood er somethin'?"

((Okay, I leave the details of what goes on as our group makes camp to all of you folks. Nothing of any real import is going to happen tonight (thread time), so feel free to converse and whatnot.

Try and make things interesting with the camping and whatnot, and remember- any food is going to have to have been brought. Yume's got a little for herself, but it's pretty much trail rations and whatnot, granola bar sort of a thing.

Interact! Develop character! Enhance realism! And don't forget: It's not a movie, people take potty breaks!

I will be accepting ONE more participant between this post and my next, so if anyone wants in, now is the time.

Amusedly,
Reiko))

[ March 23, 2005, 06:40 PM: Message edited by: The Willful Wanderer- Reiko Kameno ]