First Drill: Orientation

[Lemon]

"Oh..." Sedit went back to staring at the grass under his feet as he processed what he had just heard. So, livestock was literal. The elf's story brought back vivid memories of his father's shipments of corpses into the lab. Sometimes his father would exhume the bodies himself from resting places far from their home, places you couldn't pay grave-robbers to venture. Sedit shuddered as he imagined living elves being subjected to what experiments his father would perform on the recently deceased. He started to rub his arms, swallowing several times to keep his supper down.

"R-really beautiful n-night. H-huh?"

[littlebean]

Loman quickly started cramming food into his mouth faster than he could chew or swallow it until eventually his cheeks bulged and his mouth reached it's maximum capacity for holding food. Eventually he looked more like a hamster than a human being sitting at the table. It would be clear that he either had no manners or was too hungry to give a damn. He cared only for two things, food, and the girl.

"I--" she uttered between quiet sobs, "I-- I don't wanna--"

"Hrm?" He leaned in closer to hear what she was saying. She what? She didn't wanna huh?

SMASH!

Her small voice was drowned out by a scream, a crash, and a torrential downpour of mashed potatoes raining down on him. It landed with a splat on the clueless Loman who was still leaning in chubby cheeked and wide eyed.


The captains speach, his new tasks, death and its effect on his loved ones at home, the grim looking future, all of it had disappeared. This didn't seem like the military at all, at least not the kind he read in stories. The crowded room, the anxiety the awkwardness of the young crowd, hormones, embarrasement and mess of potatoes seemed exactly like a school cafeteria. Just like when he was alive.

"SNNRRRKK!! COUGH COUGH HACK!" The shenanigans caused him to laugh suddenly, but there was only enough room in his mouth for one. It was either the laughter and the food, and the food had to go. He accidentally swallowed some and began to choke, throwing himself back down into his seat and covering his mouth while he coughed. He was looking downwards, trying to be discreet while his face began turning red and his eyes started to water.

Just when things were looking bleak, with another hack, the problem seemed to fix itself and he sat quietly in his chair chewing the rest of his food. From now on, smaller mouthfuls. He would talk later when his mouth wasn't full.

It didn't seem the girl was going to eat any food. With a final gulp of his food he spoke to her once more in the most non threatening voice he had.

"Try to eat a lil' bit? The food is good. I mean it's not so bad?" If after this she didn't want to eat he wouldn't bother her. He wasn't the brightest but he felt a person should be free to do what they wanted, if he intruded he'd be doing more harm than good.

[Nayt]

Maybe the night would've been nice. Maybe. If he hadn't have talked about the issue of elves in Darokin, he might have been able to take in the night peacefully.

But it wasn't fair to blame this kid for it. Truth be told, Sedit was the first person the elf had actually made direct contact with in the academy. He'd talked to-- and accidentally riled up --a few citizens of Dachinst, but he was mostly silent the second he arrived at the academy. He stood in the crowd with the others, he stayed in perfect file, and he even went along with the others to the dining hall. He sat with others, he said nothing. He just stared at the table and imagined all the terrible things that could be in their food.

So he got out. All the people bothered him. Made it hard to breath. Hard to think. His head was hurting and he needed a smoke. And now he was talking to this kid. No, it wasn't this kid's fault that the elf was having a poor day. The day began badly and just stayed on a steady trek of piss-poor.

He took one final drag of his cigarette and flicked it away onto the grass campus as he stood up. He started down the steps and stopped once he was onto the stone walk-way that connected all of the campus structures together. The whole place looked like some sort of university. It made the elf sick. He shoved his hands into his pockets and glanced back to the kid he'd been talking to.

"What's your name, kid?" the elf asked.

---

"But . . . why?" Areva asked meekly.

The young man across from her asked a question, and normally she'd have just gone with it. She'd have said he was right and politely gathered up some food stuffs for herself-- but this was not a normal day. Every day from here on out was not going to be a normal day for her.

Her voice was somewhat hoarse from crying so much. Her throat felt raw whenever she spoke--but that perhaps had nothing to do with her mental and emotional breakdown. She hadn't drank any water since she started on her trip to Darokin, just like she hadn't eaten anything. She couldn't find the sense in it. Not in this state of mind. She couldn't think of anything but the doomsday prophecy. That the end of her life was coming fairly soon. That there was no way she could enjoy the rest of the time she had left.

"I-- I'm just gonna-- I'm just gonna die, anyway," Areva whispered.

She hadn't even thought about it before she said it, and the second she did . . . it brought moisture to her eyes again. She was truly afraid of death.

[Lemon]

"Sedit," he said, rising as the elf got to the walkway. Naturally drawn by this man's unrefined confidence in himself, Sedit felt subconsciously drawn to follow him until he was told to go away. He was, after all, the only one who didn't see him make a complete ass of himself in the mess hall.

"Just Sedit, sir."

[Nayt]

"Well, Sedit," the elf began as he turned from the kid.

The elf didn't yet introduce himself. He hadn't felt the need to, actually. Maybe it'd come up eventually, but names were scarcely shared without inquiry. He asked for Sedit's name and Sedit didn't ask for his and it was that simple. This didn't make the elf feel any less valuable, though. Really, he could have cared less. In this place, an elf's name was just a throwaway title on a sheet of paper, ultimately burned and disregarded from that point on. He started to feel a bit unnerved by being here again.

That's when he decided it:

"I'm going to head to town. I need to take a walk. Maybe get a drink," he remarked as he took the first step forward, "You can come along if you want."

It was odd even to him that he said that, the invited this kid to hang out with him. This kid was a stranger. There was no reason to feel at all attached to him.

Except Sedit was a friendly stranger. The elf already knew there was no risk of prejudice in this kid. He knew he wasn't going make a livestock remark. The elf felt comfortable around the kid already.

[Lemon]

"Okay!" He said, somewhat more cheerfully than was called for. He'd never been invited to do anything! Well, untrue, he supposed. He'd been invited to fuck off, to go to hell, to mind his own business, to sleep with the fishes, to go play in traffic, to go kiss a leper, to catch the plague, to go fuck a corpse, to go fuck himself, to go fuck... a lot of things really. He didn't understand why people were so obsessed with fucking strange things and why they wanted him to do it, but most of those people died shortly after inviting him to do these things anyway so he never got the chance to ask what they meant. Of course, some souls told him to do these things too before he sent them on their merry way. He didn't talk to those ones for very long.

Sedit patted and straightened his uniform before taking position next to, but just slightly behind, the elf as they walked toward town. He felt himself slipping into his natural guise of unnoticeability as they walked, but wondered if he should even bother. Next to an elf, his meager, average presence would be nearly invisible even without his ability.

[littlebean]

"Why? Well..."

By now more than half of his plate of food was finished and he planned on having seconds. Taking a long drink of his tall glass of milk, he'd think of an answer while he ate. The veggies tasted good and the more he ate the more he could feel the food filling his stomach. The more his stomach was filled the less hungry he felt, and the less hungry he felt the less weak and tired he felt. It wasn't that eating literally felt pleasurable like a backrub it was because...

"Because if you don't eat, you die." He concluded with his milk moustache, cramming another piece of turkey into his mouth as if to make a point. If he had heard what she whispered, he might have stopped eating altogether.

Areva was right. Out of everyone at the table she seemed to be the only one who was honest about how they truely felt. Everyone was scared, everyone was still reeling from whatever it was that brought them there and everyone was horrified about the days to come. They just had different ways of showing it.

Loman ate well as if it never crossed his mind. So far he had been polite and cheerful as he could be, but even with a nice hot meal in front of him he was still green around the eyes and mouth, paling gradually. It wasn't that he wasn't terrified, it's just that he was good at distracting himself. Once he ran out of distractions, he'd have to acknowledge what had and still was happening.

It would be a completely different story once dinner was over.

[Skylar]

None of them had spoke to her, let alone acknowledge her existence. Perhaps it was better that way. Friends meant responsibilities, if not that, at least feeling responsible. They would be engaged in war, people were going to die, some of them were going to die. Maybe it would be easier to handle if they were all unknown faces.

It wasn’t so much that she wasn’t friendly, she could be friendly, but taking the first step to making friends wasn’t her forte these days. Learning the hard way you couldn’t trust anyone, including the ones you love the most made her this way.

Picking up her fork, she began to eat. Silently she watched them all interact. Nutrition would be important in the upcoming days, this much she was aware. She was curious of what kind of exercises they would be put through, tests of might and wit. She would be ready though, and willing - not that there was a choice in the matter. But dying, it was not an option for her.

[Syntaphar]

Rube. That was actually a new one on Aldric. (So was the lingering chill, but you come to expect things like that after death.) He knew what it meant (at least in a basic sense), but the interesting thing was that most of the insults he had been given revolved around his status and the effects thereof. Pompous ass, snob, highborn scum, haughty bastard, etcetera. It was actually kind of nice to be on a level playing field for once, and actually be called something based on something in his control! It was a refreshing feeling of responsibility. All he could really do was pass a warm smile back to Fillip and say "I think you what I meant, monsieur."

After finishing the remainder of his meal and politely cleaning the small remainder of his food from his face with his napkin, Aldric got up and stretched, smiling. He noticed a few things. The girl wasn't crying anymore, though she still seemed distressed. He was glad on the first part, but not the second. The young man who caused the ruckus earlier was gone entirely. Not surprising. And a new arrival had come into the dining hall. Now that was interesting. He walked over to her and offered a hand and his persistant warm smile. "Allo there miss. Fashionably late, eh? I can't say zat I blame you. Ze speech ze general gave was not quite ze most heartening I've ever 'eard. My name is Aldric Montegue. And yours?

[Nayt]

Through some way-- be it pure rhetorical and philosophical skills or blind luck --Loman said something that made absolutely perfect sense to Areva. If self preservation meant anything to her, she stood a higher chance of surviving longer if she didn't just forgo on eating and drinking.

So she finally leaned in and-- with minimal grace --shakily put her hands over the table and scooped several spoon fulls of corn onto her plate. She did the same with the mashed potatoes, and took one slice of ham after the fact. She didn't put much on her plate, as it was currently easy to ignore her own appetite. There was a glass of water already by her plate, as all settings seemed to have one. Before she did anything else, Areva took a nice long drink from it. It was the first time she'd had a drop of water to drink for a day and a half it felt like . . .

Needless to say, she emptied her glass without even thinking about it.

"I-- I'm--" she trailed off, paused, gulped back her fears, and continued: "I-- I'm Areva."

She hadn't started to eat just yet, but was already feeling better now that her thirst was clenched. Areva couldn't help but stare at her plate of food at first. As much sense as it made to eat to maximize her life span, it still felt weird. Like maybe this was a last meal.

"What's your name?" It was something of idle conversation, but there was nothing wrong with it. Heck, that's probably what most of the people here in the dining hall were doing! Occupying themselves with idle discussion and idle thoughts and idle antics, doing everything they could to avoid being like her, sitting and stirring and thinking about how scared she was of this place and what it meant to her future.

---

Sedit and the elf's interactions continue [in this thread]

[littlebean]

He was surprised when the crying stopped, she seemed so upset that he doubted there'd be anything he could do to help her. It relieved him to see her reach for the food and start piling it onto her plate. She wasn't exactly eating the food, but showed interest in it enough. Instead of eating she decided again on making small talk, which he wouldn't complain about in a million years.

Smiling warmly, still with a milk moustache and mashed potatoes in his hair that he completely forgot about he introduced himself,making sure to compliment her name or at least mention anything to carry on the conversation. "Hey, I'm Loman. Uh...." There was a pause while he ate some veggies, then he spoke again. "Where you from? Areva sounds kind of exotic or something."

[Paroxysm]

"The dark of it is," Fillip started: "all o'this? This is just ta give us some comfort, you say relax, but I say it ain't so, jig? Food and bub ‘fore the dying starts, Montegue, and that’s all. An’ nobody better think less,” he added after a moment of silence. “Ignorance ain’t the same as being bobbed,” he threw a glance around the room and stood up from his seat. Fillip hadn’t been quiet, this was, perhaps, the highest he’d raised his voice since he arrived at the academy, but only the closest of the tables would have heard him, regardless. There was too much noise for it to carry further, at least.

“Gettin’ the yawn here,” he admitted and stood up from his table; unlike Aldric, Fillip wasn’t entirely interested in socializing with the rest of the room. He was up and gone within a matter of moments and would head towards the dorms.

[Skylar]

Her eyes remained on her plate as the voice came from her side. An unusual accent, but easily one to put her finger on. “His speech had nothing to do with my tardiness. I’ve been preparing to hear that speech for a long time, as should have everyone else in this room.” Her voice was so controlled, calm, smooth and so easy to listen to. She took a small bite of her food and chewed it silently, still not making eye contact just yet.

Introductions. They can be as comfortable or uncomfortable as you make them. It was that simple. And the fact of the matter was, there was nothing about any of this thus far that made her uncomfortable. Finally, as if planned perfectly, her eyes met his. Eerie green they were, gentle...yet not so innocent. “Misha.”

Offering nothing more then a nod, she returned back to her plate. She would continue to speak if spoken to, but she wasn’t much for offering information freely. On that note, she wasn’t much for offering any type of information about herself at all, if she could get around it. She did however take note on the male that was making his leave, the one that had made his leave, and the fact that the crying girl was no longer crying....

[Syntaphar]

Aldric smiled warmly as Misha returned his greeting. However, a noteable tiredness was entering his eyes, as though her words were hitting home all too clearly. Leaning against the chair next to him, Aldric sighed and slumped just barely out of his noble decorum. In a voice slightly less cheery than before, he said: "Yes, I believe zat I know what you mean. It was inevitable, of course. However, I could only 'ope that this turns out better zan everyone expects, if you know what I mean. Certainly there are few among ze people in this room deserving of the grisly fate they are destined for. If I had my choice, I would have them all be happy, if only for ze night."

Aldric lost himself in thought for a couple seconds, scanning his eyes over the crowd. He wondered just exactly how many of them were doomed to be killed, or worse in this brutal war. Snapping eyes and focus back to the woman before him, Alric stuttered once or twice before asking: "Anyway, enough lingering on that. Where iz it that you come from, Miss Misha? I am not certain that I recognize the name. And I certainly don't mean to pry, but what iz it that drives you, that keeps you going? I admit that sometimes I lose sight of it myself, and it iz nice to hear another point of view.

[Nayt]

It was an easy thing to figure, really-- that Areva was not from the center continent, that is. She was outlandish compared to most Reapers on this continent . . .excepting the few of different species, that is. She kind of got that question a lot.

"Igorath," she replied, her voice small and hoarse.

Areva finally took her fork and slowly gathered for herself a small nibble of mashed potatoes. She was still kind of lacking the emotional will to eat, but maybe-- just maybe --one bit would be enough to coerce her to take a larger. And indeed it did. Areva's next fork-full was much larger than the last.

"It's, um, this island down . . . south of here. Really far south," she added as an afterthought. Most people in the world hadn't even heard of Igorath before.

A racist individual might say all islanders like Areva look the same. Conversely, though, Areva actually had trouble discerning the ethnicity of people from this continent. Every person out there had an individual appearance, yes, but she couldn't look someone in the face and tell he was from the former Republic of Juno (yet another populous lost to the End of the World). Sure, she'd been around them. Several times, Areva had been to the old Reaper headquarters back before the End, back before it was destroyed.

It felt reasonable to return Loman's question to him.

"What about you . . .?" Areva asked, "Where are you from?"