First Drill: Orientation

[Syntaphar]

Aldric had noticed the crying and was trying to ignore it. It was a valid way of coping, he supposed. Some lash out, some lash in. Everyone was afraid in this room in some wa or another, and they all ignored it or expressed it in different ways. Some were talking nervously, some were staying reclusive. Some were crying, Some were laughing. Aldric was coping by sticking to his old ways, and apparently the man beside him was coping by being contemptible. Aldric could handle that. Once you deal with assassins (and successful ones at that), you develop a greater tolerance for general unpleasantness. Yes, death puts it aaaall in perspective.

The shriek, however, was less understandable. That was more of a shriek of surprise than general fear. Mostly by reaction, Aldric would swivel up and out of his chair, falling into fencing position with a dinner knife clutched in his hands. Seeing there was no threat, however, he would hop out of the way of a flying chunk of mashed potato and place the knife back on the table. Mostly done eating anyway, he would walk over to the other table, and with a calm smile and a marked Vontais accent, ask "Is everyzing all right over 'ere? I 'eard a shriek."

[Nayt]

There were people talking all around her. It would've made Areva feel completely at home were she not so downtrodden. Back at home, she loved to lose herself in crowds. It wasn't that she wanted to be center of attention, either. It was just nice to be in a place full of people. It always reminded her that the world was living and the people on it were going to keep on going with their lives. The people in a busy marketplace . . . they weren't thinking about life and death. They didn't know what was beyond their own lives. The majority of them barely even acknowledged how temporary they really were. Being in those crowds, just walking through and acknowledging all the lives around her, was the most relaxing pastime Areva developed after she became a Reaper.

But the people in this room were different. Everyone in this academy was different. Each of her fellow "cadets" knew they were temporary. Thoughts of death weighed on most of their minds. To Areva, it felt like they'd all been damned and they'd just recently been made acutely aware of it.

What drew her attention away from these terrible thoughts was that of a boy sitting before her. He addressed her with a nervous brand of kindness, and Areva hesitantly looked up to him. She couldn't help but see over his shoulder, though, to a young man that seemed to be staring at her intently. Suddenly, Areva felt very small and pathetic again, and the urge to cry built up even more. Areva did all she could to just look up to the youth before her, trying to calm her down (or cheer her up) as he was.

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

Areva cut herself short in mid-sentence, though. There was a shriek right next to her, sending a jolt through her body and almost calling her to jump up, herself. But she didn't. Areva jumped a bit and hesitantly glanced over to the boy by her side-- or fallen upon the floor, rather --and found herself at a complete loss for words. Did he scream because he was scared like her, too? Scared of the same thing? Scared of death?

The most Areva could do was stare, no matter how much she tried not to.

Well, at least she'd stopped crying for now.

[Zach Kaiser]

While any number of responses would have been understandable, up to and including hostility, the sudden shriek was out of the ordinary that she felt vaguely offended by it. It wasn't as though she'd done anything wrong by trying to talk to the guy.

"What the hell's your problem?" she exclaimed after Sedit fell down, miffed at getting such a reaction.

When Aldric came over she refused to look at him, as there was currently a glare plastered to her face. "Hell if I know," she muttered, pointing to Sedit. "Ask him."

[Lemon]

The fall was excruciating. Not the landing, but the actual fall. The failure to correct his balance, the vegetables flying across the room, and the turning of heads all inched so painfully slowly by. Everyone was staring at him. Everyone had seen him make a complete fool of himself. Everyone had to think he was a colossal idiot. He was the center of attention.

His phobia flared wildly and thrashed his skull well before the floor ever did. His flighty, uncoordinated conscious mind stepped aside for the sake of social survival and self preservation. As he was almost completely horizontal, right before impact, he spotted the nearest exit. He had no plan, he couldn't think, he just knew being in that room for another second would see him crying hysterically. After colliding with the floor and landing awkwardly with the chair digging into his back, he sprang up as best he could and shut his eyes tight.

"Ahh... uh... uh... SORRY!" He shouted to the presumably empty room with absolutely nobody looking at him at all in fact it would be silly to even say that kind of thing to such an empty, nonthreatening room such as this one but he did it anyway and summarily bolted out the dining hall and around the nearest corner. He stood there, out of sight from everyone, his chest heaving. He needed to calm down. To blend again. To become invisible. Then he could just wait until everyone else was done eating and head unnoticed to where ever it was they were supposed to be sleeping.

[Paroxysm]

A mass of potato and vegetables and god knows what else slammed straight onto Fillip's head and face with a sopping, echoing smack. It was the kind of sound that could and has started fights before and needless to say, Fillip was outraged and standing within moments of getting hit: his eyes were lit aflame and his face contorted into a snarl complete with gritted teeth and raised lips. Like an animal, he looked around the room, which had grown a good deal more quiet than before, there was still talking, chattering, laughing, but it was muffled, almost muted.

It took a moment for Fillip to realize who had hit him and by that time, the boy had already scrambled out of the room, a shameless and pathetic wreck, Fillip thought, and, for a moment, he considered chasing the boy down, he even took a step forwards, his right hand balled tightly into a fist and his left removed the food from his face and head.

“I’ll, I‘ll ...murder That kid!”

His face was flushed red and one could only assume it was out of anger rather than embarrassment; in fact, it could probably be assumed that Fillip was, at some point, going to hunt down Sedit, string him up, torture him, and beat him until he went through some sort of pulpy, bloody metamorphosis and became a horrible flesh-butterfly. Maybe, probably.

[Syntaphar]

Aldric looked in half concern and half amusement as the young man dashed off to another room. he seemed a nice enough kid, but he needed to work on keeping his nerve. Were he not preoccupied with other matters, he would have set Sedit's chair back up. However, this Fillip fellow seemed quite irate. This dinner was supposed to be a time of relaxation. Certainly no one was supposed to get hurt! Aldric felt the need to calm him down before the situation escalated. He considered putting a friendly hand on his shoulder, but swiftly reconsidered, lest he suffer swift retaliation.

'Monsieur Bashkin, excuse my intrusion, but I suppose that zis dinner is to relax us before ze battles we are to face. If that is ze case, I suppose we should let bygones be bygones, if only for ze night! After all, he will be your comrade-in-arms by tomorrow, so to speak!" With a warm, but weary smile, he would against his better judgment pat Fillip once on the shoulder. After that, assuming no problems, he would wipe the flying food from his chair and sit down again, hoping for a few more bites of the feast before them.

[Skylar]

She arrived late to the dining hall, and was slightly glad she did. It seemed the opening speech was too much for some of these cadets, and not enough to others. Perhaps they just didn’t grasp it as firmly as they needed to, but she was sure in all due time, everything would fall in place and they would understand that this fate was theirs, made by them alone.

As soon as she walked through the door a young man fell before her, food flying in every direction. Lucky, she was fast enough to dodge it, although not all was as lucky as she.

“Calm down, there’s no need to get bent outta shape. Shit happens.” She knew this better then most. She averted her chilling green eyes from one young man to the next, to the next. There was something about her presence that was calming, her voice was soft, yet not easily ignored. She patted the young man on the shoulder, who had quickly picked himself up, and moved past the group.

It took no time for the sobs of a young girl to taint her ears. Crying...she had lost all use for it. She raised a brow as she silently walked past her, past them all really. An unattended table soon became her own as she took a seat, and propped her one booted foot on the chair across from her.

Black was her color of choice, but since coming here, she wore the proper attire. This was her destiny, her life now, and she would claim it as her own with the hopes of being lucky enough one day to ferry Patrick on one final journey.

[Nayt]

It seemed that whole mess was taken care of-- at least partially. Areva looked away from Sedit once he'd got up and started out. What wasn't taken care of was the mess of food (of Sedit's fault) that landed on the young man that seemed to be leering at her earlier.

Areva looked down in her lap, where she folded her hands nervously and laced her fingers together with the utmost tension. She'd stopped crying, but she still couldn't find the urge or need to reach over and find some food for herself. Her plate was still blank and the utensils nearby were absolutely untouched.

---

When Sedit fled the dining hall, the first thing he'd find would be the empty campus laid about before him, large and wide like some sort of well cut grassy field, and completely encased in buildings on all sides. The second thing he might notice was the young man on the steps to the dining hall, sitting to the direct left of where Sedit stood. The third thing he might notice would be exactly how out of place this young man would have looked in the dining hall. He was not a human being, not in the most conservative aspects.

This young man was an elf. A scourge in Darokin, a nation with a strict policy against elven races. Even liberated peoples hated his kind.

He had short platinum hair that was parted on his left side and the frame of his body seemed to be mostly average. Average height, average build-- for a seventeen year old, that is. He was clearly an elf from northern Prompt, a trait so easily found in the way his ears were long and edged backwards, rather than the short and vaguely human-like ears of northern Prompt elves. A self-rolled cigarette hung between his lips idly. He'd yet to strike a match for it. He paid one glance to Sedit, his prompt in noticing him being less the boy's presence and more the fuss he was coming out of. The elf had simply looked in the direction of a rush of sounds coming to a halt.

"Too stuffy in there for you?" he asked idly, his tone-- while mostly indifferent --suggesting some degree of acknowledgment and understanding.

Clearly there were just too many damn people in there for his tastes, too.

[Paroxysm]

Fillip paid no large amount of attention to Aldric and nor did he specifically avoid the man’s attempt to pat him on the shoulder, but the well-spoken young man from Vontier would find his gesture followed by a lingering chill; the chill was something spiritual, rather than physical, and would fade after a few seconds, though curious it remained.

“Aye, yer good on tha’ one,” Fillip grumbled after Aldric. “I feel right relaxed now.”

Calmly, Fillip gave a momentary look about the room and returned to his seat and scraped off any stray food that may have remained on his person. In the end, he didn’t go hunting the other person down and he had entirely forgotten about the crying girl, too.

“People’re cryin’ and complaining and short-sighted,” Fillip remarked off-handedly, assumingly to Aldric. “Thi’ dinner’s a mess of anxiety, pressure and fear.”

He smiled, sadly.

“Ain’t ever been so relaxed in my life, rube.”

[Lemon]

Sedit exhaled slowly and turned his head to the man, surveying the surroundings as he did. They were alone in the expansive campus. He could do one on one, it wasn't like he'd never talked to anyone before, of course. Just... not in such a crowded room, and not when he was comfortable in his invisibility. He noticed the lighting wasn't too terrible out here either with the setting--

"Oooo!" He cooed as his eyes fell on the stranger, all thoughts of what had happened just a few feet through the doors vanishing instantly.

"A-are you an elf!? You're an elf, aren't you! I've never met an elf before! Hi my name's Sedit and I'm a reaper! Are you a reaper? Of course you are that's a silly thing to ask. Man! I've always wanted to meet an elf!" His rapid-fire barrage stopped abruptly as he realized just how much he'd been blabbering on. Elves represented something magnificent to Sedit. His natural curiosity--inherited from both parents--was piqued because elves were such mysterious loners to begin with, but they were also always such commanding leaders in the stories he'd read. He was obsessed with blending in, with being absolutely average and unnoticeable, but things that stood out completely fascinated him. And elves stood out among humans, no matter what they did.

[Nayt]

In the back of his throat, the elf felt a familiar sigh, something that blended a sigh and a growl altogether into one harmlessly disappointed puff of air. He'd come out here to escape the commotion and wound up greeted at the steps by even more commotion. Well . . . at least this one didn't include a dining hall filled with hormones. He could at least breath around this kid.

Breath smoke, that is. If this kid was going to hang around the steps for much longer, the elf was going to need this cigarette. He reached into the pocket of his dress slacks-- the standard dress uniform for this batch of Reapers and all others like them --and fumbled around for his matches. The second he found them, he withdrew them, drew one out, and struck it against the backside of the small match box. Once his cigarette was lit, he waved the flame from the match and flicked it away. As he pushed the match box back into his pocket, though, he remembered his pack of cigarettes. He'd picked up many a carton when passing through Sythinia. His guide duly warned him of Darokin prejudice against elves, after all. There might not be any buying a single cigar here in Darokin, let alone a packet of cigarettes.

Yet still, he had one on hand and it was practically full. This was the first stick he'd taken from it, in fact. Without hesitation, he reached into his breast pocket and withdrew it, packed it once to knock another stick loose and partly out of the small hole he'd made in the top, and offered it to the boy next to him.

"Want one?" he asked Sedit.

It was just common courtesy-- and that was all he said so far. Acknowledging the boy's questions and rapid fire speech right now was just not something he could do. He'd have needed a special kind of smoke to muster that urge. Maybe even some alcohol to go with it . . .

[Lemon]

"N... no. Thanks." Sedit would never be that cool. Even if you took the sum total of every not-awkward moment in his life, past and future, and combined them into a single second, this elf would still have more cool in his pinky finger than that. On a bad day.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to... but I wanted to ask... I mean I got excited... It's cause of my dad... well I mean he's dead so it's not like it was his fault... not that I!... er..."

The sensory overload today was nuts. First he goes from his worst nightmare out into something he's wanted to do his entire life, not even to mention that he was dragged to the school by the scruff of his neck without any forewarning earlier that day. Though, that was really his own fault. He sighed.

"I'll just shut up now..." He sunk onto the grass next to the steps and let his head rest against the wall.

[Nayt]

The elf shrugged his shoulders when the kid turned down the offer for a cigarette and promptly slid the thin cardboard box into his breast-pocket again.

The kid seemed put off a bit-- not by what the elf said, though. The young man could take some small relief in that. The last thing he needed to do was start upsetting his compatriots on the first day. He'd already thrown a few citizens of Dachinst for a giant collective hussy, just moments before he had to show up for the orientation drill. He quickly collected his thoughts whilst taking a long drag from his cigarette. The orange light burned ever down the machine rolled stick and filled the elf's lungs with a slew of relaxing toxins.

"Look-- don't worry about it. It's no big deal," the elf replied. He shrugged his shoulders as a thought came to mind: "At least you didn't call me livestock."

Sedit was already infinitely better than most of the people the elf had met here in Darokin. He was already ranked higher on the elf's list of "people to give a shit about" than a few of the cadets. Sedit could be any amount of annoying, and the elf would have fewer qualms with him than he did the rest of the world around him.

"Anything above that's just fine by me," he paused to take another drag, "I suppose."

And by anything, he meant anyone.

[Lemon]

"Livestock? What's that supposed to mean?" He asked, turning his head toward the elf. Curiosity urging him to pursue the conversation rather than let it drop, as may have been the best course.

He'd never been integrated into a community. He'd never had a cultural identity, never had prejudices or opinions of people based on race, he wasn't even sure where his father's lab had been when it imploded, killing Sedit and both parents in the blast. Never having it, though, made him curious about it all. Sometimes, from the shadows, he'd watch the children of his assigned hamlet tease each other and call people they didn't like derogatory names. But... livestock never came up. He was used to hearing much worse curses than that, so it seemed kind of silly.

Livestock were really an integral part of the community, after all. Shouldn't that be more like... maybe a compliment? Maybe not. Without certain livestock, after all, it'd be much more difficult to construct buildings or manage crops! But Sedit knew logic didn't often dictate connotation, so he waited to see if the elf would satisfy his rather infinite curiosity.

[Nayt]

The elf felt another twinge somewhere within the confines of his skin, except this one was like a twitch. A tick. He felt it somewhere in his ribcage. It was uncomfortable.

"What . . .?" he trailed off, paused at length, and took another drag from his cigarette. "You mean, you don't know?"

That felt . . . impossible. The elf thought just about every one of these cadets knew just what they were getting themselves into--but maybe it was just him. Maybe the issue of elves in Darokin simply wasn't covered. Maybe he only knew because he'd heard the stories even before the End of the World. The elf withdrew his cigarette and held it betwixt his middle and index fingers. As if relaxing, he leaned forward and set his elbows upon his knees. The truth was, though, he wasn't relaxed. He wasn't relaxed at all.

The notion that at least one person in the world might be ignorant to this made him feel an unfamiliar sickness, one he hadn't experienced in years.

"We're-- I'm . . . er, people like me, we're like a delicacy to these people," he held out his arms as if to indicate all of Darokin, "Hunted. Bred. Maintained. Harvested. Shipped to the whole country."

If Sedit was observant enough, he'd hear in the sound of the elf's voice that he was sincerely upset to just think about the prospect, let alone talk about it. But he was a detached kind of person; he didn't sneer nor did he (openly) wretch. Only his voice altered with a suggestion of ill feelings, and that was all.

"Livestock," he repeated before setting his cigarette back to his lips and sucking in a plume of smoke.