The Start of it All

[Kwokinator]

"What," Kwok asked, confused. "Don't you recognize me Ryder?"

[RyderHakubi]

"No... I've never met you in my whole life.  How do you know my name anyway?  I just got to this f'd up world..." Ryder said with a tint of irritation in his voice.  

The irritation, though, wasn't directed at Kwok, for once.  Actually, he was angry at himself for the weird feeling of deja vu he had been experiencing ever since he had met those two people in the ally...

[Kwokinator]

Kwok faked a hurt expression.

"Don't you recognize me, Ryder?" he made his voice sound as sad as he could, crocodile tears threatening to pour out of his eyes. "Don't you even recognize your best friend?  I've done all those things for you and you don't even recognize me?  You're cruel!"

[RyderHakubi]

"I've never met you in my whole life, and you tell me you've done things for me?" Ryder says while ignoring Kwok's pathetic attempt at a sad puppy dog face...

"Listen, I just got here... I don't know anyone on this crazy world, and I'm looking for two guys that I think might be the cause of this nagging deja vu..." Ryder said while moving his hand away from the gun...

[Kwokinator]

Kwok whined.

"But... Ryder-kun..." he said, his lips wobbling as more crocodile tears fell from his eyes. "You said you'd love me forever... and now you said you've never met me..."

"You break my heart, Ryder-kun!" he wailed, covering his face with his hands as he turned away, completely ignoring what Ryder said about the two guys he was looking for.

[RyderHakubi]

"I never said that!  I don't even know you..." Ryder said while realizing the fact that the people in the bar were all staring at them... Ryder silently prayed to Kasumi-sama that they didn't understand English...

OOC: Kasumi-sama is a MTCFF Ultra joke... Ryder had been working as a member of This Old Dojo before he had been transported to a different dimention...

[Carthrat]

OOC: Yeah! I knew I was far away all the time! Heh. Heheheh.

Crud. This RPG moves too fast for me. 30 posts while I'm in bed?

And the names CaRthrat. With an R. It amazes me how many people leave it out... you're hardly the first ^^

IC: "Beer? Fear the beer? Good, this things working..."

So, after drinking vast quantities of 'the stuff', Carthrat left the tavern and started poking around the little village he was in. Maybe there'd be like, something to do, you know.

Perhaps some almighty mage would challenge him! Or do some rash deeds! Carthrat liked killing almighty mages!

They made a satisfying *squish* sound when they died. And they always made those really long speeches!

So, when he left the village, he spent a few hours wandering around the countryside, just looking for something to do...

And something, quite happily, presented itself.

A tall mountain with a crystalline tower and a storm vortex! It looked COOL! And it looked FUN!

Quite happily ignoring the very dangerous lightning storms, Carthrat walked over towards the tower, and...

Knocked on the door.

[Kwokinator]

"See?" Kwok allowed the crocodile tears to flow even further as he kept his back turned to Ryder, his voice climbing, disregarding the odd stares they were getting from everyone else. "Now you said you don't even know me! And after everything we've been through together!"

[Naphtali]

"Wait a sec...summoners....I know that term.  And...umm...uh...uh...something called...uh...Espers!  Yeah, that's what I was thinking of!  Summoners summon Espers!"

Shi blinked.  "Actually, that's a few planes over.  The word you want is Aeon.  But that's not the point."  He paused and sipped his drink.  Ah, yes... it WAS fruity.  He liked this town.


[ooc- ignoring for the moment rat's weirdness, ryder, kwok!  Stop goofing off!  we're waiting for the gang to meet up in the bar!  for the group to move on!]

[Tomas]

"Really?"  Tomas actually managed to look dissapointed.  "Oh well, that's too bad.  Maybe we can visit them and bring this Sin thing they're all talking about along!"  

Hey, that actually sounded like fun!  Tomas made a mental note to do that whenever they eventually got bored and came back to the discussion at hand.

"Okay, so if we arn't at this Aeon place, then where are we?"  After a few more moments of thought, Tomas shrugged.  "Its not like it really matters.  This is a city we're in, so something will happen eventually.  Either an army will try to take it over, or monsters will invade, or the thing will end up having hover jets and take off, ya know?"

[Naphtali]

"It's not like it really matters.  This is a city we're in, so something will happen eventually.  Either an army will try to take it over, or monsters will invade, or the thing will end up having hover jets and take off, ya know?"

Shi nodded.  Yes, that sounded about right.  They seemed drawn towards focal points in other people's stories.  Shi himself was always drawn into conflict.  If he didn't start it, that is.  "I meant they summon Aeons, actually.  Not important."

Actually, now that he thought of it, since any of those things (or more) were bound to happen, he might as well wait for it.  He sipped his drink again.  Ahh...

[Tomas]

"They summon planets to fight with?  Damn, how big is this place, anyway?"  That would be an impressive fight to watch, people whacking each other with entire worlds.  Hell, even he didn't fight like that.

But then again, you'd think that if someone had that much power, they could make a drink that was truely hard, rather then this thing.  An entire mug of it, and he didn't even have the slightest buzz.  What a horrid bar.

[Naphtali]

Shi stared at Tomas.  Oh, come on.  It was hard to believe how dense he could be sometimes.  "No, the planet is called Spira.  Aeons are the creatures they summon.  Like Espers.  Summoning planets... jeez..."

He slipped his headphones forward over his ears.  Time for tunes.  He did something under his coat, and music filled his ears.

[Tomas]

"Oh."  Tomas thought about that for a few moments.  "Well, if I have to fight a summoner, I'm summoning a planet.  That'll teacch them a lesson."  And a lesson it probably would teach them, not that they'd live long to remember it, but still...

Ah, hell, he'd probably never even meet one of them.  Too bad, too.  Resting his elbow on the bar, and then his head on his hand, Tomas wondered just what the hell he was going to do until something at least semi-interesting happened.

[Carthrat]

Carthrat walked straight into the mage tower... as per usual, the front door was unlocked.

Why was it that so many mages rattled on about privacy, but left their front doors open? Talk about hypocritical... if someones door is open, dosn't that mean they WANT visitors?

So Carthrat climbed the stairs of the mage tower, occasionally blowing away whatever guardian he encoutered, braving his way through flame traps, stepping very carefully through spike traps, and spraypainting the walls with things like "Ultra-Mad Scientist was here! Fear!" and "Magic sucks!"

Eventually, he reached the top of the tower, where...

"Oi! What you doin here?"

The question came from a rather irate-looking old man with a walking stick.

"Eh? YOU'RE THE MAGE?" Carthrat said, bamboozled.

"What wrong with dat? Not my fault I'm only 3" tall!" replied the old man, poking Carthrat with his walking stick. "Watcha gonna do about it, hmm?"

Carthrat shrugged. "You're a mage, right? I hate mages, so I'm gonna kill you. Partly cos your a mage, but you also live in a big, scary looking tower. If that ain't a good indicator..."

It was the old mans turn to blink. "But you aren't the hero!"

"Damn straight. I hate heroes. Goddamed punks wandering the world, trying to make good triumph over evil... bah. The more goodly a world gets, the less it takes to be evil. I mean, I saw someone drop a toothpick once and get hanged for it."

The old man nodded. "Tragic, yes."

"Well, time to die, mage."

The old man cackled. "But only the heroes have a prayer! I'll slaughter you! Run whilst you can, fool!"

Carthrat responded by calmly pulling out a pistol and loading it.

"Summon Cragboy!" shouted the mage.

A rocky-looking 4" tall golem appeared, and lunged towards Carthrat. A gem in it's forehead glowed green.

Carthrat jumped on top of it and fired a shot at the mage.

It hit his walking stick, and as such, the mage fell over.

"Ouch! I'll get yoo for dat, whippersnapper! Get him, Cragboy!"

The golem did some kind of flip, and Carthrat was standing on the ground again. The mage, however, was casting some kind of powerful spell..

As such, the sky above the tower darkened dramatically, and lightning began striking with a 100km radius of the thing, blowing out a few small villages and landing perilously close to a city...