paixaorpg | Mission Probable! [active]

Entry tags:

Mission Probable! [active]

Character(s): Ashe, Dias Flac, Isaac, Phoenix Wright, Toshiro Hojo, Yaten Kou, Miles Edgeworth
Content: The severely mismatched group rescuing Cloud, Maya, and Zack
Setting: Fortress of Darkness (2L)
Time: Friday late night
Warnings: none so far.

The ride on the buggy had been much too bumpy for her comfort, but she manages to utter no word of complaint through the journey; which they all should applaud her for. Rubbing her bottom while trying to make sure no one notices, Ashe looks around at her current companions. There is only one word that can truly describe the group: mismatched. Chuckling to herself, she tries to remember all their names once again.

There is the tall blue-haired man named Dias Flac and the tiny silver-haired woman standing beside Dias is Yaten Kou. The two seemingly-sophisticated men are Miles Edgeworth and Phoenix Wright; Mr. Wright's hair is able to defy gravity while Mr. Edgeworth's is not able to. And then, in the middle of them there is the kidnapper. They had to explain a lot to her when they first met; about why Cid is not coming and why the kidnapper is with them, but she figures that asking too many questions would annoy them. And then she had to explain about Isaac. She ended up telling them that Isaac was lonely and she figured that it would be nice to take him along as he seems powerful anyway, skipping the violence altogether.

A realization snaps her out of her reverie, and she clears her throat before speaking, "So, I suppose we should go into the Fortress now? I recall reading Zack's entry where he ranted about how hungry he was," she skipped the part about having a tail, hoping that they would not be expecting her to fix that.

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Dias studied the decidedly heavy-looking doors in front of him. Anyone with eyes was able to see that the fortress had been constructed almost entirely of some dark material from at least a mile off(at least in the daytime; at night the place was probably close to invisible unless there was moonlight), but even Dias had expected some sort of paint or magic to make the place look the way it did...not for the entire building, doors and all, to be made of jet-black stone. Obsidian, jet, perhaps even the dark damascus metal from his own world - it was impossible to tell exactly what sort of material the place had been made from, but the entire fortress was as black as a hole in the spectrum of light. It almost made the area around it seem darker.

And perfectly smooth; this detail unsettled Dias. It was as flat as the surface of a mirror, without a single flaw that Dias could see; the rain all but sheeted down the walls. When he reached out and ran his fingers along the surface, his gloves didn't encounter the least resistance. Even if the structure was newly made, without having had time for weather and other sources to create any sort of imperfection in the stone, there was no way anyone could cut a surface so perfectly - and it wasn't as if they were even bricks of stone. It was as if the entire fortress had been carved, with supernatural precision, out of a single black gem the size of which Dias didn't even like to contemplate.

It wasn't a human structure, that was for certain. Demons would be Dias' first guess, and it wouldn't be the first time he'd faced off with some, but it didn't exactly put him at ease.

He pushed - or, more accurately, shouldered - one of the doors open, doing his best to keep from silhouetting himself against the light of the outside in the doorway; making himself into a perfect target was not on his agenda. But nothing seemed to move in the ~~entirely unsurprising~~ dimness beyond the doors.

Dias stood by (but not directly in front of) the open door, mulling over the possibilities of what might be waiting inside for him and how he could best handle each scenario. Then, with a brief glance back at the group he'd left behind - no obvious problems there - he stepped into the fortress and was engulfed. The contrast between the light outside and the darkness inside was so immediate and so palpable that there was simply no escaping the word.

[ooc: Oh, I thought you meant a whole new post. XD Do you want to go on threading, to keep ours separate from the outside action?]

Riku was starting to become impatient by the time the voice who'd announced he would be going in alone finally arrived. The sound of the great doors being opened was unmistakable, the twilight blinding, even with his eyes shut. Luckily (sort of), Ansem had designed the doors to shut in any new visitors.

The man didn't exactly freeze where he stood as soon as the light was gone, it was more like he became very still. Riku could respect that. He didn't feel afraid, which was more than Riku could have said for himself not long ago.

Something about this guy felt familiar...

Knowing that his voice wouldn't carry outside the fortress, Riku spoke from where he stood many yards away. "If you came to storm the castle, you made a big mistake bringing Hojo along."

Riku had not heard the last exchange where it had been revealed Hojo had lied to them so that they would bring him here; he didn't have to. He knew the sort of intentions Hojo had; Ansem hadn't implanted them exactly, he'd only encouraged what was there. But that had been foul enough to start without the boost of Darkness Ansem had given the mad doctor.

(OOC: Up to you. <3 I was thinking we could keep it all in the same thread since the others will be entering the fortress soon and they might merge up with Dias again ~~despite his best efforts~~ or Riku might want to investigate them.)

Well, the door booming shut behind him was an unsettling but not entirely surprising development. By Tria, there must have been some sort of checklist for aspiring villains - forbidding fortress, dim lighting, doors that made a properly sonorous coffin-lid sound when closing...

And, as if on cue, a mysterious voice from the darkness. They really covered everything, Dias reflected, mainly because being cynical helped him to stay calm despite his surprise. He forced his hand to relax around the hilt of his sword - there'd be no point to drawing it, not yet, not when he couldn't see. He focused instead on remaining still, listening for any sound beyond his own breathing for a few moments and making reasonably certain he couldn't detect anyone moving to attack him before replying.

In the pause between the voice from the darkness and his own answer, Dias felt the faintest flickering of recognition. Had he heard that voice before, somewhere...?

"I advised against it," he informed the darkness, eyes darting back and forth as he searched for some point, ANY point in the blackness that differentiated itself from the rest, anything to focus his eyes on while they adjusted to the dimness. And him without a torch - damn. "But what do I know, I'm just the hired muscle." He shifted slightly, backwards, in the direction of the door; he had no intention of leaving, but having something solid against his back would at least cut off the number of directions he could be surprised from. "I'm looking for some people - two men and a woman. Hojo said they were in the basement. Either help me rescue them or get out of my way."

[ooc: Red said Hojo was about to run after Dias, so this is probably best, yeah.]

"But what do I know, I'm just the hired muscle."

These words, along with hearing the voice again, jogged a memory from the hidden depths of Riku's mind, jarring it free from one of the brain cells Ansem had imprinted just a few days ago.

Hired muscle...

The words swam back into his mind, though he had not been the one reading them.

"MERCENARY FOR HIRE

Expert swordsman

Winner of the Lacour Tournament of Arms
Twice champion of Cross Tournament
Experienced bodyguard, monster slayer, fighter

Reasonable rates - payment upon completion of job

Contact Dias Flac..."

So this was Dias Flac. That clipped-response hardhead he'd tried to warn on the journals out of guilt for Ansem trying to hire him. The one Axel's demon girlfriend seemed to be stalking. The one who was friends with Tidus...who claimed not to be Tidus.

Huh.

Riku heard him move, getting his back up against the wall. Maybe he wasn't so brave--or stupid--after all. The tone of what he said next seriously pissed Riku off, though. No one told him what to do. It took a surprising amount of restraint to keep from telling him so right then and there.

Instead, he said, "You better get back to your friends. You don't know what Hojo is capable of." For that matter, neither did Riku. But with Ansem involved, anything was possible. "I'll free the prisoners."

There was something else Riku had to do in the lab, too. And he didn't really want Mr. Hardass staring over his shoulder while Riku tried to figure out how to do it.

Dias snorted quietly. Friends? "I'm working with them," he said flatly. "They're not exactly friends. Anyway, I've no reason to trust you. I was hired to rescue the prisoners and that's what I intend to do."

Much to the swordsman's relief, his eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness. What he'd taken at first for pitch blackness was merely ALMOST pitch blackness; given long enough to grow accustomed to it, the eyes could pick out shapes and movement, if not much else. He didn't know where what little light there was to see by was coming from...perhaps from the walls themselves, for all he knew. They were certainly sucking up enough light from the outside that casting a bit of it in here wouldn't be entirely surprising.

And there it was again, that niggling feeling that he knew this voice from somewhere. "Who are you?" he asked cautiously, eyes scanning the darkness as he tried to pick out the speaker's silhouette.

Riku couldn't have cared less if the people outside were Dias' actual friends or not. He sure did appreciate being corrected like some little kid, though.

"Anyway, I've no reason to trust you."

Oh man. There he went again with that crap. This guy was like a broken record.

Oddly, when Dias asked who he was, his tone had changed a little. He sounded less like he was demanding the information and more like he might actually be curious. So Riku gave him an answer, rather than walk away and let the soldier fend for himself in the darkness.

"I'm Riku," he said simply, the usual masculine bravado and tail-flashing that accompanied this declaration greatly muted due to recent events. "And you're Dias Flac."

There. Give him something to think about.

"If you don't care that Hojo can kill the people you're working for, neither do I." That wasn't really true. If Hojo killed people now or experimented on people or kidnapped people or kicked kittens, Riku couldn't help but feel at least some guilt for it. It had been his fault Ansem had gotten out and brought out the darkness in the scientist.

But.

He was here to rescue Cloud and that other guy. He'd warned Dias. That's all he could do for now.

Without another word, Riku turned and began to make his way to the lower levels of the fortress. He didn't really give a rat's ass what the mercenary decided to do.

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Mission Probable! [active]

For Riku~

To Dias

To Riku

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