Ryanti

Even as a not-new person this baffles me to high extremes. I basically have to do everything that there is worth doing in the zone and explore it completely before I can use something confined specifically to that zone, which I will never visit again because that zone is now basically done. By the time you unlock flying, it's practically useless. What the hell, SquareEnix. This design decision was made because Yoshi looked at games like WoW that had flying in the past and realized that introducing flying in the very beginning takes away the feeling of exploration and navigating terrain during the leveling process. People would just fly in straight lines from point a to point b and never explore, and it would take a very short time to complete quests. So that's why Blizzard killed flying abd that's why Yoshi made flying unlockable only after the zone has been thoroughly 'warmed in'. Hope that makes sense.

This is a rather challenging thing to answer. I really love deep, encompassing, plot heavy dramatic RP. I love RP that really probes into the deepest parts of the character's soul. I love storylines and plots that bring out meaningful moments that cause me to feel strong emotions. My writing often emphasizes that people are abnormal and irrational, and life can always be messy and strange. I really love rp'ing the 'being human' side of people. I love long-winded, thorough stories with character evolution and character development. At the same time, I can just as easily have slice of life rp, I can just as easily have a nice romantic rp because once again feelings. It's all about the feelings for me. Comedy rp I'm very picky with. It has to be done right and it has to feel right. For me though, fufilllment is what I like and it's what I want. I look for fufillment in my plots, large or small, serious or not. If I can walk away from the rp having an experience out of it, I feel like I've done what I was supposed to do.

(tl;dr: Just some more of my introspection on a lot of the state of the game and my feelings about stuffs. I don't post enough on this forum. Oh, and Warren? Talk about relics lol) Me either. I can pretty much firmly believe at this point that they are using XIV to cope with the net losses they had to deal with a few years ago that nearly crippled them as a company. But I am afraid that if they keep that mentality up, they're going to end up using XIV as a crutch to throw money at other titles because their other titles won't have long term consistent revenue like XIV will. But you have to feed the cow that gives you milk, and Square needs to take care of its cash cow. This breaks my heart because of this: Naoki Yoshida, A Realm Reborn’s director, told The Penny Arcade Report on Friday, “Most MMOs have investors in the background, and the company uses the profit and splits the profit with the investors. But, if the game’s not successful, and it doesn’t reach the target, then they have to switch to free-to-play to try and get just a little profit from it. Among the MMOs in the market, only Blizzard and Square-Enix are making money without investors in the background.” ^ FFXIV does not have investors. It means they don't need to try to do things to please them. They can focus 100% of their efforts in studying their audience and giving them what they want and they don't have to put any effort towards trying to give investors what they want. But it feels like XIV is -still- torn in two directions. The staff wants to make a game the people want, but Square Enix wants XIV to make a game that Square Enix wants. Square Enix wants a continuous revenue with maximum profit with minimal investment. But they are having difficulty understanding that MMO's, especially MMO's with sub-models, need to be re-invested into over and over again to provide that same consistent, healthy long term growth. This means staff. This means raises. This means funneling money into development costs and being willing and able to take a short term loss if it meant a great chance at long term growth. That's taking a risk, something Japan's culture is iffy about compared to the West. FFXIV may not have investors, but Square Enix is currently acting like a disgruntled shareholder that wants his return right -now- on money they gave towards the game years ago and not willing to see the bigger picture here. I really hope that there's some sort of human resources department or some kind of intermediary between XIV's staff and Square that can start making some positive changes done for the overworked and tired-as-hell XIV staff that is being worked to the bone and basically living on caffeine and passion for the title. Switching subjects here... Yeah.. that was a real thing too. I can't say I was frustrated enough to think about quitting, but I did have an adventure trying to get that clear the first time. Lots of wipes, lots of frustrating nights dealing with frustrating people. That's the negative side of it. Often times, not just in those fights but in Second Coil and stuff as well, I would feel like 'these people can't do this shit, who can?'. Like Turn 7 pre-nerf, holy crap the stuff I put up with. But at the same time, I look back on those Titan HM days and those Turn 7 days and I also remember how it made my old FC so healthy because we were always trying to help people with those clears and all of my funny/great experiences in PF and all of the pop culture that resulted from it (the rage gifs and the fan art and the web comics about Titan and Enrage strat) and in the end, I had bad memories and good memories. I had an experience, and MMO's to me are about having experiences. I personally prefer that. When things feel hazardous, I feel great for making past it. I want to support your friends that haven't yet. I realize that's more of an old school MMO mentality, and I admit that I am more of an 'old school' guy on that. I also know that PF can sometimes let people down but I'm not gonna touch the whole "NA Partyfinder hurdur" subject with a ten foot pole because I really think that communication has more of an effect on that than location. The first relic questline felt like a journey. Sure, it was just a lists of steps to do, but in my mind I was the Hero that was on a quest, and that each step in that quest got harder and harder until I hit the midpoint bottleneck. Got past it, slid down that hill and grabbed my relic. And sure, I didn't touch Titan for a while after that lol but I didn't touch Ravana either after doing it ten times within three days so.. truly, the Titan content lasted longer with me. Ever since ST it's been pretty straight-forward. I actually appreciate the fact that it's straightforward and not convoluted. I think a lot of people are glancing over the fact that the feeling of progress in XIV is simple, clean, and solid. I always feel like I'm one step closer to my goal when I log out. But when is the point where things become *too* routine?

(tl;dr at bottom) That's true, but the whole idea was that you did something hard before doing something long. In order to get any weapon at i90 at launch, you had to do one of two things. 1.) Beat Turn 5. (Doing something hardcore) 2.) Beat the three primals on hard mode and then farm your butt off. (Doing something midcore + time investment) You had to do something that was not a faceroll fest to get a i lvl 90 weapon. Heaps of people were stuck on Titan. I found the fight to be very challenging in AK gear. I found Coil harder in Darklight gear. This is coming from a guy who eventually led a static through T13, so I'm definitely not a casual. Relics to me never became casual, even as they shifted away from having to clear hard content to do. They eventually ended up being a little ridiculous. But it all comes down to defining what casual is. I define casual as logging on for half a hour - two hours max a day, doing roulettes, getting your tomes and doing the 24 mans. It is truly casual to spend months grinding out an ultimate weapon? Was it truly casual to spend loads of time doing atma, then doing all those animus books? Or spend literally millions of gil melding for the steps after? Farming light? Nah.. I think the Soldiery tome weapons and onward are casual. I think true casuals would be just fine with using 'x' number of tomes to buy that weapon and just be fine with it. But I see time investment as something that isn't casual. If you're going to invest an extreme amount of time on one thing (relic), even if it's easy to do, that's still a major investment you're making in a video game. Free time is as valuable to me as it's ever been. It's a time sink, much like raiding is, except you get one thing instead of a chance for multiple things. So, I judge casual-ism to be something that doesn't require 1.) too much skill and 2.) time. I didn't go for the relics after atma. I thought it was too much time investment. I was doing Coil at the time and I thought Relics were just as hardcore! Why? Because I was a college student with a part time job. But I spent every ounce of my free time RP'ing or learning how to be better at PLD for my midcore static and playing very seriously during our raid times, spending a lot more time learning the hard stuff than a casual would, and doing things like clearing T5. But, my definition of casual can be different from other people's. Was the DPS requirement because of low item level, or because of lack of skill? Was it because the DPS were bad or because they could not find a way to get better gear besides farming Myth? So, I can't really form a reasonable angle on arguing against that. However, I will say that in my own experience I had slight problems in T4, but nothing too major that wouldn't take a week or so to conquer. This coming from a group that did the Enrage strat (I in fact didn't do it the honest way until later). Running into trouble is totally midcore content in my opinion. If we classify Titan hard as midcore than oh boy.. a shit ton of people had issues clearing it. But, at the same time, you could go into a party finder for Titan hard and beat it. You could do a Party Finder T4 run and beat it. It wasn't unheard of. Not common, but common enough to be totally doable if you were geared in Myth and worked with your party to do it. Was T5 like that? Hell no. At launch, Turn 5 was the fight you absolutely needed a static for. Nowadays we have two turns of Alex you NEED a static for: 3 and 4. Yet no midcore people are trying Alex Savage 1 and 2. Probably because of the dps checks in those first two turns. Probably because of the horror stories. I dunno honestly! I don't see a lot of PF's for those two turns at all. Why was it that I saw Coil all the time/primal fights all the time in PF in the past and now very few Alex 1 and 2's? I agree on your first Alex thing. That might be why there aren't PF savage parties. Maybe people are just sick and tired of Alex. Extreme primals, Coil and Alex.. I know I'm making points entirely from my point of view, but the reason is simple. As you said: Yes. Yes it is. It's hard to explain the in-between. What's easy and what's hard. It's difficult to reason exactly what kind of challenge people truly want when they say things like "I enjoy how this game doesn't hold your hand" and then a month later talk about how the raids are too hard/dungeons too long. Then to have complaints about how easy content is when 20% of the playerbase hasn't even cleared Alex 4 normal. I just personally think they got it really right at launch, and now it feels so much more unbalanced than it used to. I wanna do Thordan, but I feel like the last three or so phases is too hard for PF. I wanna do something harder than the faceroll dungeons, but I don't want to be in a static anymore. Right now, Thordan is really the only thing that caters to people like me. But Square says that Thordan is for statics stuck on Alex 2. The way they perceive that content is to help raiders, not provide the non-raiders with challenge. I think that's gonna get them in trouble with the people that play this game every single day and sub every single month, and that's gonna hurt their bottom line. And yet, ironically... Truth. Whether it be more staff, a different philosophy moving forward, further effort of communication, or even changing up the Diadem which fell on its ass when it came out when it probably was supposed to fill in the gap a bit.. Something needs to happen. TL;DR: Midcore content is hard to define, I don't see timesinks as casual, and with such diverse opinions like this I don't envy Square Enix but they need to do something about the people inbetween casual and hardcore.

I'm loyal to this game, so yeah that's my only concern right now. Because I really think a lot of this stuff can be fixed with the right communication. I'm gonna make a case here as to why I think people are being alienated. I think LoV should have been delayed until the fanbase felt like there was enough content to go around and they could be happy with 'misc' content. When the Gold Saucer came out, there was a lot of positive reception for it. But that's because it came out right in the middle of a huge content surge, right between parts 1 and 2 of 2.5 which IMO was my favorite patch cycle. But because it came out right now when the fanbase is begging for straight up relevant content, not side content, it's become a symbol of the devs not knowing what the people want. They have shifted their focus more towards casual content since Heavensward, and I think they've gone too far in that department. It alienates the legacy players, it alienates raiders, and it alienates what I believe are the majority of Square's loyal, consistent people who sub (And inevitably provide long term health to the game): midcore players. They have really screwed midcore players with Heavensward. Dividing the audience between super casual and super hardcore is a very, very bad idea. In 2.0 we had Ifrit, Garuda, Titan Hard which were excellent midcore bottlenecks. The first half of Coil were great midcore bottlenecks. Coil itself was a great midcore bottleneck because unlike Alex Savage, the difficulty spikes were never extreme. A compelling story motivated players that might not have tried that stuff before to pull their pants up. There were no ridiculous DPS checks where tanks had to go full out STR gear to meet. Coil also was great hardcore content too because usually the last fight in the series was THE hardcore fight. And then in later patches, the extreme primals became great midcore content. I feel like Heavensward was supposed to have great midcore content in the form of Bismark and Ravana. However, Bismark was dead on arrival because of i180 upgrade hunt weapons. Which left Ravana. Since Alex Savage wasn't out yet, all the super hardcore just congested Ravana and Ravana became a scenario where a lot of midcore players felt like it was the only fight they could do, and they had to mingle with the hardcore players. Since then, we've had exactly two pieces of mid-core content. That and Thordan. All of the other midcore content is completely obsolete now. Hell even Ravana is obsolete now. So all midcore content players have to do now is Thordan. That's a far cry from launch. Midcore content has gone from being the majority of the content to the extreme minority.

It really makes me frown when I realize that this MMO has gone from an inspiring Cinderella story of redemption to a game in which the dev team has lost their way in regard to their own audience in the matter of a single delay and a single patch. The populace of XIV have shifted to such a pessimistic stance since 3.0 got stale, especially since 3.1. Who can blame them? I'm starting to feel it. To be fair they made some design mistakes, not just technical ones. It's starting to feel more and more like Square Enix five years ago to me. This technical crap on top of an already disappointed fanbase is not good. Not good at all. I don't want to say that the fanbase is abandoned the game, but XIV has been bleeding subs for months. 3.2 Needs to fix a lot of this shit or else it's going to continue.

From the small team they've got the amount of issues that DON'T make it live is pretty damn amazing. These guys have to be working themselves to the bone. They probably are. IIRC Yoshi had a little moment in one of the recent Live Letters in which he made a passive aggressive comment about being understaffed that caught a lot of people's attention. There's been a lot of rumor about that recently. I'm starting to believe a lot of XIV's revenue is not going back into XIV. I don't understand why Square isn't re-investing back into the game. XI wrapped up all new content, how about putting some of them on XIV's staff? It's not so much Yoshi being a hypocrit as much as it is the Marketing Department trying to do their job. If I was working in that department I'd definitely be trying to emphasize the game's success and mask the failures. Trailers and such are marketing tools after all.

Who the hell is gonna replace Mako? I do not want that job at allllllllllll.

Ryanti had returned her rueful smirk, though his expression was a little softer. Perhaps it was not a smirk but rather a smile. One of the requirements for receiving a number in this line of work was to be a fool. He already had that part covered. “That’s all I ask.” Ryanti responded to the notion that she wouldn’t drop him. He needed that re-enforcement. There was a lot on his plate already. The fact that his teammates weren’t there was such a massive weight on his shoulders; a weight that he tried not to let the Captain of the Roehmerl see as she dove into the ultimate unknown with him. There was no way he was going to try to convince her to come with him on this stunt, let alone be the one to walk out upon the ledge though her height might have made it easier. He felt a great need to tackle the ‘hard’ parts when he could. Still though, in time he was sure that would change. The ledge he was standing on that he had to navigate through in order to reach the other side of the massive shaft thinned out to a space that was shorter in length than even his feet. He could not even use the balls of his feet to balance himself upon the little ring designed to cushion and hoist the elevator that neither of them could see at the moment. There was a moderately firm wind that blew from deep within the gallows of the darkness, flicking his hair about and emphasizing the great distance he would meet with his death if he were to slip and fall – if Sounsyy were to go back on her word and drop him. "So, when yer not 'seventy-seven', er, before or after this is over, yeh have a normal life that yeh go back to? Do yeh work or have someone waitin' at home fer yeh?" Those were the kind of questions that took a little bit of time to fully sink in. But when they did, it always had a bit of an impact on him, especially coming from her. It was a little bit more than an oddly personal question, kind of penetrating as well, but it was something to focus on besides the fear of the immense space in front of him and the uncertainty that lied ahead. He didn’t mind. There was honestly a part of him that felt more at peace over it than he expected. A stronger gust of damp, stale wind brushed across his face, pushing the beads of sweat from his concentration up into the air and flicking a bit of his dampened locks aside. "Yeh there yet or...?" Ryanti looked towards her for a moment, finally getting his second foot upon the razor-thin ledge. The palms of his hands were glued to the cerment wall of the enormous Allagan construct. He could see nothing except for the immense space visible by his torchlight, and the slight silhouette of the woman’s face that had joined him in this hell – this beautiful darkness. One foot slid to the side. Another joined it. Ryanti was making progress, but it was slow and almost painful to watch due to how focused he was on the matter at hand. A moment later, Sounsyy could hear a light little buzz in her ear. The man had placed a hand upon his own ear and activated the local communication signal. It was an easier way to talk now, an easier way to not lose his mind from the other end. “I’m getting there.” He replied softly in the linkpearl. It sounded as if Ryanti was right next to her, but of course he wasn’t. With every inch of space he covered, he drifted further and further away from the ledge – from Sounsyy. She was becoming more and more alone in the dark, but Ryanti’s voice was in her ear. In fact, she could hear every single hiccup in his breath as he found himself more and more alone on the shaft’s ring. She could see the flicker of light as he occasionally moved his body, hesitated and inched his way along. She could hear the concentration, the nervousness, and the focus. That was when Ryanti finally answered. “I’m a Lieutenant Quartermaster… for the Flames.” He answered after mulling for long enough. “I am usually in charge of weapon stockpiles, and I follow where they go. I make sure the right things go out to the right people, and that nothing is stolen or lost. I keep inventory and supervise. A lot of the time I travel. Sometimes I can be at home for a little bit. I deal a lot with other governments besides the Sultanate’s, including yours. It’s… its normal on paper, y’know? Like the ideal job for someone who graduated ‘Officer’s Camp’ … a perfect little life, right? Heck, sometimes I even help my family business out.” He was talking as if everything was normal right now. Where they were, what he was doing… but the tone of his voice was strained and serious. It was that tone which betrayed the situation that they could not escape from. However, Ryanti could escape from that perfect picture of his life outside of this job, and he had no issue doing just that. “Y’know what, Sounsyy? It’s fake. It’s very fake. There’s no such thing as normal in my reality. Ever since I was brought into this world via Halfling blood, it has not been normal for me. My life hasn’t been normal at all. My identity is as abnormal as my blood. Take my career away from me and what do you have? What else besides a number? Who am I –really-? I ask myself that often. My hobbies, and my passions… they define me I think. There’s much more to be besides this suit. But I was never happy trying to be normal… I was never happy with my public face I’m forced to live because of my family. I’m happier here – knowing I can make a difference by doing –something- meaningful beyond words and actions of normal men.” It was then that his left foot made a little slip on the smooth surface of the stabilizer ring. Ryanti was almost two-thirds of the way there. His little slip echoed the noise to Sounsyy’s ear and Ryanti’s light flickered. His body seemed to light on fire inside as he immediately gripped a metal pipe or some such behind him as hard as he could to keep himself from slipping entirely. He glanced to the left. His eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that he could make out the grey rectangular presence of the control box on the other side. There was a large lever on the side of it, sticking out. It had perhaps not been disturbed in five millennia. It looked like a manual override. Curiously though, it seemed to have been tampered with. He was hesitant to believe that the manual lever would have been designed to stick out like that. From what he knew of Allagan life, terminals like that were operated by fingertips, not my muscle power. Something must have happened. Even something like a control box had a story to tell in this behemoth of a ship. Knowing that any false move at all could lead to a swift death, Ryanti’s inhibitions were a bit lower than normal for the time being. His mind had been mulling over her second question for a little longer now than the first. It was no doubt a more difficult challenge to answer the right way. Part of him wondering why she had asked, but… it was interesting that she did. It brought some feelings up to the surface that were very separate from his mission mindset. His voice crackled once again in her ear. “As for my home, it’s as quiet as a mouse. The only thing waiting for me there is a bed and my belongings…. And maybe some incense and good book if I’m lucky.” He eyed the gap between the ring and the control panel. He would have to jump to the other ledge. Then it would be easy to go to the panel and try to re-activate it or… yank down the manual override. Maybe even kick the damn thing – if that could possibly work. One thing was for sure, he wouldn’t be able to go back until he got it working. Unknown to them both, back within the room in which Sounsyy had crawled up the vent and Allagan equations laid decorated on the walls, the wires that had joined together and provided the entire floor with a brief surge of power were not done with making their presence known. Indeed one of the wire tips had been lifted up into the air with the power of electrical surge. However since then, gravity was slowing edging it back down towards it again… and this time their interference would affect them far more than psychologically…. Yet right before everything went to hell, Ryanti managed to ask Sounsyy a rather intimate question in return. A question that made his cheek glow a flushed red in the hostile darkness. “So what about where you lay your head down? Is it quiet too?” That’s when everything went to hell. --- An enormous RUMBLE echoed from one end of the shaft to the other. Sounsyy could hear the snap of the enormous spark caused by the two wired rejoining once more in the room far down the hallway. Bright blue lines shaped like computer circuitry flushed up the shape of the entire shaft in one enormous surge. Ryanti’s voice cried out from her linkpearl, fading out with a little sizzle of words from above the water, very faint but very clear. “If you can h-… ething’s-- ..—ange… ac- …str-.. ge.. someth-- ….live… the sh-… “ And then it ceased. Power had returned to the shaft as well. Crippled, malfunctioning power. The electricity had surged onto the stabilizing ring, and ultimately through Ryanti’s feet. It traveled along his rope and ended up providing Sounsyy with enough of a shock to race her heart, but Ryanti took the brunt of it. Sound disappeared from Sounsyy’s ear as her linkpearl shorted out and became non-functional and dead. Ryanti’s linkpearl did the same, and nearly shattered into pieces. Ryanti’s body snapped in one huge spaz, a spark flying off from his torchlight and sapping the battery power from it. It was strong enough to stop his heart. In a brilliant display, a tiny taste of what it would have been like to witness five thousand years ago, rings of red lights activated along the stabilizer rings and flickered on and off as it struggled to function. Blue light soon joined the circles of red lights, except these lights went vertical up and down the shaft, shaking off some of the ancient dust. Even under layers and layers of it, it was gorgeous. It would have been immensely beautiful back in the day to witness. But there was nothing beautiful about this. There was only the horrifying image of Ryanti’s limp body losing balance, and falling forward... sparks flying out of his linkpearl and torchlight. It had almost felt like slow motion. As if time kept stopping and going, stopping and going… The left side of his body felt warm... yet very cold. He had his eyes closed, and it was almost as if he was sleeping. Just a brief little nap. Just some time to rest. He did not even notice nor feel the aetherial lines ingrained on the side of his face revealing themselves. They traveled all the way down it and further down his left arm. They were life stiff veins of a soft blue glow on his body. Memories that weren’t his. Feelings not of his own. It was what he was experiencing in that split second as he fell without a pulse. It was the symptoms described by Jonathan and the others. The after-effects of seeing and experiencing. His left eye opened and glanced at the manual lever. His left arm that was not his anymore reached out and grabbed the lever, squeezing upon it. His weight fell upon it. The lever creaked and gave into his full weight. He was hanging from the lever as it tugged itself downward and activated. The spectre of the woman stood over the exposed wires with tired eyes in the room they used to be in. She vanished. Power was cut once more, except for the auxiliary, manual mode of power Ryanti had activated with the elevator’s override. The glow in Ryanti’s body left him. The beating of his heart returned. Ryanti let go. His limp body sailed across the open space and swung from the rope. All of this happened in a matter of moments. His back slammed into the wall, dangling for a moment before another great rumbling occurred. Then, life returned to it. Warm, encompassing life. The man opened his aquamarine eyes in a bit of a dizzy state. His ears were ringing and his hands were shaking. Every occasional dim red light was not activated, blinking very lightly. Some glass from the lightbulb’s shells shattered and a few of the dim red lights shorted out immediately. The shaft was rumbling constantly now, and a feint grinding sound could now be heard from above them. Above them… above them! That was when Ryanti knew where he was! His form immediately glanced up to witness the auxiliary Allagan gears wrenching and turning, managing to barely work and lower a huge circular platform. It was heading downward… coming down… it was coming towards them! Towards him! If it were to pass Sounsyy Ryanti would surely be killed by it. Ryanti had never grabbed rope so hard in his life. “Sounsyy! Sounsyy!” Ryanti called out as loud as he could, struggling to try to climb up the rope as fast as he could, slamming the heels of his feet against the wall as he glanced up to witness what could very well be his impending doom. “Sounsyy, pull me up!” He cried out in desperation, trying to beat the elevator with his own merit but he needed her help now! Facing an event so close to death, Ryanti began to panic, realizing now how badly he actually wanted to live. Of course, if he were to die there… Sounsyy would be trapped in this massive place… with no sense of direction… in the darkness… alone. “PULL ME UP!”

As you know (at least in the US) Thanksgiving falls on this day, and I am extremely stuffed. I'm curious about how the members of the RPC chose to celebrate. For me, it went a little like this. The Meal: Grilled New York Strip Steak: 12 ounce Mashed Potatoes with Brown Gravy Homemade Dinner Rolls Corn on the Cob (Grilled) Grilled Veggies Sweet Tea with Lemon Juice The Dessert: Homemade Pecan Pie Eggnog SO WORTH IT.

-In that very same Inn- Falling blades of grass so evergreen, from trees with everlasting canopies. Sunlight shines down upon heaven. The heaven on the earth. He sees the light shine down, through the meadow's flowers and upon his cheeks. It is warm. It fills him with peace. The reflection of the water glistened with the might of the star. Innocent fingers swipe along the surface of the water's edge. The laughter of children. The sound of their jewelry flicking about in their excitement of play. Monuments of silver and gold in the distance. Despite the warmth, it feels numb. Something is wrong. These memories are not his own. A false peace. That was how Ryanti described sleep. It was a deception of the body, he thought. A ruse to allow oneself to retreat into pretty little dreams as his aching body healed and his aetherial sickness slowly drained away like the water in a bathtub after one had pulled the plug. There he laid, white locks dancing about his features. Young aquamarine eyes were shrouded in a misty redness of bloodshot fatigue. Etched on the left side of his face, barely visible, were lines. Lines that seemed tattooed upon the fibers of his skin. It faded away after a few moments of shimmering in a quiet cyan shade. He was not completely well yet. It had not been a month since his last incursion. He slaved to grab half of his face with the sweaty palm of his open hand. A moan emerged from the quietness of his inn room's head. It was not a moan of pleasure like perhaps this mattress had seen in the past, but rather of pain. It was a pleasant memory, but it was not his. From what era, from who it was he had no idea. He could never tell anyone of this. It was something he had to live with. He looked at himself in the mirror. What a mess he was, what a body he had. His fingertips pricked and touched the side of his cheek that had bared those lines moments before. Now his skin was as clear as a whistle. He poked it a little bit just so he could still feel it. It goes numb when those lines come. Those words weren't his either. They were from another of his same occupation, a person he did not even know the name to. Only a number. Were they dead now? Were they dead and gone? There was a good chance they were. A few coughs here. A drink of water helped. It helped a lot. He needed breakfast. He needed to leave that room and get some fresh air. Fresh air would be nice. --- "Oh-umm... 'how 'but a glass of cawfee?" The stammering teenaged Miqo'te server asked Ryanti with a little bit of concern at the humble Thanalan abode. It was a rather quiet little place; out of the way of the main city districts. It was a product of the new 'push' within the city limits of having more of a 'homey' atmosphere meant to distract someone from the hustle and bustle of the actual Desert Jewel itself. Despite the fact that Ul'Dah never slept, it's men and women did. It was also cheap, decently enough. Probably because it was family owned. Indeed the father of the maiden appeared before her and spoke. "I think he would rather have a glass of some fruit juice. You look like you've been through quite an adventure, young man." Ryanti managed to push himself back from leaning upon the bar counter, thank the Twelve the seats had a backrest. "You're right. I think I did." he said with a little smile. "I'll take you up on that offer, thank you." He was wearing nothing but a white frilly suit, some dark blue trousers with golden threading in the knee accents, and some decent black traveling shoes. He had dropped off his equipment already, now he was trying to get some rest. But he didn't feel like going home yet. There was still things he needed to do.

"Yeh, I were there. I drove the Sahagin spear through her chest," It was difficult to surprise Ryanti in this line of work. She had bared witness to his stunning reaction to where they were at, giving away the reality that he had never been in anywhere remotely like a place such as this before. Yet, he was the more composed individual. He was the most prepared. Likewise, his training had also ingrained into his head the reality of betrayal, deception, and most importantly the unexpected. But Sounsyy did in fact manage to surprise Ryanti sometimes. His knife slid ever so slightly amongst the bottom of the window’s frame as he glanced over to her. The reflection of his torchlight upon the pieces of glass provided only the slightest light upon his feature, but it was enough for her to notice. There was a hint of surprise in his eyes - yes perhaps it was just what she was looking for. But there was also an element of interest and a layer of perplexity about that glance as well. Ryanti’s eyes trapped light easily, and so they seemed to glow under the very dim shadows of his torchlight being reflected back at him. "That secret safe with yeh too?" Her wit. It reminded him of the little spark he saw in her eyes just moments before. Before all of this, he remembered how dead those eyes were. Now there was some life to them, as well as some life that had crept into her lips and gave her some fun things to say. As her light left his own and checked behind her again for a spectre long gone, Ryanti’s lips pursed into a smile. Sounsyy could not see this, but she could probably hear a feint chuckle emanating from his own pair of lips. The chuckle was the sign of him putting two and two together. It was an easy connection to make. The Captain had just told him about the personality and demeanor of her former Master, and the little sideshow Ryanti was picturing in his head… yes, if he were her, he would have hated her. Hated her so much. So indeed it was an easy connection to make… and an easy action to imagine taking. She had gone the less moral path to obtain her position. She had murdered her. Sounsyy’s proximity was enough to break Ryanti out of his thoughts and into reality once more. The lack of distance between their shoulders caused his senses to become hypersensitive. He could almost feel every tiny little movement of Sounsyy’s shoulders, even though he only occasionally felt contact. So softly did his hands rest upon what remained of the broken glass upon the frame of the window; the fragments were small enough now to be harmless to him. He was wondering the same thing as her, if the closeness made her feel uncomfortable. He had a brief memory of seeing her in the infirmary. Then, he felt a sudden harsh pressure on his shoulder. Ryanti’s side hunched over for a tiny moment, as he didn’t expect such a maneuver, but his shoulder then stood firm enough for the woman to leap up into the window. When he returned his glance back to where it was, all he could see was a form hunched up in the window. He turned his head to the side, placing his fingertips upon the torchlight on his chest, telling himself for future reference that he had only seen the illumination of her brunette tail. He was silent for now – studying with his eyes relentlessly as they followed Sounsyy’s torch. She could hear the crackling of the glass bits as he rested the barrel of his rifle upon the frame of the window when she gingerly climbed through. The size of the chamber was immense, and rings circled around the ovalesque chamber with each ideal ‘floor’. He concluded to himself that those rings were there to stabilize the elevator upon each floor of the rear of this vessel, and that Sounsyy was standing upon one of them. "Yeh got more rope? I think that's yer power source. If we can get to it. Whoever crosses this should 'ave a safety rope." When she regarded him, he looked serious. Almost concerned. His face was too stiff to be casual, and he was too quiet for the moment in question to be completely happy with the situation. However, his eyes darted towards her when she regarded him, and when she returned her glance to the empty space, she could hear an “Absolutely.” From him. Ryanti kept his eyes on her for a moment, observing her shape illuminated by his torchlight. Her braid, and her story, was in his mind as he prepared the rope in question. This was a different kind of group than last time. It was tighter, thinner, and stronger. It felt almost like it was made out of Garlean fibers, and it could be easily assumed that perhaps it was even stolen from Garleans physically or.. technologically. Ryanti had actually reached his hands back behind him and started fiffled with two metal clamps on each side of his chest. While he was doing this, he listened to her story. All too often did he hear about tales in which lesser men and women would meet a harsh fate whether or not they expected it so. He could hear the sound of the masts crack. He could feel the spear through her former master’s chest. He could almost picture that look in her eye, and it made him remember Cynthia. She had taken her hand, and killed her. If Ryanti would ever be in the same situation, taking her hand to save his life… would she? Or would she do the same to him? No one would ever know the look Ryanti gave her just then as he bared witness to her in a glistening spectre form to what might have been an ironic appearance given what she saw in that hallway. He didn’t know how to looked, or what glance he gave, and Sounsyy couldn’t see anything on his face. He was to her, in that moment, as his job would portray him: a dark shadow, a silent face with tools in his hand, in a location no one would ever be privy enough to know of, doing his job because no one else could. A number. It was what most saw before they encountered death at the hands of that man. Ryanti got closer to the window. The shadow was looking out to the enormous, dark, claustrophobic room out ahead of him. A sigh escaped his lips. She was right. It was him that had to go. He had to gather his wits about him and gather them now. It wasn’t the first time, and he was still alive. When she began to climb back through the window, his face was once again illuminated, and she could see for herself the grim look on Ryanti’s face. There was a slight tension about him. He was still stiff from before. There was something else he didn’t like – not just the idea of trying to tiptoe across the shaft’s stabilizer rings. Something was off. But her laughter, that allowed his shoulders to relax and for him to finally brief. What Sounsyy received when Ryanti stared back at her was not a stiff expression nor a concerned one. It was a little weak smile, and aquamarine eyes full of life, as they were before. The porclain-haired man leapt up into the small window frame with a measure of finesse and grace, impressive enough considering that he was taller than her. Now he was close alongside her in the tangled mess that was the window frame, and that is when he answered. “No.” He first said, a chuckle or two emitting from the back of his throat. How did he ever feel like mentioning this stuff? “Though, I must admit that I didn’t really know what to expect at first.” With that, he pushed himself over the side, two feet lightly hitting the balcony. He did not give himself the time nor the moment to stare out at the space in front of him just yet. He only glanced upwards. “Not when I first met you out in Thanalan’s sun, and certainly not when I found out you were our Captain for this mission.” He said to her, his back turned to her and his white hair sparkling in her light as he started sliding the rope through the clamps. His back to her was brief as he found himself turning towards her as he started fastening himself, which included wrapping the rope around his waist. “But, quite honestly I’m too old now to find cardboard cutouts on fliers and posters more interesting than the reality behind it all. Sounsyy the woman… the real woman… I was not entirely wrong about what I expected. I knew you probably wouldn’t trust me, especially how we met the second time. I knew those dead eyes were still able to sparkle, despite what a colorful past could do to a pair of living eyes over time…” When he was all done, Ryanti had all of his front clamps covered in safety rope, and the clamp at the center of his chest extended the cable outwards in front of him. Ryanti picked up the rope, which had been gathered in a circle, and tossed it to the ground next to the window frame, bending down briefly to find the other end of it. “I think that the real Sounsyy is more interesting than the one I saw in my youth. The period to move on from such black and white views of the world is long behind me. It was about time my perception of you updated.” The Halfling emerged from below the window frame, with the other end of the rope in hand. He motioned for Sounsyy to come to the border of the window, adjusting his light to shine dimmer so that she could see him with clarity and he could see her as well. This was a much more dangerous stunt than that time in the hangar. It had to be done with maximum amount of safety in mind. And so Ryanti inserted the rope past the clamps on the front of her, the rope dancing around each of the three on her chest in a very elaborate and specific pattern, as if it was ingrained in him, as if he did it all the time. The task itself was sewn into his unconscious memory. Ryanti was thinking of someone else, of her story about how she became a Captain. He spoke, almost suddenly. “About Sterransa… about how you became a Captain…” The end of the rope went through her top right clamp a second time. She could feel the nooks of the rope tighten upon her chest. “The manner in which everything happened, it was probably wrong. It’s wrong to commit murder. It’s wrong to kill. I know.” A light sigh escaped him. Ryanti kept his eyes on his fingers doing their work. “When I was being trained in this very field, my recruiter treated me like an animal. Like absolute garbage, like less than a sentient being. I hated him. There were times when I envisioned my hands wrapped around his throat and squeezing...” A light scrunching noise emerged from the rope as Ryanti squeezed it tightly with both of his hands in front of her. “Like that. Until he stopped breathing. I even had dreams about it.” There was a solemn look on his face as he lowered the rope, shaking his head but a little in the memory of it, a quiet breath escaping his lips. He slowly lurched the end of the rope towards one side of her waist. “I guess what I am trying to say is… if the manner in which you made Captain is supposed to change my perception of you, it doesn’t. Not by much. I live in a world in which many have done much worse. I myself have murdered in the name of others and even for myself… I have done away with individuals that probably did not deserve to die nearly as much as Sterransa. You should bring up how I got my seventy-seven sometime. Heh, I don’t know… I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore.” Now his right hand maneuvered around her back, and grabbed onto the rope dangling from her waist. It was in that moment that he himself wondered once more if the proximity made her feel uncomfortable. If it were to make her feel uncomfortable if Sounsyy knew what things Ryanti had done. He asked himself that as he glided the shape of the rope across the back of her waist, then around to the other side. As he did so, he spoke. “But… I don’t think any less of you as a person or a Captain… so to answer your question from before, yes. That secret’s also safe with me. Think of it like this safety rope.” And with that, and a smile, Ryanti looped the rope over her center clamp, and closed the clamp, binding them two together. He took a few steps back, and the rope stayed upon him. He adjusted his light as he turned his back to her from short and wide to long and narrow. It was only then that he truly understood the vast scope of this room. A loose gust of wind blew his locks around and the Halfling realized he was but a tiny ant in this massive, long abandoned dead Allagan elevator shaft. He would have to circle around the razor thin stabilizer rings to get to the other side. His light shined all about, reviving the appearance of the dead cerment chamber coated in eons of dust and casted out to be forgotten with piles of stories left untold about what came up and down through here. Would they find out? “I trust you, Sounsyy!” Ryanti said outloud, his breath increasing in intensity as he slowly began to shuffle himself to the corner of the tiny balcony. He bent down to pick up his rifle, placing the strap over his shoulders and the curls of his fingers gripped the side of the window frame. “I’m a little scared!” He admitted, eyeing the difference in thickness between the balcony and the ring. He needed something… one extra bit of courage to begin what he was about to do…

I second this. /bellydance pls.

If one remembers the Ball Dance quest, the girl in question wanted to learn a different art of dancing more sophisticated than her own. It was heavily implied that she was one of Ul'Dah's infamous dancing girls, and they strengthened the stereotype with her being Miqo'te. From the way she looked down upon her current ... profession, it's easy for me to correlate that "She's a lowly whore!" mentality with seeing those dancing girls in Ul'Dah. In places like Bazaars, I would imagine they would make a fair bit of money by receiving coin from the pockets of impulsive individuals. But it definitely would be seen as sleazy and promiscuous regardless of whether or not the dancers are actually prostitutes. My head-canon tells me that some are, some aren't. But I think there's definitely an image out of there of all of them being correlated with a sexual overtone and viewed as kind of lower than the standard member of society. Not to mention that there are performing artists that breath fire and juggle and do street acrobatics. Those people aren't usually seen under the same light as the dancers though. There's not really a feeling of promiscuousness with them I think. It's more regulated towards the dancers, and that could very well be because the dancers might use their gender as an advantage.

The hallway was very quiet now. Almost as quiet as it had been eons prior. Their presence at this time seemed so insignificant to Ryanti, so tiny compared to the size of the rest of the ship. The silence was welcoming in a way. At least in the company of another. The young man wondered if Sounsyy realized now why he could not do this alone. It stood for certain that if she didn’t now, she will eventually. Company… company prevented insanity. Right now, he was thoroughly enjoying this tiny escape from the very grim reality they were in right now. His slender hands began to unfasten a strap from one of his larger pouches on his waistline as Sounsyy began her recalling of her former master. His body seemed to respond automatically to the situation, knowing what tools to apply to any given uncertainty. It was a trick of his trade – they almost always had to improvise. He had a second eye upon the woman as she examined the adjacent room, only accessible through a broken window. It was a relief and at the same time, concerning to be informed that it was empty. If they could not open this door, they would have to take that path and do whatever it took to get deeper inside the maul of this giant mechanical beast of an incomprehensible era. The gadget Ryanti pulled out of his pouch looked like a little black scanner about the size of his hand and shaped like a cylinder. It was designed by Sharlayan to detect electricity and aether flow. With a quiet click, he turned the device on, and a tiny red light from the gadget began to blink in a slow, continuous rhythm as he hovered the device over the door while listening to Sounsyy’s story. This figure of hers, this Sterransa… she seemed so colorful, and so bitter a person. He admitted that part of him was deeply amused about the idea of imagining Sounsyy paying her dues, albeit unreasonably of course. He almost wanted to make a jab at her about how she never would tie her hair neat anymore or make everything spotless because of her former master, but he made no such comment outloud. As for her comment about the lift, Ryanti had a look about him that confirmed her suspicions that he was thinking the same thing. He said nothing when she tried to break the latches open with her sword. He wanted her to experience for herself the immense strength and resilience of Allagan steel. Even after five thousand years, the metal was as strong and abstained from neither rust nor decomposition. Even the modern steel of the Sharlayan blades were pitiful compared to this unknown molecular composition. It was alien. Foreboding. Ryanti had looked back at her while she told the tale. He could tell by the little sparkle in her eye that she hated her – dearly. Yet, at the same time, he could sense that she respected her. Perhaps Ryanti’s own eyes betrayed interest. His attention was briefly diverted by the notification of the device. It made a little beeping noise, and the blinking red light slowly began to morph into an unblinking green light. The look that Ryanti gave the device told her that it was important, and once again concern emerged from the surface of his expression. But it did not seem like it was all too much a bad thing, just… suspenseful. His eyes turned to the blade Sounsyy held up in their torchlight’s embrace. The steel glinted off of the light which bounced off of the dead Allagan walls. A little smile graced him as he whipped out his cleaning rag from his back pocket again. Clean every blade thrice over… funny it was then when Ryanti decided to wipe the dust off of Sounsyy’s blade right then as she held it aloft. Perhaps their Sharlayan tools and skills could never be sharp enough. Not for a job like this. But this was a sign of respect from Ryanti. He figured it was a better way to show it than most. “This door is incredibly thick. It would take Garlean machinations hours, maybe even days to carve through it, and that is if they can even do it in the first place.” He sidestepped her towards the door after cleaning off her blade, his initial sigh wisping some of the dust into the close air around him. “Perhaps these doors opened to some kind of repulsor lift, but something of this magnitude would have not been for passengers.” Perhaps one of the inaccessible doors held the former passenger elevator but… they had no other options but to try to take this one. “My device indicates that there is a power source beyond this point.” Ryanti mentioned, his voice dead serious. He truly didn’t know what power source could be there. “It’s still functioning. After all this time. We need to access it. If the room behind this door happens to be a lift of some sort, and if we can still use it, it would beat climbing. Regardless, we need to press on, we need to go deeper inside… we are not even in the bowels yet.” He gently tapped the device against his chin in thought as he switched it off, eyeing the windowsill again. Gears in his mind began to click together, and he pulled out his utility knife from his thigh and walked over to the broken glass. He stabbed a point of glass sticking out from the bottom, and it shattered a bit. Satisfied with his ability to break it, he placed the blade in a bottom corner of the windowsill. “Let’s go through here, but first help me out with clearing the glass. If our suits get caught in it, gone will be our modesty for sure. There’s a time and a place for that, but definitely not here.” With that, Ryanti began to jab his blade against the bottom of the frame, tiny bits of ancient glass crumbling under its age and his knife. Sounsyy’s eyes had seemed to dare Ryanti from before, and he was not about to decline the invitation. “So... were you there? When she died?”

He let go of the rag and watched as the woman next to him took to doing what he had done. It was his turn to stare into the darkness, his turn to listen. His aquamarine eyes had a powerful color, but it was all for naught if there was no light to illuminate them. He had the stock of his weapon resting against the floor of the place and leaned back fully against the wall. The pain in his back was beginning to fade away, but the remnants were still there. He closed his eyes and rested the side of his cheek away from Sounsyy upon his rifle, using it a kind of a tool to try to obtain some kind of calm, relaxing rest that his body absolutely needed right now while his mind ruminated upon her words. His eyes very subtly opened just a tad after she had explained her first bit about fooling one’s own self and… who you were when no one was looking. Those words hit him more than she knew. Not in a bad way, but in a penetrating way. He knew. She knew too. Your braid is very pretty. The expression on his face carried an element of drowsiness, but Ryanti’s ears kept upright. He wanted to hear what she had to say, and he listened intently. In his mind he was painting a picture using her words. It was a portrait of her life that was beginning to build in his memories to try to add some depth to the woman he had met back at the Grindstone that faithful day; the same woman he had admired as a boy. Ryanti knew about Ala Mhigo and the events that happened prior to his homecoming. His father had even participated in some events relating to just that. He picked up on her wistful sigh, and he wished he could have been there. “That girl from the Bloodsands yeh admire, the Maimier?” Ryanti turned his head to her when she said that in a slight glance. She didn’t look too different from his memories, honestly. Especially when she had emerged in the war paint she had donned upon her. The closest glance he could afford of her was when he had knocked her down and saved her life from an old rival decades before. She was beautiful then – as she had been in the Coliseum, all primed with makeup and other aspects of showmanship for those fake fights – yet how ugly she was when she got her hands on Cynthia. Ryanti had seen most of it. He continued to listen. So she had been fighting for years before? But she was so young then. The time she was talking about before all that… she was even younger. So young. Ryanti’s heart felt heavy under irrational guilt, as if it was his fault. That's about the time yeh stop feeling guilty fer doing horrible things to horrible people.” Another phrase that penetrated him. This one deeper than the first. He could understand her perspective from her time in the Bloodsands. He did not like Ul’Dah much either. Every day he found himself back there, he would always see someone do something that would make him feel a little sick to his stomach. Ul’Dah was a never city of morals, it was more like a crippling drain of idealism distorted into an evil, selfish desire to shape the world in one’s own image. In other words, it was the city he grew up in, and his job was really no different from that, and neither was he. But yet… You weren’t fake to me, Sounsyy. I cared. Yeah. Right. Like having some damn boy caring would change anything. He noticed that she spoke of moving to Limsa with another, and yet did not mention her again after moving on to talking about her time in the Barracuda. He thought it best not to ask – if she was speaking from the heart right now, there were always crevasses in people’s souls that one just shouldn’t shine a light in. Ryanti decided not to probe. He was feeling rather despondent when she mentioned her best kept secret. He cleared his throat a bit. A few fingertips tapped the barrel of his rifle. Neither was he, Ryanti thought. Neither was he. He glanced up at her as she stood, catching the rag. Even though there was minimal light, he could see well enough to make out her feminine form in the darkness, captured rather ideally by the Sharlayan suit that clung to her in all manners of physical protection. It was a pleasant sight. But a Sharlayan suit could do nothing to protect someone from their own mind. No, he didn’t mean what it did to his mind when he saw Sounsyy in it. That made him laugh a little bit on the inside. Ryanti was in the middle of placing his rag away when he heard her laugh, pausing a bit, honestly surprised at that. Ryanti had laughed in his mind… she had laughed out loud. Your braid is very pretty. So is your laugh. She looked a little bit more like herself again. Confident. She could hear Ryanti slowly getting to his feet as indeed he was. With one long exhale, his taller form stepped alongside hers, glancing to the side to observe her. “I am.” He shifted his glance back to the hallway ahead, and raised his rifle up. “Your best kept secret is safe with me.” He also said that so matter-of-factly. The delivery may had been neutral, but there was much more to it than that. Perhaps Ryanti would have better imagined conversation like this to occur at a nice dinner, or overlooking a field of flowers while enjoying a lovely picnic on days the sky was bluest. Instead, they were an unpresented distance under the ocean in an ancient, derelict relic of a bygone age in which they both could barely comprehend. The little intricate marks of the cerment’s masterful work was apparent everywhere on the ship from the floor to the walls to even the ceiling. Everywhere his light touched revealed another brilliantly made part of the vessel in which could even be seen past all of the eons old dust that had accumulated along with the still air. But it was a good decision to have conversation here. It made it so much easier to do. Ryanti’s movement wasted no energy, and covered every open space in front of him with light and left no louder sound than a whisper. His rifle light did not cross over his torchlight on his torso. He was so very professional, yet his words were so very personal. “Your right, y’know?” He said to her, checking another long-abandoned and long-forgotten doorway. The cerment door which perhaps had openly brilliantly for Allagan peoples of ages past had collapsed within itself, making entry impossible. It would have been a sombering sight to see for anyone that lived during that time. “Your right about me fooling myself. About my wishful thinking.” A little smile brushed off of his face as he glanced at her once more. A smile that was sad in nature. He slung his rifle upon his back and tried to manually remove the large pillars of cerment that covered the entryway. His body lurched and twitched as he exerted himself to try as he continued to speak. “I don’t really know what Seventy-Seven is. I like to see it as separate because… when you’ve not had solid food for three days and water for two, and you’re glancing at the man in the chair, or what’s left of him because you blew his head off with a powerful rifle such as this one or the pistol in my pocket, and you’re having your way with his food and his water, and you.. look at him and go ‘I didn’t do that, Seventy-Seven did that.’ He didn’t know Ryanti, he never met him. He met Agent Seventy-Seven and Agent Seventy-Seven killed him. Because Ryanti could never… could never do something like that. Not the nice man that loves to have a cup of warm tea before lunch time and loves people and art, culture and history.” He could remember how he was on the battlefield with the Garleans. How neutral his face was, how efficient of a killing machine he was. He knew Sounsyy had seen him too. “But maybe I can. Maybe I always could. Maybe that’s a part of me too. Maybe I know it is. Seventy-Seven will always be a part of me. That man that has little problem using the end to justify the means. The man that became the same way, that stopped learning how to feel guilty for doing horrible things to horrible people.” He perhaps tried one too many times to move the debris. It was an outlet for him. The last thing he wanted to do was to have his eyes water, turn beat red, and tears to fall in front of her. He managed to only allow them to water. The rest was dealt with his little outlet – his little attempt at trying to move the debris. His voice was somber, melancholy, and heavy. “Maybe it’s easier to separate that part of me into a number. Into a nickname, or… something separate from my real name to try to distance what I hate about myself. But that’s not the right way to think, isn’t it? To do that would mean that the name ‘Ryanti’ would be nothing but a label to the persona I show to others. It says little about what kind of person I am when no one is looking – the real me. I can’t help but feel that I am a bad man, and a terrible influence. But I don’t know who Ryanti is when no one is looking. I’m too confused with it all to try to answer the question myself, and no one has ever told me who Ryanti is when no one is looking.” Your braid is very pretty. So is your laugh. I’m sorry for bringing you down here, please forgive me. I’m a terrible person. He tugged on his strap and his rifle slung back right around, stepping away from a room that was obviously impossible to get into. Its secrets would be buried forever now. They had to move on. Ryanti tried the adjacent door. It was sealed tight, with no hint of receiving power for decades, centuries, more. He banged on it once or twice, glancing around at the form of it but shaking his head. Another no-go. He spoke again, but this time his voice had a measure of conviction it did not have earlier. “But there’s a difference between bad people and evil people.” Ryanti did not believe her to be evil. It was a very poor word to describe her to him. He could have turned around, and perhaps said something more about that, but he could not manage to gather the courage to glance at her now. He had felt like he had revealed an ugly side to himself to her, too ugly… he was afraid of that ugliness, insecure of that part of his soul just as Sounsyy was insecure about the burns on her shoulder. “Not only do bad people have good sides to them, but they also have the ability to do good things – great things. Part of who I am is being able to experience the wonders of this world on a first-hand basis and to be able to make a positive difference for the future. That’s the part of Seventy-Seven I love to accept. Sometimes I think all people – all civilizations from all eras – have those parts they love to accept, and other parts to themselves that they find a lot harder to accept. I think.” Ryanti wasn’t really sure about that philosophical comparison but… it was he believed, anyway. It was obvious that despite the ugly parts of this job, Ryanti had no shortage of passion for it. He had shown it time and time again. It was then that his light shined upon what appeared to be a much larger door than any of the others, with broken glass above it the only remnants of what used to be a lit up elevator sign. There was a window adjacent to it that had been laminated with glass, but the glass had long since shattered. There were plenty of sharp edges on the broken glass, and so Ryanti immediately figured to try the straightforward approach first. “That’s interesting. Looks like we’ve reached the end of the hallway. Shine a light in the window. Make sure there’s nothing there.” The ship was remarkably quiet now. There were no sounds, no feeling of a presence, nothing. It was almost as if the ship was letting them talk, as if the ship was trying to say that there was nothing left for them to discover in this first hallway here. But was the ship lying? “So… you said you had a bitch of a Captain, huh?” Ryanti stated. His voice had gone back to normal. It was an attempt to change the subject, yes. It was perhaps a part of him that wanted something more lighthearted, something that would illicit a smile or maybe even laughter in this hell of a place. He placed the palm of his hand upon the door, glancing up at the broken light, closing his eyes and trying to feel with his fingertips if there was any kind of manual action required to let the door loose somehow so that they could proceed, trying not to think about the alternative of traveling in the less desirable route of the open window next to them. “Do you have any funny stories from that time?”

"There was... there was... blood. In the vent, I think, and on the floor. In there. Beneath the table. And when I came out here... I thought I saw something. Someone. Gods, there's no one here, why am I being so stupid?" The air in the room was so stale. As it should be, considering that the components of the ship designed to recycle the air amongst the bowels of the vessel probably met its critical system failure hundreds or even thousands of years ago. His mouth was scant and dry, and his tongue would stick to his teeth often as he made those harsh recovery breaths. Blood? Did she see blood? Ryanti saw no such thing, but the thought of such a thing upon the floor and even in the vent… how did he not notice this? Was he too distracted with his own senses to realize it? The idea, the possibility that the blood wasn’t the black incarnations of millennia-old injury very deeply troubled him. As much as he hated to admit it, he couldn’t rule out that either marine life had gotten inside the ship somehow… or the ship had become an ecosystem to whatever ecosystem the Allagans made to study. Hell, it would even be plausible for marine life to have gotten in and evolved because of how much time had passed. Especially if the Allagans were masters of magic – aether could have been dense in this air long ago. Regardless of all that, Ryanti was taught in training for this job to always worry about the right now, not about potential outcomes. Right now, they were safe. Right now, all was quiet. Right now, everything was okay. “It’s okay, Sounsyy. It’s alright. You’re not stupid.” No, she wasn’t. Ryanti’s experience in that room proved his assumption correct. There was something in this building besides both of them, and it wasn’t anything physical. He himself wasn’t sure if it truly had anything to do with his dreams, but he remembered when he came into the ship for the first time what had happened to the artifact. He remember how the bright light from the tool spread amongst the ship before the artifact went dead. He glanced back at his backpack. It was still dead. Ryanti’s face flinched up. The jolting feeling of pain in his spine, neck, and buttocks made it difficult to think. He would have stopped breathing as hard as he was if he wasn’t trying to shake off the pain. Sounsyy’s assumptions were right, Ryanti was hurt. All of that weight crashing down on him followed by the mental pain of what he experienced right after… it left his back in a scraped up mess, and the wind knocked out of him. Then there was the pounding on his head from the fresh wound on his temple, blood dripping from it visible for her to see. He didn’t say anything about it. This was his burden to bare. Especially for her. It was his fault she was here… yet even as Sounsyy believed Ryanti sentimental, it was not something his superiors appreciated from time to time. It was why he could never afford to blunder, why he always had to give results to justify his methods. He had to leave this ship with something. Or he wouldn’t leave at all. He’d send Sounsyy back up at the cost of his life if he had to… if they were to find nothing. That was something he wasn’t going to tell her though. He glanced over to her eventually as the silence progressed. It was deathly quiet in this ship. His eyes focused a little bit on her braid, all fancied up. It had gotten thicker since they had boarded. The little burst of hair from the last cross of the braid was no longer wet and tiny, but dry and bushy again. He remembered her comment from before: Have yeh ever tried to keep a braid underwater? Her pretty braid was something pleasant to focus on. But Ryanti knew from her subtle movements that she wasn’t feeling okay. It dawned on him that she never answered that question with a yes. It had been a no, a shake of the head. She had curled up, nibbling on a ration that she had obtained from her backpack. Was she hungry? Probably not. She looked afraid. Lonely. But she wasn’t alone, not truly. He wished… that his presence could do more for her. He wished he was someone else… someone more dear to her. If he was, then well… he could have helped her right now. It ate at him. Again, again he had wished he was someone else. His features lightened up a little bit when she glanced at him, for some reason knowing the instant she did. Then she began moving a little bit… ah, yes… she was offering him a piece. Ryanti looked down upon the square cracker ration with an uneasy “Sure… thank you.” And accepted it, softly taking it away from her. Ryanti never held it for a moment in his mouth. He simply bit it, and chewed it quietly… idly. He never expected that next question that came for him. "Before yeh were Seventy-seven, what did yeh do?" His chewing stopped for a moment. He blinked a few times, making sure that what he heard was what Sounsyy actually said. His eyes warmed up a little bit and closed as he got to thinking about that question, swallowing what was left of the silly ration he had chewed up. He wasn’t hungry either. “Before I was Seventy-seven, huh?” She could hear the little clangs of metal upon metal as he set his Sharlayan rifle to the side away from her. A little ‘hmm’ emerged from him as he tried to find out the best way to answer that question. He could still feel that warm crimson blood creep down the side of his face... but he had nothing to wipe it with. He spoke. “Well… I was born as the mixed-blood child of a very old and quite influential family in Ul’Dah. My last name, Veanysus, has a bit of reknown to it in the world of big business. My family has been Dinnerware merchants for centuries. We have our hands extremely deep in the restaurant business. We’ve been supplying decent establishments with wine glasses and glass plates and such for a very long time. We’ve also had a fair amount of our family serve the nation in the military – the Flames.” He bit upon his fishtack, and grimaced a little as he chewed it down. He obviously didn’t like the taste. “When I was a child, I felt like I had to try that much harder to impress anyone. Because… I felt like the world didn’t get that perfect Hyuran boy and got me instead.” He slipped the rest of the snack into his mouth, trying not to remember the taste as he swallowed it. But the damn ration’s aftertaste clinged to the back of his throat. Oh well. “Before my father retired, he was a Bloodsworn in the military. My mother took control of the family business and immersed herself in work. I never wanted to… spend my entire life selling plates and silverware. I always wanted to be like my father – proud, powerful, and possessing the ability to change the world for the better. I looked up to him. So when I came of age, I decided to join the military too. Now back then I was really green. A big softie. A wimpy loser rich boy with his stockings to his knees.” He laughed a little bit at the memory of his past teenaged self. “I was pathetic. I thought it would be easy. I learned really quickly that it wasn’t. I still remember the smell of piss and lukewarm rubbing alcohol. That’s what the Barracks smelled like – one of the worst months of my life.” He leaned a little back towards the cerment wall, coughing a bit. He was still trying to ride out the pain. “I went to Officer’s School, basically. So… we were given big projects before we were to graduate. They gave me a notebook the size of my hand, and told me to travel the world and document my good deeds endorsed by the people I helped. They told me not to come back until I had done one hundred endorsed good deeds. That was the first time I truly set out to travel the world. I ended up meeting someone. A woman… older than me of course. She was a former Paladin of the sultanate. I remember how she did her hair… it was cut short like a Bob, but she had a long ponytail in the center… black hair.” He rubbed the back of his neck as he mentioned her. “She took me in. She taught me… a lot about growing up. Back then she was the head of a band of individuals determined to morally shape Eorzea into a better world than it was. Things were more uncertain during those times. I traveled with them and … those good deeds started piling up. I resolved to never go on a journey without a notebook after that. After I finished my assignment and reluctantly informed everyone that I would have to go back, she proceeded to give me a great test, a test that I passed with no shortages of bruises and scabbed kneecaps.” He laughed a little bit, recalling a positive memory. “I remember one of the sponsors of our freelancing group was a rather wealthy man who had little faith in our group’s leadership. So I spoke up and told him not to ask anything of us that he wouldn’t do himself and we would listen to him. We ended up running across the frozen wastes of Coerthas with nothing but skimpy briefs on! My feet were totally numb and I nearly shivered my teeth into pieces! But we did it...” He realized that it was perhaps the first time a laugh had permeated these walls in five thousand years. Those were some of his happier times. His hand slowly reached over to his rifle again, and Ryanti glanced towards it and away from Sounsyy. “I never saw her again after I left to graduate. I never saw any of them again…” The young man spread his legs, and suddenly picked up the rifle and placed the rear stock in between his legs with a thud, holding the rifle upwards with one hand and inspecting it, whipping out a cleaning rag from one of his pockets to clean it from the dust. It would be bad if it got into the contraption. He couldn’t use that rag to wipe his blood off, which was beginning to dry. “At first I started just simply supervising weapon shipments and such to pay my dues. I was going to go into quartermastering. That was my plan. I always enjoyed tinkering with weapons, and I knew that technology almost always innovates with weapons first. That had become an obsession of mine, both technology and history. I adored such subjects when I was a child, but I never really had the faith in me to chase my dreams. It was that woman and her ragtag group that gave me the faith to start believing that I could make a living doing what I wanted.” His rag continued to swipe the dust off of his rifle as he spoke. “At this point, I was a young man that never had an identity due to my mixed blood, and never figured I deserve a reason to live in the first place. Believing my existence a fluke, I just… immersed myself in knowledge. I despised the world I was living in so I… wanted to know about other eras in this world, other times. I pulled strings because my family name allowed me too. I figured out that in the end… what I truly wanted was knowledge. I wanted to know about the world in its entirety as it occurred in the past so that I could build a better future – so that nobody born in any situation would ever grow to loathe the world. That gave me a purpose… a reason to live. So I started asking questions and rubbing elbows. They were actions that were dangerous and very risky now that I look back at it. But I wanted to know, and I had no qualms about the consequences because I didn’t care if I died because of it.” He paused for a moment, his voice turning grim. “I didn’t find ‘them’ … they found me. I was taken right out of where I was sleeping. I thought I was being kidnapped… -again-, like I was when I was little once… but no. It wasn’t a kidnapping… in the literal definition. I was taken somewhere. All I could remember was that it smelled like dust and metal and gas, the place where they took me.” “They asked me if I really wanted to know.” Ryanti smiled a little. “I told them that if I could be afforded to see the past, present, and future and live only half a life... then I would have already seen many times more than if I would have said no and lived a full one. That’s when they took me in. They gave me a warm blanket and some hot chocolate. That was the first day – their only love they ever gave to me in that place was a blanket and hot chocolate.” “They worked us to the bone. Trained us in obscene conditions, yet never crossing the line to the point of permanent injury. None of us left that place with a single scar on our bodies and yet… yet there was so much pain. I never knew who I was training with. It was twenty-four seven. Never ending, for one entire month of hell. My parents were told I had simply shipped out to do an escorting job for a friggin’ caravan.” He began to unattach his flashlight from his rifle, and stuck it into a little slot on his belt. Three stripes of light glew in the darkness, an indicator that it was charging. He began shuffling through his backpack to find his other flashlight. “We were given all sorts of physical tests. Psychological ones too. They wanted to make sure we were as sane as could be despite the insane training. But… but I think the worst was when we began to realize the true scope of what they were preparing us for. What they called their real training. The final week they… subjected us to… things.” He lightly pinched his fingers against his closed eyes for a moment. The little smile was still on his face. “That’s how I could read some of those pieces of writing back there.” He mentioned, tilting his head in the direction of where he came. “They had us learn those kinds of things the quick and painful way. The Keepers only, of course. We were subject to the most rigorous training. Though I have to admit... I closed my eyes for some of it..” “So then I became agent Eighty-two. That was my first number. Five people have either left the business or died since then, so I became agent Seventy-seven. Since it’s damn near impossible to leave the business once you’re in it, well… they probably all died.” He attached the fully-charged flashlight onto his barrel, and took the magazine out to make sure it was clean too. “The thing is though… you asked me about who I was before I was Seventy-seven. There is no before. Seventy-seven is a number. It’s a body. It’s a label that tells you what rank I am and nothing more besides hiding my true name during classified missions. One privilege we do receive is that we still get to keep our prior lives. The innkeeper you book a room for – the merchant you buy a tunic from – the janitor of a friggin’ fishing vessel – anyone could be one of us. Our deeds go un-thanked, and perhaps will for years… decades… centuries. But yes… I only go on missions like these maybe once a month or less. I didn’t transform into Seventy-seven, Sounsyy… Seventy-seven is simply my alias when I’m on my special little shift. My workplace persona. It’s no different than Captain Mirke or... Mirke the Maimer. When it comes to you though, I’d just… I’d just rather be called Ryanti. That is… if I have earned it.” Satisfied with his weapon, he set it down before him again, this time on his lap and resting his hands upon it. He wouldn’t make the mistake of putting it on the floor again, not with all the dust. He offered the rag to Sounsyy. Maybe cleaning her rifle could be something to take her mind off of things? “What about you, huh? What’s your story? And no I don’t mean the Captain Mirke you are now or… the striking young woman on the posters during my youth that I know deep down was nothing more than clever marketing and the persona of someone trying to survive. No... what’s -Sounsyy’s- story? Before you were Captain Mirke of the Roehmerl or Mirke the Maimer… what did you do?”

Welcome to the madhouse! Leave your hat and coat at the door.

Let's see... - Enjoys scenic travel - Merchant by trade - Admiration of books - Knowledge in the arcane - Seeks out and digests knowledge Ryanti's actually... nowhere near as screwed as I anticipated going into this thread. :bouncy: Oh, well this makes things complicated.

I'm incredibly sorry and remorseful that this happened, Xydane. My heart goes out to you and your friends. I find that I can relate to this at an uncomfortable level, so it can be challenging to for me to speak up about this subject without being anxious. For one, I deeply appreciate that Xydane would be considerate enough to reach out to this community after experiencing a sudden loss in another one. It's a kind act to offer information and assistance to people who might be struggling in silence or behind the facade curtain. I myself have had battle after battle over the years with depression. I've also had anxiety issues creep up as I've gotten older. Not social anxiety, but anxiety over other things. Depression and anxiety are a deadly cocktail, and do not mix well at all. Add low self esteem and you've hit the trifecta. Depression is not having a bad day/week/month. Depression is not having a good cry. It's different from being sad. Depression is a state of mind. It's a way of thinking that can be irrational and distorted. It's a toxic way of looking at yourself, those around you, and the situation you are in. Depression is a lot like an unwilling addiction. Once you slip into that way of thinking, it can be very hard to break away from it. You can certainly want/desire to think differently, and want to change for the better. But it's not an overnight thing. Like breaking any other addiction, it takes a lot of hard work, patience, and support. There's also the relapses. You can look at yourself and tell yourself 'What are you doing?', but even with your mind asking you that question, you still 'do', because you can't find any other way to function. It's gotten to me more often nowadays because I have just graduated college. So I would like to add a link or two about the issues effecting people in my position right now. This is purely something I would like to throw out there as well, and hopefully anyone going through it too can benefit from it. [This is a link about something called Post-Graduate Depression] [This is a link about wondering why it is not really talked about that often.] [11 Ways to Avoid Post College Depression] Remember: There are those that are open about their suffering, and those that are not. The reasons can range from being afraid of criticism and rejection, to anxiety, to stubbornness in admitting weakness when they believe it to be a weak trait, to just being shameful of it. Sometimes we have no idea of their suffering until it's too late to help just like in Xydane's case. If any of you see any sort of sign that something is not well with somebody in your family, in your friends, in this community, anywhere... then reach out to them. Let them know you care. Let them know. Offer an ear to listen, if anything. We're all human, and none of us are perfect and we all have our own personal struggles and some are doing better than others at fighting it. I don't know how to end this, so, I'll do it by quoting Xidane here. PS: I'd also love to recommend the 'Chicken Soup for the' series of books for anyone that wants to read something that may help him get through hard times. It isn't just for teenagers. There are Chicken Soups books out there for all ages and backgrounds, such as parents, teachers, being at work/college/school etc. Here is a list of them.

Well, I mean obviously people are going to have different tastes in what they find attractive. That goes with my character too. He's a look some people love, some people don't love as much lol. And I understand that. Who defines the beauty of a character? I think it's the society in the lore more than anything from a IC perspective. Sometimes I think it leaks OOC influences too. What people like OOC, they transfer to their characters. I have my own IRL preferences in what I like. Ryanti's preferences deviate from mine in places. When it comes to descriptions in wikis and stuff about people being pretty or ugly, I take that from a societal perspective. In other words, if a wiki/description describes someone as beautiful, then I take it as they are considered beautiful in their culture. What is beautiful in Ul'Dah may be different in Limsa, etc. Ryanti has his own unique tastes. Sometimes they don't match the majority. I mean sure he's found the commonly accepted pretty ones pretty. But he's also found people that find themselves 'not considered the most pretty' ... pretty. So if a RP'er describes someone as beautiful or ugly, I kind of absorb that message as 'this is what society thinks of him/her', but then I run it by Ryanti's mind after that and sometimes the results are different.

“I’ll check it.” The young man shifted his eyes to her with an immediate look of concern upon his face as his gaze grew still and his posture shifted in a more tense fashion than before. The air was so still in that room. Ryanti could trace his breath in the midst of the dust particles among his torchlight, which now momentarily shined on Sounsyy’s form. He continued to hold his rifle up pointed towards the door. The cold steel of the gun’s make was beginning to feel more moist and damp because of the sweat coming from Ryanti’s palms. “Are you sure?” He murmured to her, but already knew the answer to that question. It was best that they leave no stone unturned in this ship, and Ryanti knew that his fear was playing with him by trying to make it okay for his conscious to prefer ignorance to anything that could be in there. Ryanti’s tail and ears tensed up and he clenched his teeth and shut his eyes tightly when he heard the loud screeches of the table moving. The sound permeated throughout the room in the all too silent ship, bouncing off of the walls in the hallway and echoing down the corridor. At least out of the most mysterious noises they have heard so far, this noise had an explanation to it, but Ryanti couldn’t help but think that now that they were making their own noise, the rest of the entire ship knew they had… intruders. With a few steps, he aligned himself with Sounsyy’s position, briefly looking up at her dark form on top of the eons-old piece of furniture. He flinched retroactively at all of the loose screws that broke free from the grating, tiny Allagan pieces of work sprinkling over his form and causing him to wipe his shoulder and a few other spots to clear himself of the rubble and dust. “Looks like it’s enough space to crawl up into.” She said. Ryanti’s grip on his rifle tightened. Checking out the inside of paneling like that with the enormous chance of electric shock was a terrifying risk to take. But it would but one of many crazy risks they would have to take on this trial by fire inside of the derelict ship. He returned her glance with one of his own, with concern forefronting to the surface, whether it be because of him sensing her fear or projecting his own. “I’ll let an ankle dangle.” “Please be careful.” Ryanti had a little taste of Sounsyy’s prior loneliness after she had grabbed onto the grating and kicked away to pull herself up. There was a primal fear deep inside of him that she would suddenly be whisked away from him, never to return and leaving him by himself in this place. A heated feeling of guilt coursed through the young man’s body. He would not leave her again. Even for a moment. The young man timidly placed his rifle down on its side next to hers, letting out a few breaths of exertion as he slowly climbed himself upon the ancient table, the legs wobbling a little bit when he tried to stand. Ryanti weighed more than Sounsyy, so he was afraid the slightest movement could send the table crumbling to dust. “Seventy-seven…?” “Yeah?.. What is it?” Ryanti said back to her. Despite him being below her and not in the duct with her, his voice sounded just as loud as if he was right next to her. He had already placed both of his hands right outside of her dangling right leg, as if he was ready at any moment to grab onto her leg and pull with all of his might if one of the thousands of ways this could go wrong came true. He remembered she said something about trading places, about something literally being there with her in the vent. But that was all that he could recall. His eyes were wandering around outside of Sounsyy’s vision in places he could afford to see from the vantage point of where he was. When the clamor happened deep within the ship’s bowels, Ryanti was not exposed to the true nature of the sound like she was. It allowed him to pick up on a subtle noise. It sounded like a tiny buzz, almost like the sound of white noise that quickly increased in volume. It was actually the sound of electrical current bouncing off of two ends of exposed wire that threatened to get too close. It was then that it all clicked together in Ryanti’s mind. The very deep bowels of this ship… even after all this time… still retained power. The power was coming to life, and within moments Sounsyy would be exposed to the voltage! Oh no! He had to get her out of there NOW! “SHITE!” The young man snapped into action with amazing speed that could only come out of anyone in a life or death situation. He snatched one hand upon her ankle and warped his other arm around the woman’s thigh. Immediately after, he pulled as hard as he could, ignoring her cries as her life was more valuable to him than her nerves and always would be. The force of his pull caused the metallic surface underneath Sounsyy to break off, the rectangular metallic piece crumbling down along with her body. Ryanti looked up just in time to be overtaken with the weight of her, knocking his face to the side. He groaned out in pain after taking her weight, the table immediately collapsing into a bunch of pieces. Ryanti was able to catch her, warping his arms tightly around her collarbone area as they fell to keep her from flailing out of his grip and injuring herself further until they hit the floor. His back smashed into the ground of broken glass with all of her weight on top of him. “AHK-!” He cried out with the last of his breath as he hit the floor, his lips parted in pain but unable to breath. It was a horrid amount of pain, and if it were not for his suit protecting him, Ryanti would probably have mean gashes all across his back now for falling upon the broken glass. He coughed and wheezed, his arms limp when Sounsyy flailed out of his grip not a moment after the accident. An acute puncture wound had formed near his left temple. Bright crimson blood began to bubble to the surface, crawling down the side of his face after bubbling up too much. Immense sparks of electricity shot between all space of the air duct right afterwords. If Sounsyy had still been there, her heart would have easily ruptured and her brain fried from the immense electric shock. Ryanti took a deep, painful breath with a bit of a hoarse voice, opening his eyes in a daze on the floor and squirming a bit, the tiny pieces of broken glass crackling under him. Something was flickering, something in the distance… a buzzing sound rang in his ears. It was a familiar sound from far away from here… an echo of Ryanti’s recent past. For but a moment, the cell they were in came to life under a five thousand year old florescent light. His pupils dilated and he gasped with marvel at what he saw before him. There were… pieces of writing. Writing all over the walls. The Allagan writing was so sophisticated and the various shapes and puzzling formulas written on the wall were far beyond the comprehension of anyone in the Seventh Era. These incredibly complex mathematical formulas were everywhere on the walls of this room. This was when Ryanti felt that connection again. That pull. Those numbers… those equations… those diagrams that were buried in dust… the incomprehensible nonsense formed themselves into shapes in Ryanti’s head. It was as if he was being forced to remember, forced to understand, and forced to recall only what he had just seen moments prior as if he had studied those shapes for weeks. The writing on the wall was burning into his mind, much like the Allagan alphabet had during Ryanti’s initiations. But this was not promoted or provoked by tomestones or other advanced methods of acquiring knowledge. No, this was burned into him because of something else. Because both him and Sounsyy were connected to the fate of this ship. Ryanti had allowed the back door of his mind to be open to the Allagan influences, and this was why. “Ahhhh! Hnnnn!” Ryanti groaned out, sinking his forehead onto the floor with only his knees supporting him, his arms sprawled out among him as he suffered with this information. It hurt. It hurt so bad. It was like he was being forced to think so hard that his brain felt like exploding. Murmurs, whispers, words… hands writing the formulas upon the wall… florescent lights, beakers, hope, heart, struggle, desperation… all invading his mind. When Sounsyy tugged at his suit, Ryanti looked over at her with an expression of immense pain. In his eyes were mirrored the writing of the Allagans upon the wall, which had burned into his aquamarine irises and gave out a soft white glow as if those memories were being stamped upon his very eyes. He was out of it. He wasn’t completely there. He remained crumpled for a moment longer after Sounsyy left, his weak eyes being exposed to the writing again with one last flicker… ancient memories that were not his own fogging his mind. So… why did you decide to become a scientist? To help people… It seems so strange, that… the more that we seem to understand about this world, the… more that we realize how much we truly don’t know… So close! ... I’m so close! No one will have to die like they do anymore if I just… if I just… When the lights flickered that one last time, the hallway that Sounsyy was in very briefly exposed the entirety of itself with that light. The brilliant white light that had functioned as such five thousand years prior had grown into a pale tan color with age and covered with dust, therefore much weaker than it used to be. The light flickered upon the hallway… once… twice… three times. On the third flicker, out of the corner of Sounsyy’s eye, there was a figure. A figure that was standing in the hallway. It was impossible to make her out completely because she was only around for one flicker. What could be seen was that she had a coat of white. A pair of glasses. An ethereal silver earring that dangled from her ear lobe and sparkled beautifully, even in the rusted light. Long blonde hair of some sort… of some length. And skin that was deathly blue. Unmistakably deathly. The Allagan specter appeared in a blink of an eye, and was gone in the blink of an eye. The lights flickered two more times, exposing the hallway for it truly was: empty and silent, before one of the light bulbs shattered into old and rotten pieces. The wiring in the vent shorted out and fried with age and wear, sending the ship back into utter darkness once more as the ship died again. The ship had died again, but had never felt more alive. “A-are you okay?!?” Sounsyy could hear little sounds and quiet groans from the room that she had left. It was similar noises one would make if they were sick to their stomach or just completed a sprint and needed air. The stale air of this ship did Ryanti no favors in recovering. His brain felt like it was dancing on ice after receiving a burn. Those memories of what the Allagans were doing in this ship during its heyday finally quieted down in his mind, and Sounsyy could see the light of his suit’s torch emerge from the doorway, along with a right hand holding onto the side of the broken door. Ryanti emerged from the entranceway with his head wound still fresh. He looked to his right slowly, then to his left, eyeing Sounsyy who had slammed her back against the wall. Ryanti still had a little bit of a glazed look in eye, and when he swallowed there was nothing but air, but he was able to get some words out. “I… think I am, yeah. Heh… that… that kind of hurt…” Humor. He felt like he had to. To try to calm both of their fears. “I just… I just need a second.” He sounded winded, as if he was tired. He rested himself against her side of the wall, shoulder to shoulder with her. Both of their torchlights illuminated their section of the hallway, at least. He placed a hand upon his head rubbing it gently to try to box out the cobwebs. “There was… there was writing on the wall. Writing that burned into my mind. They… they were so complex, so delicate and sophisticated but… unfinished. The Allagans, I… saw one working on the formulas in that room. I remember it like it’s my own memory. They were… they were trying to solve something. To end a certain kind of suffering. Testing, re-writing, testing re-writing… it was as if they were studying the very core of what made those liquids… down to the tiniest level of detail.” A sudden little realization coursed through Ryanti’s mind, and he turned to her with a bit of a dizzy look that was slowly, yet surely, wearing off. A bit more energy was in his next words. “Are you okay too?”

"Uh, mom, dad... this isn't what it looks like."