Day 52: Sun Room

[thatdamnedninja.livejournal.com]

No better way to start the day than with a bucket full of sunshine, huh? Too bad that'd been the opposite.

In the end, Yuffie had been more than glad to escape. All the angst and sap and drama; it'd been too much, and way too personal. She'd done her best, for her friend's sake, but that Tomoe chick was gonna be hard work. Why couldn't Kenshin have asked for her help in something simple, like killing the big bad of the day?

… Oh, wait.

Groaning, the young ninja gave up on just walking through the sun room. What kind of a way to cheer herself up was that? No, she needed something interesting—she needed a distraction. Walking on her hands wasn't a whole lot better than walking on her feet, but it did get Plucky going.

"Hanna, stop that this instant! You'll break your neck."

"Oh, come on; only a moron'd kill themselves doin' a handstand. They're child's play!" Yuffie, after shifting her weight to her left hand, waggled a finger at her nurse. "It's a waste of my prodigious talent, actually. You really should be grateful." She hopped forward several more paces before dropping her hand back down.

"Be that as it may," Plucky replied, doubtfully. "I must insist."

"Insist away," said Yuffie, nonchalantly, pausing just long enough to let a cat stroll past her.

"You'll disturb the other patients!"

"Your face'll disturb the other patients." It was petty, and it was childish, but Yuffie didn't care; it was getting her what she wanted. And what she wanted was something to laugh at, something to poke at, something that, while it kept her wandering attention in the here and now, didn't really require her to think.

[For Kaito~]

Comments

[fangirlfatale.livejournal.com]

"That'll make it tough to collect," Morgan commented sympathetically. Don't get involved was the cardinal rule of any self-respecting sword-for-hire, and that had never been a problem for her before--not when she was getting paid for the kill, anyway. It was frustrating to have a job get messy, not to mention bad for business.

When she thought about it, though, she couldn't say she was sorry, even for the moments when she'd felt like someone was twisting a blade in her stomach. She was a little sorry for the moments when someone actually had been twisting a blade in her stomach, but...well, she wasn't going to dwell on that. She was okay now, and that was what mattered.

Anyway, there they were, professed (or maybe confessed) fellow professionals. They'd better get the introductions out of the way before they started talking shop--or revealing any more embarrassing personal stories. Morgan gestured to herself with a flourish. "Morgan LeFlay, Mighty Pirate Hunter™."

She wanted to move the topic off leaders of grand heroic ventures who took people who'd recently attacked them under their wings, so she turned her focus to studying the guy again. He looked some years older than Morgan was, but the air of cheerfulness made it hard to tell whether he'd been through the wear to match. "Dual blades?" she guessed. She couldn't be sure, since she hadn't seen him move much, but it was usually obvious which side was someone's sword arm; his muscles looked more evenly developed. "Interesting fighting style. Mind if I ask where you learned?"

[scavengerbird.livejournal.com]

"It is truly a pleasure to meet such a beautiful and sharp woman, Madam Morgan," he began, even executing a slight bow from his seated position, although his eyes remained trained on her. She was truly an attractive woman, and his smile had redoubled at the confirmation that she seemed to be equally competent. He had been fortunate enough to be in the company of several brilliant and talented ladies as of recently, but most of them had taken an immediate disliking to him. Zevran was resigned to the fact that his sense of humor simply didn't mesh well with the judgmental and self-important, but Morgan seemed to be neither. She did appear appealingly confident, though, and curious about him.

Her observations were spot on. At the very least, she knew what she was talking about, but Zevran suspected she could back up those words quite proficiently with a sword in hand. Zevran considered for a moment if he should confess to being a Crow, and couldn't come up with many good reasons not to. He wasn't pursuing a mark, and Zevran wasn't terribly secretive about most things. The more he volunteered, the less people pried, after all. Besides, he was no longer a Crow, technically speaking. He could claim the title as much as he liked, but they'd never take him back even if he wanted to go. Anyway, if Morgan had any relation at all to the world he knew, her reaction would be telling. Their professions overlapped, after all.

But on that note, Zevran hadn't met many confessed pirate hunters. And yet, he could see why they'd be desired. Under normal circumstances, the lack of interaction between assassin and pirate hunter would simply be a matter of location, since Crows didn't take many assignments on the high seas. (Zevran had been meeting a lot of seafarers lately, now that he thought about it.) But all of this theorizing and preemptive excuse making was probably irrelevant. Zevran was prepared for her to know nothing of the Antivan Crows, or Antiva itself, or darkspawn, or anything else that was a staple of his past for that matter.

"You haven't even seen me in action, my dear!" he laughed, but was openly pleased all the same. "Although I confess, you are right about me so far. I am Zevran, of the Antivan Crows. Normally my, ah, association would need no introduction, but since things are different here... The Crows are an infamous guild of assassins who happened to purchase me young, and I was a model student. Twenty or so years and a betrayal later, here I am! Although this most recent development doesn't fit into the story quite as well."