Giant Spiders Oh My

[youhearthebells]

Who: the current Hazmats
Where: sailing to Manahana-lia Island, then on the island
When: August 27 through September 5th
What: sailing as fast as they can to rescue Cynthia, and the rescue thereof. They'll try to save time by jumping through Empieza but...
Warnings: spiders. Violence, talk of death, Gan Ning's mouth
Style: whatever you want, don't mind the setup
Status: closed to Hazmat crew

The minute the scream came though his journal, Gan Ning was moving. There was no time to waste fiddling around, they had to set sail to find Cynthia before it was too late. He tore through any maps and information they had on the ship, looking for anything that suggested spiders. Her clue, the spider-webs, meant that was all he had to go on. Fortunately, other pirates around the docks totally knew which island that was, and aside from impressing on him the "don't go there" part of the legend, told him where to find it.

It did seem odd that no matter where they were, if they set sail for Isla Empieza, they'd make it there in a day or so instead of weeks. Gan Ning relied on that, even though he didn't do more than skim through the harbor before setting a new course for Manahana-lia in the far west of the land. Hopefully weather wouldn't be against them. They had a long way to go and didn't have Wan there to guide the winds in their favor.

Spiders, the other pirates said. There'd be large spiders and his crew would be killed. Nope, Xingba would not let anyone die if he could help it. But that meant they'd have to fight. Roxas needed to heal so he could guard the ship, but everyone else, well...

Let's hope they make it on time.

[ooc: info on the island is here - make and date your own sailing threads but we'll hit the island about the 3rd or 4th and there'll be a fight log for that]

Comments

[anelegantmyth]

Hello, brother.

I'm pretty sure I didn't break anything. But I'm trying to remember the past month and everything's a little foggy. Anything interesting happen while I was gone?

[ Actually, she's got zero memory of the past month. Whoops ]

[by_heart]

[Lea scratches the back of his head and looks sheepish.]

Where do I even begin? It's been nuts. I think saving you from giant spiders was the most relaxing thing I've done in weeks.

[It's sad, but that's the truth. It was kind of a relief to get to go set everything on fire.]

Got my old pals on the Spades mad at me again, though, and this time I don't even really understand why! It's a new record. I need a plaque.

[anelegantmyth]

Oh gosh that does sound bad. You guys didn't start some kind on war while I was gone, did you?

[by_heart]

I think they'd prefer that.

[Since that seems to be their solution to every problem.]

Nah, there was just this creepy mist that caused some of us to swap bodies. I ended up stuck in Selphie's back with the Spades and I figured the smart thing to do would be to lay low until the whole thing blew over. Of course, then she decided to announce it to the whole world and make fun of my, er, business.

[Why that was fine but what he did was apparently abhorrent still confuses him deeply.]

I told her what was up and she flipped out on me and dragged Marco and Roxas into it and it all kind of went downhill from there...

[anelegantmyth]

Wait wait, I'm confused. So you swapped bodies with some girl, you kept quiet and she still started drama over it? That's...kind of stupid.

[by_heart]

Tell me about it. I got an earful about it, too.

[For multiple reasons, most of which stemmed from Marco's deep-seated crazy.]

As a special added bonus, I got a pretty clear picture of how bad Marco's gotten into Roxas' head. It was kinda scary.

["Scary," like "icky" is one of those words that takes on a bit of a different meaning when Lea uses it.]

[anelegantmyth]

Geez...I don't know what to say, Lea. Suddenly I'm glad I got you guys out of that crew. They sound pretty toxic.

[ She could only imagine what it's like to be in his position. Cynthia's never actually seen Marco's dark demented side. So she's not quite sure how to go about all this. But she does take his hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze. ]

If you need to vent, and I mean vent. I'm here.

[by_heart]

[He squeezes her hand back with a wry little smile.]

The healthy thing to do, huh?

[He shakes his head.]

I don't know where I'd even start. It's kind of like a trainwreck.

[anelegantmyth]

Well, start from the beginning? I'm all ears.

[by_heart]

Part One: Marco is crazy. Seriously, dangerously crazy. Every time I talk to the guy, he finds new and exciting ways to creep me out. Don't tell Roxas, but what led me to leaving in the first place was him saying he wanted to keep Roxas with him when we all went home. I don't think I realized how badly he was trying to get into his head until we left and it all fell apart. You should have seen him crying and carrying on the night we jumped ship. He's scary overattached. It makes my skin crawl.

[anelegantmyth]

"Finds new and exciting ways to creep me out", ahahaha...I've only ever talked to the guy once and already I was a little freaked out by it. But wait, who was crying? Roxas or Marco?

[by_heart]

Marco. He made a huge production of the whole thing. It's gross. You should listen to him talk to Roxas sometime and let me know if you can keep your lunch down. He sounds like he's talking to a five year old, but then he says some of the most, I don't know...Brutal? Violent? Psychotic? Disturbing things, that's for sure.

[The whole thing about hamstringing people had almost made him physically ill, especially how blatantly he lied about it. He'd worked for some truly evil people, but that wasn't something he'd expect from any of them.]

[anelegantmyth]

Ok Lea, calm down a little. You're scaring me.

[ She strokes the back of his hand with her thumb. At the moment, it was the only thing she could think of that would soothe the poor guy. ]

I get that you're protective over Roxas and hate Marco with a burning passion. But I don't think I'll ever get the chance to hear Marco talk to Roxas so you have to dumb it down for me. What EXACTLY does he tell Roxas.

[by_heart]

[He takes a breath and lets her hand go, then pulls his journal out of his pocket and flips through it.]

This looks pretty tame, right? I'm sure if I called him on it, he'd give me a big lecture about being paranoid or something, but...look at that. When I told Roxas what hamstringing can actually do to someone, that that bastard was using him to hurt people, his eyes just went cold on me, but it only lasted a few seconds before he was back to "Marco says, Marco says, Marco says." I can't get him to listen to a single thing I say if Marco contradicts it. That's how much he's gotten into his head and I don't know what to do about it.

[anelegantmyth]

[ Cynthia takes the journal from him so she could hear the conversation a little better. But at the mention of slicing legs and the fact that they had such a casual tone while talking about it. She shuts the journal with a snap and slides it back to him. That look on her face clearly showed that she didn't want to hear any more. Now she didn't know if this was the best time to mention she had talked to Roxas earlier that day. ]

That was tame?

[by_heart]

Relatively? Yeah. Nothing about being a monster or "us against the world" or bloody, violent revenge or "you're just like me, I'm just like you, we're just like each other, that guy you know is just like that guy I know, so let's be together forever" so...yeah. Tame.

[He knows that's not what she means, but he's not particularly willing to talk about the fact that, yeah, discussion of violence on that scale does seem pretty tame to him. There's even a nice little jab at him in there that implies otherwise, which is charming, totally.]

[anelegantmyth]

...and he'd usually talk to Roxas about stuff like this? I get that the boy needs regular attention. But this is too much.

[by_heart]

He's a lot better on his own than people give him credit for, but when he has people around to put ideas like that in his head...

[Lea shakes his head.]

I just don't get why he listens to all of them more than he listens to me. It's like he wants the worst possible things to be true all the time.

[anelegantmyth]

Well...maybe that's his way of making friends? The boy's been through a lot, and I take it he's only ever had you by his side. He just needs good people to influence him. Flush out the bad and all that.

[by_heart]

That's why I brought him here. Well, I mean, it's not like he didn't have a say in the matter, but he had no idea where we were going when we left.

[He smiles a little.]

I did, though. I was kind of spur of the moment, but it was a good sort of spur of the moment.