Teamwork makes the...oh, never mind.

The setting of this piece, which is about a scene I'd wanted to expand out for a while, was inspired by some art that I cannot link at this time. These notes will be updated at such time as when I can, but for now I just need to finally post this and get my circuits jump-started again. Whoo! Enjoy.

EDIT: The lads are here!!! WHOOO Delaney simply never misses, and here is the GORGEOUS art. :D

Turqos Plateau...need I describe Turqos Plateau? Its beauty is effortless, inmitable; Flying Fortress Desmor is not a terrorizing blight upon its scene but in fact a requisite member, a bolder set piece next to the warm fuschias and calm ceruleans (and of course the lurking Blants). The waters are still but not stagnant, the trees' only motion not abscissive but contemplative as they drop their blossoms sweetly in the ponds. Perhaps I'm lulling you into a false sense of security with this description, and perhaps you can see it coming a mile away. The place, quite simply, is serene.

Now, if you had to pick a subsection of our traveling troupe to most fittingly and perfectly disrupt that fact, well, it would have to be the clattering clan of cowboy, catboy, prince, and Aegis. Catboy notwithstanding, because he was off prattling with, or perhaps more at, his war-orphan friend (and I indulge in the stereotyping merely for the reductive memetics of it all), one couldn't exactly say that they were all too grown in each their own right to be quarreling in such a way.

The cast-out bastard prince only twenty-four and pretending learned wisdom for it; the rumpled-up cowboy looking thirty even if his life had only spanned years numbering eleven, and not a one of them in summing total spent in polite, caring company; and the Aegis girl not much more than a single year old...perhaps we can't blame them. But we can try.

Of course Lora's group wouldn't fight, because she was upbeat and agreeable, and her Blades each took their own share of those traits, and then their respective youthful tag-along was quite a reticent type. Hugo's, then - why, he was the emperor, and had been trained in comportment for a full eighteen of his twenty stout years, and Aegaeon was the picture of diligence and discipline alongside a Brighid fierce and controlled even in her most fiery outbursts. Indeed, not a one of them would be prone to things so immature as basest spats, not unless you spun one of our crucial trio into the mix (and of them, primarily the Bladelike).

And what were they even fighting about, anyway?

"Oh, come off it, you two," Addam could be heard as we zoom in, "it was just a silly little offhand comment. I think it's the most economical way, anyway."

Mythra, from her perch on the ground with haunches squatted and cheek cupped brattily in palm, peered up at him and snorted. "That's such bull. Humans don't really want to make things economical, they only say that to make it seem like they're looking out for the common good."

"Mythra," Addam started, and she cast her eyes back down to the blue-green grass, "do you really think I went along with it just because it reflects glory upon me? Do you really think I don't want to be fair to you both?" Do you really think I'm not looking out for your own so uncommon good - both of yours?

Now it was Minoth's turn to snort. "If you wanted to be fair, Prince, you'd drop the damn thing wholesale. I don't want anything to do with it." His crossed, reserved arms served the very sentiment quite well.

Sucking in a wincing breath and hazarding a chance, Addam placed a placating hand on Minoth's upper arm, just inside the loose leather guards. Even if the Flesh Eater didn't lean into the touch, he didn't shove it off and jerk away, either, so that was something.

"Minoth, I know, or at least I hope, that that doesn't mean you've decided you don't want anything to do with us, as a result?" Faux-royal confidence left him as the tail end of the statement ticked up in its inflection.

The slightly bumbling word choice didn't help either. Saying "us" could reflect anything from the totality of the group to the adults only to the four so related to their topic to the three of them circled up here, but Addam knew, and Minoth knew it just as well, that the prince meant "anything to do with me" and that his hope was still very tenuous, as yet. As ran in multiple directions, too.

Minoth rolled his shoulder back, taking Addam's hand with him in the motion, and nudged a well-worn boot through the fluorescent floral herbage to meet Mythra's woefully bare knee. "Calm yourself, my prince, it's nothing like that. If Miss Marvelous over here wasn't acting so childish about it, I might not care so much, but it's stupid. Plain and out stupid."

"Me?!" She rose to her feet with admirable speed and unexpected grace, perhaps kicking back as she went. "You're the one who doesn't want to cooperate at all! Isn't that what you always used to say, Addam? That I'd benefit from a little 'group participation'?" Her triumphant, if beleaguered, air quotes were truly bombastic, a real sight to behold.

Addam sighed a tired smile at last. Finally, they were getting somewhere. "Yes, I did indeed say that, and I believe I was quite right - don't you agree? You get along rather well with Haze and Hugo, now." Lora and Aegaeon she didn't so much care for, and Jin and Brighid...good luck. "Now if you'd only make nice with us, and in particular him, we'd be all set."

As if determined to keep up her troublesome, rebellious façade walled up practically forever purely for its own capacity of self-possession, Mythra gave a trademark huff and snapped her head to the side. Making nice - as if. With that guy? Not a chance.

Unfortunately for her, Minoth was the bigger person in more ways than one. "You know, Mythra, I'm not opposed to working with you. Certainly you can see that I don't make any bones with our beloved prince here for needing to pay more attention to you than he does me."

And of course he was right. Very easygoing, as long as you didn't infringe upon him and his stupid hobbies, and the very particular sensibilities that came bundled in with them. Maybe, Mythra thought, she could stand to be a little bit like that. But just a little bit!

Not that she had much of a say in that, because Captain Cowboy was still talking - monologuing, even. He never stopped, once he got started. Ugh. "But think about it. How does it triangulate the characters, if we do it your way? You in the front, and the two of us following behind you, hmm?"

Here he grinned, and Mythra felt a little less stubbornly against him once again. "I won't pretend to know all the intricacies of your pre-existing dynamic, but, well...I think I can tell that you don't want that." Addam's hand had fallen down and away a little while ago, and he reinstated it now with a broad clap upon broader shoulder. This time Minoth leaned in. "He's right, you know."

Mythra pursed her lips, chewed on them, made a very obvious show of her not-so-strenuous decision-making process. It wasn't like she was really ready to take the lead, she knew that, and with a pair of goofy, excessively avuncular bodyguards following her around she'd never get any respect from anyone they talked to in town, especially not if she needed- no, let's say "saw fit" to lash out at them (I shall leave it purposefully ambiguous, dear reader, as to who the "them" is). Well, but maybe that last part was her fault.

"Fine," she pronounced at last. "We can be Team Addam. But you better know that you're on Team Mythra for good! I'm the only MVP we're gonna have around here." And she puffed out her chest, and Minoth laughed and grasped a wrist from one of her still-crossed arms to pull her in, and Addam stretched his free arm all the way around, and wow, isn't a little group hug just too cliché?

But of course, it's better than fruitless fighting, now isn't it? Anything is, when you're bound together to be a team and even the very landscape itself is so simultaneously soothing and uplifting. That's not to say that they wouldn't find themselves tussling again at some later date ! but here in and among the dreamlike verdance? Cool your heels and hold your horses. On our fair Prince Addam's team, you are - not even just on, but making up the fullest glorious complement of comprisal, and proud of it too, to boot.

Addam: If you're Miss Marvelous and he's Captain Cowboy then what, pray tell, am I?
Mythra and Minoth, in unison: The Duke of Dumbass

And then perhaps they kiss his cheeks for extra power, I don't know, this bit was too heavy-handed to work in especially given that the second epithet is never said out loud :D (Milchreste's art owns my entire ass, please go look at it).