eswareinmal | A Guided Tour

Entry tags:

A Guided Tour

Characters: Ryo Ashihara and Cho Takahashi
Open?: Nope
Where: Around town.
When: RD9, sometime after everyone has had the necessary conversations with Loki.
What: Ryo attempts to show Cho around town, or at least to a place where she can get some books.

With the way things worked out, Ryo wasn't able to show Cho where the library and monastery were the day they'd talked. In the end, he found himself waiting downstairs for her after Loki's big meeting with everyone. He was standing there in his green leather armor, glowering at any of the townspeople who might come over to speak with him, hoping to pick up a bit of juicy gossip as to what the heroes were talking about in there.

He rather hoped she'd be ready to go soon. It wasn't like tour guide was high up on the list of "things Ryo is good at," but he figured it would be a decent change from the routine he seemed to have slipped into.

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Cho came downstairs, still feeling a little silly for her misunderstanding. Because there was apparently no reason at all for her to be lugging a traveling bag, her sword, a quiver full of arrows, and a bow that was almost as tall as her. "Hey."

At least the bakery wasn't far away. "So, you're Ryo? It's nice to meet you properly." He did look a little prickly, yes, but she'd befriended worse in the past. Heck, she was pretty sure she'd earned at least a neutral rating with Loki, and he'd had an ice knife to her throat.

Prickly was safe. It prevented anyone from getting too close. Still, with women, Ryo's bark was worse than his bite. He arched an eyebrow at all the luggage she'd dragged along with her. "Cho, right?" He nodded gruffly, still eyeing all of that baggage. "So, what, you're planning on finding the library and moving in?"

"Ah-- no." Cho looked down at herself, and then forced an awkward laugh. "Loki just said to come back after dawn. I thought he meant we were leaving today." But clearly they weren't.

Still, if they had been leaving, Cho would have been totally ready to go. "Better to be over-prepared than under-prepared."

Ryo shrugged. "Yeah. You probably wouldn't want to get stuck out there with nothing." He continued to give the pile of stuff the stinkeye and shook his head. "How long were you planning on being gone, anyway?"

He motioned for her to follow him. "Good thing I have a horse. He'll carry it." So he could be kind of nice, maybe. It might have been nicer if he didn't sound slightly exasperated by the whole thing.

Cho wanted to tell him they could just drop it off at her room, but then that defeated the purpose of the nice gesture, so she didn't say a word. "No idea. He didn't know, I have no clue. No one seems to really know what's going on or where we're going or what we're facing. A pocket dimension could hold anything. That doesn't really instill a ton of confidence."

She slipped the bow and quiver off her shoulder, and readjusted the leather satchel. Somehow she got the feeling that telling him it was mostly full of sugar would not get that sour expression off his face. "I've been unprepared for a long journey before, though, and it's awful."

"Pocket dimension. Sounds...yeah, I can see how that could be a problem." Ryo shook his head. "Glad I'm not getting mixed up with that. The weirdness here in the 'normal' town is enough."

As they talked, Ryo led her to his horse, which was decked out in rather odd armor. He gestured for her to load her things onto the horse, if she wanted. Seems he wasn't quite chivalrous enough to do it for her. "What sort of long journey you talking about?" He figured it was something, well, mundane. Or maybe she hadn't brought enough books along on said journey. She seemed like the sort to get worked up over something like that, what with the way she'd been asking about a library straight off the bat.

Edited 2012-07-13 03:03 (UTC)

"To find the King?" Cho cocked her head at Ryo, and then looked at the horse, smiling but keeping her distance at first. "Or do you mean before? I went out intending to walk to the next town over and ended up on the run all the way down through Demon territory for a month and a half. I'd have sold a kidney for a tent and a flint and some yeast-- and an extra pair of socks."

Horses, most horses, got skittish around her. They were intelligent animals, yet still of the natural order of things. They could sense the power in her, and perhaps the unrealized potential, and they tended to shy away from it. Her magic made them nervous, made them tense and bolt as surely as a snake in the grass. She waited to see how this one reacted to her.

"Yeah, I meant before." Ryo nodded, and he actually looked somewhat interested. "Demons?" There were monsters on his world, monsters he'd fought. He had to wonder if the demons she spoke of were anything like Unknown.

Ryo's horse, unlike most horses, was used to hanging around Ryo and his imperfect Seed of Agito. It had become accustomed to a bit of wild, semi-uncontrollable power hanging around all the time. It tuned to look at her for a moment, but merely twitched an ear and snorted before it went back to sniffing at the pole Ryo had tied it to. An ear was still turned towards her as though it were monitoring things, but it seemed otherwise calm. Cho would be able to approach the horse safely, it seemed.

A good sign. Cho approached slowly and calmly and tied her weapons to the saddle, hooking the strap of her bag over the pommel and then moving to carefully pet the animal. "The Demons are a race of people in Rowan, one of the three elder races. The Demon army began the legends of demons from hell in many other worlds before the walkways were closed. Your horse is used to magic?"

"Sounds like they'd be pretty unpleasant company, then." Ryo shook his head. "My world had its share of monsters, but they didn't exactly have their own territory. Or move around in armies."

He looked towards the horse, which seemed to be enjoying the petting. "I guess you could say it's used to strange things going on."

A little smile bloomed on her face. It didn't quite mesh with the idea of a ferocious army. Of course, armies were made up of people, and some of her dearest friends were soldiers she'd once stood against. "They've grown some, as a people. Those legends were born a long time ago. They're fearsome in battle, but out of it... they're not all bad. People do foolish, selfish things when they're desperate. Hopefully I can learn something while I'm here that will help the situation become a little less desperate." And to that end. "So, where to first?" He was the tour guide, after all.

"I suppose that's a good way of looking at it...I kind of just want to get out of here, myself." It was said a little gruffly, but gruff was good. Gruff kept anyone from getting too close.

"We can start heading for the monastery, I suppose. Unless you'd rather try to find the library at the castle." He shrugged. "Doesn't make too much of a difference, really." He went to take the horse's reins, ready to get going.

"We can start with whatever's closer?" She wanted to see both, but if he didn't want to take her to both places she wouldn't hold it against him. He didn't seem too happy with the company. "No one seems to think I'll have much luck, but it can't hurt to check, right?"

He shrugged. "Monastery's a bit closer. We can try there first, if you can even stand the company over there." He started off in the right direction. "You might have better luck than I did, if you're going to be looking at all those books yourself. I just tried asking directly. Didn't go so well."

"Not a talkative bunch?" But she was following him anyway, eager to at least try anything that might give her a couple of answers about what was happening and what she could do about it.

"I went in there looking for answers and wound up having a twelve-year-old get upset and throw muffins at me." He said this with a perfectly straight face, and he didn't put off the air of a guy who tended to joke about such things. "I had to get out of there before I lost my temper." Really, if Cho managed to find any sort of answers there, more power to her. Ryo had already given up on that vector of information.

"Muffins?" All right, that just sounded ridiculous. And not quite typical for a twelve year old. Maybe he'd guessed the age too high.

As it turned out, the monastery was no more help to her than it had been to him. It wasn't their business, the Heroes had better things to do, all the typical useless answers. No kid throwing baked goods, though, thankfully.

Hopefully the castle would turn up better results.

"Yeah, muffins. It was kind of weird." Ryo shook his head at the memory.

He was completely unsurprised when the monastery turned out to be totally unhelpful, and while he didn't outright say "I told you so," his manner seemed to suggest he was definitely thinking it.

Once they'd gotten out of there, it seemed there was one more place to try to find some useful books. "Castle's this way...not that I think it's going to be of much help, either."

"Maybe not," Cho agreed. But she had to figure it out for herself. At least now she knew what didn't work. So they were heading back to the castle. The little old man hadn't been super helpful, but she hadn't been through the rest of the place.

All Ryo really knew of the castle was the room he'd woken up in, the training ground, and the stables. He tried to avoid the place as much as possible; there were too many people around that might potentially become annoying. "I guess if they were capable of being any help to anyone, they wouldn't have needed to bring us here in the first place..."

"That's the spirit," she joked.

Still, getting to the castle involved going past the stables, and as they approached they heard a commotion from inside. The closer they got, the louder the struggle became. Without meaning to, Cho was making things worse just by getting closer.

Time displacement had separated her from Charlie, turning the split second between when she entered the book and when he entered the book into more than a day. But now he was here, and he was mad, and he wanted Cho.

The noise caught Ryo's attention quite well. Sounds of some sort of commotion? Yeah, that didn't usually happen around the stables. Ryo glanced back at Cho. "If there's some sort of fight in there, I'll take care of it."

Cho could appreciate the thought to protect her, even if she was fairly certain she didn't need it. She was small and fragile looking and she knew what impression that gave people. So she smiled and gave him a nod, but she tapped into the reservoir of her magic all the same, holding it at her fingertips, ready for casting. "Does this happen often?"

Ryo shook his head. "Not here in the stables, no. Usually, it's pretty quiet." All the more reason for him to be concerned at this sudden commotion, really. He continued advancing towards the source of the ruckus, mentally preparing himself to transform if he had to.

And Cho was right on his heels.

Luckily for both of them, the source of the commotion was one that was extremely familiar to the Sorceress. "Charlie!"

At the sound of his name, the massive brown Clydesdale stopped struggling, his full attention on the tiny woman. The hands who'd been having trouble holding him before had absolutely no chance now, and he ended up physically dragging two of them behind him by the ropes they had looped around his neck.

Cho appeared to not notice. She laughed happily and threw her arms around Charlie's thick neck, hugging him and letting him lift her clean off the ground. "Where have you been, buddy?"

Well, that was unexpected. Ryo hadn't expected the source of the ruckus to be a giant horse of all things...and he had to admit, it was kind of funny watching the animal give those stablehands a hard time. It was also kind of funny watching the animal's obvious reaction to finding its friend, and Ryo was doing his very best to hide a smile. "Friend of yours, I take it?"

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A Guided Tour

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