Misplaced arrivals.

[Nayt]

"Ach?" the man perked his head up.

He glanced back, and judging by the profile of his face, he looked as if he were in his mid-thirties. It was, however, difficult to see his eyes. Even in this candlelit room he seemed to wear a pair of sunglasses (which, oddly enough, had dark green lenses).

"Oh. Guten ta--!" he began enthusiastically, but cut himself short when he thought about the language they'd used to greet him. "Errrr, uh, hi."

He turned in his chair enough that he could better look at them. Well, the two girls seemed to be walking around just fine. Good for them. That was something he was worried about, actually. He was no nurse or doctor; if they were wounded and he'd treated them, then they'd definitely wind up dead.

"Looks like y'all weren't too beat up. That's good," he observed. "Yer lucky I found ya, though. Y'all were laid out in the heat for awhile, I think."

Then he remembered something.

"Oh, speakin' of-- need some water?"

[Zach Kaiser]

The person before them was certainly a strange one; he spoke with a Greoulian accent, so what he was doing all the way out here in Xexoria was beyond Myrria's ability to guess. But he seemed to mean them no harm, at least.

She nodded in response to his question. "Please." There was no telling how long they'd lain in the sand before this person found them, but it was long enough that her throat was parched.

Never one for much talking anyway, she figured she'd save her questions for when her throat was no longer dry. Or perhaps just let Circe do most of the speaking.

[Paroxysm]

"Yeah, sure." she admitted in a slightly held back kind of tone; she moved further into the room, looking around the quaint space, but not at anything in specific. Truth be told, Circe was not too surprised in hearing this guy’s accent in Xexoria; it would have been more common before the end, but she could not claim to think he was an oddball for being in Xexoria: that was reserved for the fact that he was apparently living in the middle of the desert, or at least that was where she assumed they were.

Anyways, she doubted this guy dragged both her and Myrria into a settlement, but there was the possibility of her being wrong; and after all, this guy was built like an ox and the two reaper’s combined weight couldn’t be more than two-hundred pounds and some odd change.

Circe furrowed her brow and consciously--purposely--broke her line of thought, unhappy of the direction it was taking, and feeling that now was probably not the best time to consider a diet; instead, she looked back towards their... host: “Wie heißen sie?” she asked, and was a little surprised at how rough she sounded; in fact, she could only recall one instance where she actually had to speak her native tongue since she moved to Cizok, and that was to give directions to a merchant heading towards one of the reconstruction projects in Akinai.

Circe shook her head, “ich heisse Circe, Circe Brandt. Oh, and her name is," she pointed back towards her partner, "Myrria. --Where‘re we at, anyways?” she added as an after-thought.

[Nayt]

At their request for water, the man turned away from them. Near his desk was the entrance to another corridor. He leaned over enough to peer around it, but it was kind of a useless hallway; it went straight a few steps then shot to the right and practically wrapped around this room.

"Hei! Z!" the man called around the corner, "Können sie mir bitte bringen zwei Kantinen? Das Mädchen sind wach!"

He wasn't demanding about it, though. In fact, he was pretty respectful, saying please and speaking in a calm and polite sort of way.

"Wirklich?" a girl's voice, small and distant, called back.

"Ja wirklich!"

There was a momentary pause before the girl's voice replied again. "Eeeeeiiineeeee momeeeeent bitte . . ."

With that done and over with, he leaned back to sit in a less dangerous way-- with four chair legs on the floor, not two --and turned a bit to look at Myrria and Circe again. Circe introduced herself and her friend, had some questions, and was fortunate enough to speak his primary language. Which was kind of strange. Circe looked like she belonged in a Xexorian tribe, not Greoul. Myrria, on the other hand, looked like a tried and true Greoulian girl. Then again, their names definitely differed. Brandt was a strong Greoulian name, and Myrria was a name this man recognized as distinctly Xexorian. This was some serious culture swapping if he'd ever seen it.

Oh well. This guy wasn't one to judge.

"Ich heisse Talis McCarthy," said the man with a nod of his head, but then, figuring that Myrria might not speak the language, switched back to Common. "Yer in a run down hut in BFX."

Bum-fuck Xexoria, a common phrase for those that'd been through the desert before.

"Can't say I really know where we are, m'self, but yer safe, at least."

[Zach Kaiser]

The man's confusion over the difference in appearance and name and apparent cultural origin was understandable, but it wasn't as though they could explain just why that happened. Their host--McCarthy, he'd introduced himself as--would probably think they'd come down with a severe case of sunstroke at best.

But despite her gratitude for being rescued from what probably would have been certain death, Myrria couldn't help but frown at the way he referred to her country. Both from the disrespect it showed, but also from the realization that this man would be decidedly unhelpful with figuring out where exactly they were in the desert.

Well, given a bit of time to scout around, she could probably determine their general region herself; contrary to what most foreigners believed, the desert wasn't uniform, and those who knew it well could spot the subtle differences. But it would be impossible to know their exact location without some kind of specific landmark.

"I appreciate the hospitality." It was hard to tell from her stoic demeanor, but she really was grateful. She just understood that they could only stay as long as it took for them to recover their strength, at which point they'd need to venture out and hunt their target, reestablish contact with Thompson, and find a way to switch their bodies back.

Myrria grimaced to herself. She hated it when missions got complex, and this was shaping up to be one of the most complex ones she'd tackled yet.

[Paroxysm]

--Mein gott, Circe silently mouthed with a wide-eyed expression after hearing their host’s name. She recognized the name right away, actually: this dude was pretty famous before the end occurred, back when the Covenant of Tribes was causing so much trouble, and in the underground and resistance groups he was something of a folk hero. At any rate, Circe was quite visibly impressed with him:

“I-is it true you single-handedly took out an airship fleet while defending Corania from the ‘tribes and forced ‘em into a retreat?”

Really, that was what she was lead to believe: that this guy, Talis McCarthy, had taken out an entire fleet of airships, and without much effort, either; it was pretty hard to believe and she wanted to know, straight from the source, if it was true.

“Jeeze. Well, at least our luck isn’t as bad as I thought it was,” she admitted, “but what’re you doing in Xexoria, anyways? Uh, sorry--that was pretty rude, wasn’t it? It’s none of my business.”

[Nayt]

Damn. That was quick. Word traveled fast, huh?

"Ehhhh, heh," Talis reached his hand up and scratched the back of his neck, "Ya found me."

He tried to fight back the urge to comment, but it'd been awhile since he heard anyone talk about that whole mess in Corania. Drai city, was it? The Covenant of Tribes had invaded and surrounded the city. They sent in airships first and foremost, targeting various sectors-- economic, educational, and political institutions, almost like they wanted to destroy their entire society before they marched upon the city. Talis merely played magnetic leap frog at a thousand feet in the air, and when he was done, he dropped down in front of the Covenent army.

And the Covenant ran.

"I really expected a lot more from that, to be honest with ya. What kinda army bails out with their tails 'tween their legs at just the loss of their flyin' machines? Honestly," Talis threw his hands up in the air, "Travel time, food, water, fuel, not t'mention loss of life from the sea trip an' the march 'cross half the good Goddamn continent. Ya woulda thought they'd'a been a bit more stubborn, y'know? Justify all their losses an' all that. Most dumbest sons'a bitches I ever seen in my life, I tell ya."

[Zach Kaiser]

Myrria was...confused. Granted, she didn't tend to keep up with current events unless it directly impacted her mission. Circe must have been better in the loop about that.

"...He is famous, then?" she asked, turning to her partner. And powerful, it seemed. She didn't think he was deceiving them so far, but it would pay to be careful just in case.

[Paroxysm]

"Yeah, pretty much, but I only really know about the scene dealing with the Covenant of Tribe‘s ."

Any other call to fame that Talis had, Circe was ignorant of, because she had only really heard of him during the Tribe’s campaign. Rumors of this or that were known to her, but it wasn’t something she specifically went out of her way to get involved in; she was just lucky enough to know more than a few people who were involved in the Tribe’s failed invasion of Cizok and even some guys in Corania, itself.

“Dumb’s a good way to put it.” she said with a shrug, “and I thought Cizok was pretty bad about waging several wars in succession. Ah, oh well--anyways, sorry about that. Curiosity got the better of me there.”

After re-hydrating themselves, Circe figured she and Myrria would have to hurry up and get back on task. They really didn’t have too large a timeframe to begin with and this wasn’t helping matters; it was a shame, too: Talis probably had a few things he could teach her, but there was no time for that.

[Nayt]

"Not, uh, exactly famous . . ." Talis cleared his throat.

Which was kind of a lie for modesty's sake. It was already clear that one of the two girls here knew of one of his exploits, which meant he was famous at least on some level. It was never something Talis thought about much, though. It just didn't come up nearly as often as one might think. There was nothing more he could say than that on the subject. No way he could prove his point, nor the time to go the extra mile and refute the idea of his fame, as soon enough, there were no longer just three people in the room.

A squeak of metal echoing through the corridor announced the girl's arrival. The first and quickest thing one might notice about her was that she was so very clearly disabled. This girl, who couldn't really be much older than twelve or thirteen, lacked a left leg. It was as if it'd been severed near the end of her thigh, just down far enough that she lost her knee, too. This left her requiring a wheelchair to get around. For decency's sake, she had put a bandage around the scar before she wheeled herself in. Even further, though, the girl was missing her right eye. Again for decency's sake, she wore an eyepatch over the scar. She was short, scrawny, and remarkably frail looking, yet despite her confinement to a wheelchair, had all the energy in the world. She wore a black everyday dress and her bushy platinum blond hair was mussy beyond comparison (it looked as if she'd just recently dyed a whole streak of hair black, though). She passed a blue-eyed glance from the girls to Talis, to whom she smiled brightly. Victoriously, she lifted up two full canteens from her lap.

"Gelangt es!" she said to the man.

Talis smiled. "Danke."

The girl looked over Myrria and Circe, and promptly set the canteens in her lap in order to wheel a bit closer to them. Once closer, she handed the canteens off to them.

Talis motioned towards Myrria and Circe, "Guess I should introduce y'all. Circe, Myrria, this here's--"

"Raisinger Clay," the girl said promptly, before putting her hand out, inviting at least one of them to shake it, "His daughter. Everyone that knows me though just calls me Z or Raze or . . ." She trailed off for a second to think, then looked to Talis. "Hey, don't I have another nickname?"

Talis shrugged his shoulders. "I dunno. I ain't heard a third one before."

"Huh," the girl said, briefly contemplative, "Hmm. I coulda sworn I had a third nick. Oh well."

[Zach Kaiser]

Myrria nodded silently in gratitude before indulging her throat in a little of the water. It felt...nice. She hadn't realized quite how dry her throat was until it had water again. She remembered that being in Circe's body, she wouldn't be as used to desert conditions as she should have been.

The girl named--well, she seemed to have several she went by, so Myrria chose to think of her as Raze--was surprisingly cheerful for her condition. Though...why was she out here in the middle of the desert? Unless she from around here (which seemed unlikely) bringing even the most able of girls her age into the desert would have been irresponsible.

Though admittedly is also seemed unlikely that McCarthy was actually her father; they looked nothing alike. Not that that particularly mattered, she supposed.

[Paroxysm]

The sound of Rasinger's entrance was pretty attention-grabbing, to say the least; it was even more shocking to see that the sounds came from a wheelchair, and that the occupant of said wheelchair was a girl with wounds that Circe had seen break the spirit of plenty of men, let alone a child.

"Z, huh? -- That's a pretty good collection of nicknames you've got there." She kept her voice natural as she relieved the girl of her canteen, drinking the water inside with both a nod and muffled 'thank you', and finally a sound of pure satisfaction.

[Nayt]

"Danke," Z said cheerfully.

Z leaned back in her chair and relaxed as the two girls took the canteens and downed whole gulps of water. They were probably going to need a bit more water than that if they planned on going out to wander the desert some more. Fortunately, she and her father had a lot to spare . . .

Talis waited while the girls drank, fully understanding their justification. Of course, provided they drank too much water-- almost a full canteen's worth --he'd raise a hand to stop one of them from hurting herself. It was best not to shock one's body like that. In any case, once they seemed done and refreshed, he posed a query to them that'd been bothering him for a good while:

"So what brings ya to the middle of the desert?" Talis asked, paused a second, and amended: "If ya don't mind me askin', that is."

Sure they could turn him down and say it was none of his business, but he'd found them stranded and ready to die out there. Why they were out this way was a pretty strong question in his mind.

[Zach Kaiser]

"Bounty hunting," Myrria answered; she hadn't had time to really go over any kind of cover story with Circe, but bounty hunting was always a good one. It could explain why they were looking for someone specific, why they were potentially somewhere far away from where they appeared to be from, and why they were willing to go to great lengths to see a person brought in. They just left out the small detail that the target tampered with souls and that they happened to be Reapers.

She--or rather, Circe right now--even looked the part. Though, explaining why one person was naked save for a trenchcoat in the middle of the desert would be a bit more difficult, but she'd leave that part for her partner to explain away, if she cared to.

Well aware of what a lot of water could do to a dried out throat, Myrria was slowly nursing hers; it was her instinct to conserve water anyway.

[Paroxysm]

"--Pays okay and most of the time, it helps people out, too." Circe replied without missing a beat, but she was definitely glad Myrria chose that particular profession over something else. Regardless, Circe figured they’d be alright explaining things, now, even if Talis pressed further, and it wasn’t entirely hard to believe that someone would put out a bounty on investigating the mysterious strings of disappearances in the area.

A little more conscious of Myrria, Circe put her water aside, realizing just how fast she had been drinking from her canteen in comparison, and figured there was a reason for it; she was not particularly well versed in desert survival, but at least she was quick on the uptake.

“Huh,” Circe seemed to come to a sudden realization: “You never did say why you were in ‘Xoria, either.” Respect to the man for who he was and how he had helped them, but Circe was a bit less reserved this time than before; after all, it was only fair.