The Salle, Monday Morning

[bitchprince]

On Friday, Arthur had reached a decision. After the weekend, he wasn't in the best mood to follow through on it, but there were few reasons to let his mood interfere with what was, essentially, a duty of some kind.

The duty of survival. As Crown Prince, it was a real one.

Still, he thought, as he arrived in the salle, Dinah had best be grateful. And it was all tactics. His gut still twinged with the sting of clear betrayal, but his sense of morality was as confused on this subject as anything else ever was, and so he ignored it.

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[raspberryturk]

Reno allowed himself a bit of a wry grin at that.

"You'd think the island would decide that flyin' monsters were enough for one week," he noted, and then gave his head a shake. "Turnin' into little kids, too? Must be Fandom's idea of some kinda sick joke."

[bitchprince]

"The island's whims," Arthur said, with a bit of a sigh, and a neatly pointed stab at whatever imaginary target he happened to have in mind, "are many, and utterly ridiculous."

[raspberryturk]

"Yeah, but that's kinda the way life is anyhow," Reno mused, giving his arms a stretch before giving his baton a few good swings into thin air. After a few days as a kid, it was nice to feel even remotely dangerous again. "I mean, if it ain't Fandom weirdness here, it's gonna just be some other crap at home. That's universal junk, yo. I'd almost take the weird, sometimes."

[bitchprince]

"At least we weren't attacked by a gryphon," Arthur agreed. That would've been far worse, and given him even more headaches as to the amount of magic users on the island and how to interact with them. "These... changes... have been harmless, for as long as they don't coincide with an attack."

[raspberryturk]

"Just one gryphon? The people here could handle that," Reno decided, shrugging faintly. "But the day we get a hungry gryphon runnin' around and everyone is stuck as a kid or somethin'? Damn. Fandom would'a found itself a real good show before gettin' real quiet, real fast."

His swings were erratic at best, right then. Anxious, like something in his head was itching and he was going to just beat on the air until it left.

"And not everyone here's a fighter," he said, jumping on it after a moment of seeming like he wasn't going to bother speaking at all. "Civilians shouldn't have to deal with that crap. But you see 'em goin' out anyhow, through harpies and Hades and stone freakin' angels that'll eat you if you blink."

[bitchprince]

"I've seen." And some innate part of him was severely unhappy. They weren't his people, but there was always that part of him beating away, I wish I could help people no matter where they lived. He frowned in thought. "We need to be better organised," he said, "People were running scattershot across the island, from what I could tell."

[raspberryturk]

"They all have different ways of dealin' with that kinda thing," Reno noted, bringing his baton to rest on his shoulder again. "Back where I'm from, we used to have a system. People with the brains worked out the strategies, people with the muscle hit the field. Some people weren't afraid to do the dirty work nobody else wanted, so there was a group for them, too. Fandom's got nothin' like that. People with the brains hit the library if they think they should, and everyone else beats on junk until it goes away, yoto."

[bitchprince]

"It's a wonder you don't get more casualties," he said. Thinking, still, thinking. "A good one, but..." He halted. "I'm not trying to insult your prowess," he excused, "You fought well."

[raspberryturk]

"Thanks. You too. But, I mean, we got plenty of casualties back on Gaia," Reno was going to take a few more swings at the air. Just because the air was there, so clearly it was asking for him to beat it up. "Here, just now an' then. It's weird, man. The lord of the underworld tries to take over the island and we confront him at the gates of whatever fresh hell he's tried to bring up, and nobody dies. Freakin' surreal."

He stopped swinging again. There was no end to his twitches today. "You got somethin' brewin' in that head of yours, don't you?"

[bitchprince]

"This isn't my kingdom," he said, decisively, choosing to be diplomatic. "It's not mine to intervene in security. You've got a great deal of skilled warriors. Brave ones." It was just that they seemed to have a great deal more of a shot at success if they were actually working together.

Nevermind how he'd wondered where in the name of God the island's knights had been to deal with the threat.

Although the lack of casualties really was surreal.

[raspberryturk]

"Kingdom or not, it starts to be home after a while," Reno noted, a moment of sentimentality which he tried to swat aside as quickly as it came. "It gets comfortable, I mean. Go to school, learn junk, beat up a monster now an' then. I graduate this year, and I'm already tryin' to figure out ways to flunk my classes so I don't have to go back home."

He made a guttural sort of noise in the back of his throat at the thought, and then shook his head and beat it out of the air once more. One good swing, this time. "How stupid is that? Gettin' used to people not dyin'? You can count how often some people have seen a real battle just by lookin' at their faces. They get scared, yoto. Someday, someone's gonna slip and not get up again."

[bitchprince]

And that was it: while Arthur didn't mind putting his own life on the line, and certainly didn't mind a fight from time to time, the odds that day...

He hadn't liked it a bit. He doubted even a long-time exposure to this place would help it any; it simply laid in his nature. "It's the students who fight," he said. He almost sounded questioning. Perhaps even more than that - he was worried.

Didn't like the odds at all.

[raspberryturk]

"Mostly the students," Reno agreed. "There are more of us. I've seen teachers out there swingin' weapons around, too. And people who live in town, for that matter. But if you wanna look around and take a head count in the middle of somethin' serious, you're always gonna see more people our age than just about anything else, yo."

No, they weren't good odds. Reno was convinced that so far, they'd just managed to somehow be really, really lucky.

[bitchprince]

Really bloody lucky. The odds had been far better in Ealdor, and even then they'd lost too many. It seemed unfantomable that none had fallen, but he said nothing of it.

"I see," he said. Then he slanted a look at Reno past his blade. The students were not of the island - most of them appeared to be like him. "Perhaps," he said, "engagements like last Wednesday's would fare even better without as much scattering."

[raspberryturk]

"Couldn't agree more," Reno agreed, tapping his baton to his chin in consideration. "I mean, it'd be easier to contain the monsters and then systematically wipe 'em out if people kept some kinda order to what they were doin'. And we got all kinds of different talents around this place. Healers to take up the rear and teal with the injured, people who deal with melee and people who are better at attackin' at a distance. It's like we damn near got an army here, except nobody gives a damn about tryin' to fall into step."

[bitchprince]

"What I was thinking," he said, as he launched into a drill as careful as his own choice in words, "is that something could be done about that." Twirl. His mouth set. "Beyond Fight Club, everyone seems to be training seperately. That's no way to form an army."

[raspberryturk]

"So you're thinkin', what? Some kind of Fandom reserve military unit? I mean, there ain't no way you can get everyone to join in somethin' like that. Too many independent thinkers to take orders. But that don't mean it couldn't be arranged, yoto."

Tactics? Real tactics, in a battle on Fandom Island?

Damn, that sounded almost too good to be true.

[bitchprince]

"I already run a weekly training," he said. Sure, it was mostly attempting to make sure Alice and... Dinah... didn't take their own heads off while attempting the sword, but he had some pride to keep. "Fight Club works as a way to sharpen skill, I won't argue that, but I can't see why we couldn't train to stand alongside each other as well. Atune ourselves to each other's strengths in equal sessions. We would all be working towards the same goal." He hoped. He wasn't sure yet.

But it'd even up the odds a bit.

[raspberryturk]

Even Reno, eternal cynic that he was, couldn't argue with that logic.

"Biggest weapon a man's got on the field is the person that's got his back," he noted, his free hand finding its way into his pocket as he finally managed to relax, his baton settling on his shoulder and staying there. "Until the harpies, I ain't worked with an actual partner since I left home. But it does make a difference. Some kinda group like that, I think I could handle gettin' behind."

Turks away from the Turks, in his head.

[bitchprince]

The knights as he wanted them: free from restraints of nobility and whatever else his father's paranoid moods dictated. It was incredibly tempting.

Reno sounded nothing like a knight, didn't look anything like one, either, had used magic like it was nothing; but he'd also been fierce like a knight, and brave, and this was just yet another of a long number of things Arthur would have to reconcile and fast.

"There should be more that feel that way," he said, mildly. With any luck. "There's no disadvantage in it."

[raspberryturk]

Brave. Crazy. Same thing when you were referring to Reno, really.

"If you're really lookin' into settin' up somethin' like that here on Fandom, Arthur, let me know. I grad this year, I'll probably be headin' back to Gaia to help 'em pick up more pieces back there, but if I can leave knowin' Fandom's gettin' its shit together, maybe it won't be so hard."

[bitchprince]

The large pucker of a new scar on Arthur's shoulder, which went all the way down to the other side, probably said about the same about him. No matter.

Faith, and burdens, and duties. They held a familiar weight, but Arthur had to admit he felt bloody stupid and useless without them. He was a workaholic, lost in a strange land, and he was worried about odds when he didn't know the slightest bit of the law.

Which left only his gut feeling for the right thing, and now there was some of that faith.

"I think I will," he said. A momentary quip passed through his mind, but he was too thoughtful to pay it much lip service.

[raspberryturk]

"It'd be worth the effort," Reno decided, and then he was right back to swinging his baton at the air.

It was good to feel like maybe he was going to have a purpose around here, even during the downtime. He was swinging with a grin on his face, now.