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Name: Zechariah "Ash" Ashkew
Location: Guild Hall (presently)
Guild: Hiraeth Seis
Tier: C
Activity: Asking for Unreasonable Jobs, Bumping Into People, and Being Irritating
[spoili] (This was just some fun exposition for me about what he's been up to for the past week. It's also kind of an inside look on how he handles his "finder" jobs, for those of you interested. If not, don't read.)
~ One Week Earlier ~
Location: Town of Onibus
Zechariah knew when he was not being well-received, mostly because with first-time clients this was how he was
usually received. He sat in an uncomfortable sofa across from what he assumed was an ornate armchair in a room lined with books. The man across from him was bleeding dissatisfaction with every sniffle, every noisy pat of his brow, every uncomfortable shift in his likely very comfortable seat. On the other hand, Zechariah was the picture of calm. Serinia sat quietly next to him on the sofa, as he leaned back in the seat with his legs rudely stretched out under the wood and glass coffee table before him. His right hand casually placed on the back of his head, though his bandaged left arm lay limp by his side, as always. He was smiling, those creepy, bright blue eyes not particularly looking at anything. All three had yet to speak since the Hiraeth Seis mage had entered the building.
Ash had taken the job the way he took most jobs. He'd had Serinia read all of the jobs on the job board and picked the one that had said "Help Find Missing Persons." As it stood, however, it had been some time since he'd taken on a "find person" job from a rich and unfamiliar requester, and so this silent judgment at his age was a little... annoying. He sat, waiting, leaning his head back, waiting for the man to either tell him to get out or find his missing person. The job description had been extremely vague, so he could guess the gist of what was coming next. He just had to wait a little longer.
Finally, there was a cough.
"So... you came in response my job request? You are... the mage?" The man asked tentatively, as if hoping not to hear the answer.
Zechariah continued grinning and pointed his eyes in the general direction of the voice. He closed his left eye to show the man his guild mark.
"Yes, that's me." Bending one arm over, he leaned his cheek against his fist in a blatantly arrogant expression. He was a bit more irritated than usual.
"My name is Zechariah Ashkew, but you can just call me Ash. I am a mage of Hiraeth Seis, and I came here in response to your request, which I am assuming you still want to be filled?"
It took another long hesitation for the man to shift again in his seat just once and reply,
"Are you... okay?" There was a light swish in the air that made it very clear he was waving his hand a little. So he'd caught on that Ash was blind, huh?
"That. Arm. Too." Slow, slow, too freaking slow, this flubber-brain.
Abruptly, Ash stood. Serinia knew what was coming next, and she put one paw against her head. Here it came.
"I am only 17, my left arm does not work, and I cannot see." He walked over to one book-covered wall and lifted his good hand to brush the tips of his fingers against the book spines, tapping here and there.
"But you can stop treating me like an idiot, now. I'm actually good at this. I can find anything or anyone." He said softly.
"If I wasn't, I suppose I wouldn't be able to tell you that I'm not the first person you've asked to find this missing person, nor even the second or third. Or that the person you are looking for is the last member of this family - that lives here, anyways. That this bookshelf," he tapped his knuckles against the spines of a few books,
"ain't a bookshelf, but a door. You are planning to severely underpay me, would be my guess. Not surprising considering the current state of your house. How much did you pay the others? Get to the point. Who do you want me to find and how much will you pay me for it?"
As Zechariah walked out less than an hour later, Serinia floated by his side in a kind of tired manner, bobbing up and down. With a sigh, she said,
"No matter how many times you do that, it's always so-" "Cool?" Ash interrupted with a grin, full well knowing that the answer was actually...
"Creepy." Serinia finished, as she'd said often before.
He gave a little "heh" and added,
"But you want to know, don't you? How I knew, as I always do." The flying cat tried to protest that she didn't want to know, but hey, she was a cat. She did actually always want to know, as frustrating as it was to admit it.
"The house was obviously big and grand, and both the man who let us in and the man we met were clearly most comfortable there. The man who let us in spoke very respectfully to the requester. There's a high chance it is actually his house, and yet only one person answered the intercom, and by voice the same person let us in. While all naturally large estates echo, the interior echoed too much to be comfortably furnished. The pamphlet you read also did not state a price. Either he's just a conservative rich man, or one who is running a little short on cash at the moment. He was instantly disappointed when he saw how young I was, but even after he saw my arm and guessed the state of my vision, he did not speak condescendingly, or tell me instantly to leave, politely or otherwise. He was hoping that I'd say I was faking my injuries. He's desperate. Very desperate. For a man like that to be both desperate and short on cash, it's not much of a stretch to assume that he's lost money to a bunch of incompetent frauds already." The blind mage gave another little "heh" to finish off the unnecessary explanation, and Serinia burst out in frustration.
"But those are all GUESSES!! Every single little time again and again, you use those ears of yours and just make guesses! How can those be right more than half the time? Honestly." She crossed her arms over her chest with a little harrumph, still bobbing in the air a little, though this time in more of a haughty fashion.
"And besides, you really went all-out this time. Was it really necessary to show off like that?"
One corner of Zechariah's mouth turned up in a smirk of unbridled disdain.
"He was wasting my time. If I didn't show off a little bit, he wouldn't have let me take the job. This kind of thing I can do." The man's request had been to find his only daughter, who had run away from home, leaving behind only a note. It took a little strong-arming on Ash's part to actually get to see the letter, and the contents Serinia read to him led him to (correctly) surmise that the girl was pregnant. He suspected the father knew this, but said nothing about it. The girl had run away rather cleanly, having told no servants anything about the escape, nor taking much from her room. She had taken money, but no food, and taken equal proportions of different kinds of clothes except for the more expensive dresses. A thoughtful, careful girl. Not thoughtful and careful enough if she was getting herself pregnant. Or perhaps that had been part of her plan, for whatever reason. Still, finding a runaway from a wealthy family who'd only been gone for two months was nowhere near impossible. He claimed he could find anything and anyone, and he often could find things others were too stupid or lazy to uncover, but the impossible was still the impossible. He'd once seen a pamphlet to find a dog that had run away fifteen years ago. He pitied the stupid schmuck who'd taken that job.
Five days later, Ash had tracked her down to a small secluded house hiding at the edge of Kunugi. As per his usual obligation to his laziness, he waited outside her residence to see if he could talk her into coming home. That wasn't how it turned out. When she returned home, he was sitting on a rock casually clinking the bangles on his belt together. He wanted her to know he was there. Apparently, she did, because in the midst of their waiting, there was a rustle. And then another. Believing she would come out, Ash let the sounds be, but Serinia, as ever unexpectedly curious, tentatively went forth to make sure it wasn't anything worse. A hand reached out and grabbed her, another reaching over to pinch her mouth shut. Panic rose in Serinia's throat as memories came flooding back.
"Sorry, little cat." A girl's voice whispered in her ear, but she barely heard it. Bracing herself, the flying creature forced her mouth open and chomped down hard on the girl's fingers. There was a yelp of pain, and an instinctive reactionary slap. Unintentionally, Serinia let out a little cry, then bit her lip to prevent actual tears from spilling over.
None of this escaped Zechariah's notice, and before either female had a chance to switch focus, his voice reverberated in the little secluded clearing, magnified by anger rather than magic.
"You made her cry, didn't you?" By the time his "prey" turned to look, the boy was facing her, empty eyes wide open, seeming to stare straight at her. The smile on his face could only accurately be described with two words: pure evil. It was difficult to even call such a thing a smile. He raised his right hand palm up, and an odd, swirly ball of sound formed above it.
"You made her cry." He snarled, voice as maliciously pleased as his expression.
"Do you think I'll forgive you?" He tilted the tips of his fingers down and the oddly colored ball seemed to roll off his hand....
By nightfall they had arrived at the lonely estate. The girl had both hands covering her ears, bent over slightly as if in pain. If she had not been trapped in a sound cage, which forced the target to do their own walking, she likely would have been curled up fetal position at the bottom of the cage. As it was, she walked into her ancestral home with bruised feet, head hung, arms fettered by her own mind. Her father came down to greet them in horror.
"You!? What did you-" Zechariah was smiling widely, white teeth showing clearly, eyes intense and unblinking. There was not a hint of remorse there, only something that seemed to the casual observer to border on madness. A story came to mind. A mage who hunts men and smiles as he does it. A smile with neither anger nor joy just... madness. An image that would burn itself into your brain, leaving only that behind. Like the cat in the legendary stories of the girl who traveled through mirrors. The Cheshire Cat.
"You-" The man started,
"Could it be, you're... the Cheshire Cat?"
Ash mockingly replied,
"Perhaps." And with that, accepted his pay and turned on his heels to go back home.[/spoili]
~ Today, Morning ~
Having woken several hours earlier to do some shopping before they made the last leg of the journey back home, Zechariah and Serinia were both fully awake by the time they walked into the guild together. Hiraeth Seis. Home. He twisted his head from side to side as if fondly looking around. A farce born of habit. He passed the old man Izoto, muttering something about youth, which caused him to chuckle and mumble
"old man" under his breath. Loud enough to Serinia to hear, but no one else. Even though he couldn't see, he knew she probably frowned at him for that comment. He also further passed Alma Kregan, who, as usual, seemed rather lacking in sleep. "And no...singing or..fast movement..my head is killing me...." He heard her say. Just to be obnoxious, he put the fingers of his right hand together and made an extremely loud snap with them right as he passed.
Although he was not particularly looking for jobs at the moment, he walked over to the Hiraeth Seis guild job board, prompting Serinia to automatically read it for him. There didn't seem to be many at the moment, none really interesting, and then.... Serinia hit upon the C-class job
Motor City Rush, and although she read it for him because he always asked her to read the whole board through, her immediate assumption was that he'd never do something as stupid as take that kind of job. There was no way....
"Hmmm. That sounds interesting." He reached out his hand and brushed it against the board to feel for the pamphlet, of which there were several, since it was not a "one group only" job.
Flabbergasted, his companion cried,
"Zechariah! Don't do that one!" She tried to pry his fingers from the piece of paper, but he just pulled it from the board with a slightly mischievous smile on his face. The frustrated Exceed pressed both paws against her face, but knew that it was no use arguing with him, and instead followed dejectedly as he made his way to the bar for some slightly belated breakfast. He distinctly heard her mutter dark cat things as they went, but ignored her in great cheerfulness. This could be fun. Now if he could just get Arba to give him the okay, it might be a very interesting outing indeed. Gripping the paper comfortably, he narrowly avoided tables and other obstructions through a combination of a well-oiled memory and some clicks of the tongue here and there. As usual, he somehow made it to the bar without bumping into anything, though he did trip on his own feet the last two steps. His hand flailed a little, hit something warm he recognized as some form of a person, and then managed to grab on to the edge of the bar just in time to save his lips from a kiss with the floor.
"Who is that?" He asked Serinia automatically.
"It's Misaka Jane, Zechariah." She responded, stifling her laughter a little bit. Over ten years, and Serinia still found his clumsiness funny. It never failed to amaze him at how easy it was to amuse her. Misaka Jane.... Who? Ohh right. That one. Though she'd only been in the guild for a week when he'd left (two weeks now, he supposed), he had heard that she'd been quickly promoted to B-class. In quite the opposite fashion, Ash himself, despite being one of the younger members of the guild, had been around for a great deal longer than most, a little over eight years, now. And yet, he'd very comfortably stayed as a quiet, C-class member, focusing on honing the spells he knew rather than learning new ones. At any rate, he rather suspected some of his guild mates would not be able to say with confidence that he even had magic. He'd shown perhaps three or four people at most, and only one knew what it was. The previous guild master hadn't had a clue. With Arba... well, it had been an unfortunate coincidence that she in particular would just so happen to choose his - yes, his - home to claim dominion over. Misaka Jane's magic was... what again? Well, what did it matter. She set off his "loud person alert."
All of these things passing through his head, Ash didn't think to apologize to the girl he'd just accidentally smacked, ordering some food for himself as if nothing had happened, miraculously still somehow holding the job paper in his hand even after that little stumble.
Characters mentioned/interacted with:
Izoto Hiro -
@Artorias
Alma Kregan -
@RedArmyShogun
Misaka Jane -
@RainDash
(Also open for interaction for anyone else in the guild).[/bg]
