Snippet #2716738

Pommel Grade

”Ugh, this isn’t what I had in mind…” Pommel muttered to herself as she descended the stairs to speak with the others. Though Oceana had been nice in having her help pick the mission and discuss the team, now she was running errands as a messenger girl. Worst of all was the first task she’d been assigned, one of the last things she wanted to do. Making her way over to the group, she noticed that she seemed to have drawn some of their attention, probably because they knew she was helping Oceana. That didn’t bother her so much. In fact, she enjoyed being the focus. The problem was…

”Keiji.” Speaking his name, she spoke curtly. As he looked up to her, she looked to the side, arms folded. Was she mad or something? ”Sis-Er, the Guild Master wants to speak with you upstairs.” She clarified, trying to sound a bit more formal. Pivoting on her heel and taking long strides back towards the stairs, she called over her shoulder as she made her way back up. ”Follow me please.”

Keiji didn’t bother questioning the sudden request to see Oceana in private, chances are she needed to run through some of the finer details of the mission before they actually embarked on it. Although he was perplexed as to what Pommel’s issue with him was, considering her stance and cold demeanor towards him seemed to indicate that he had slighted her in some way. Once again, he reminded himself to figure out the problem and solve it, but for the moment he had to focus on the task at hand.

Quickly climbing the stairs, Pommel lead him to Oceana who stood with Jin seemingly in conversation about something. “Oceana.” There was no trace of good nature in the name, only an unexplained urgency. “The people in town have been talking a lot recently. It seems like ‘they’ve’ resurfaced.” He was purposely vague, but he was sure the guildmaster would understand exactly what he meant. Jin stopped upon seeing Keiji causing to Ocean to turn and look as well. Jin didn’t bother with any sort of greeting, he was more focused on getting to the task at hand.

“Is there an issue with the job?” Keiji asked, holding his hands behind his back like he was standing at attention.

Oceana pursed her lips for a moment before sighing and turning back to Jin. “Thank you for telling me. We can talk about the other thing after I send the new team out.”

“Sure thing boss.” Jin’s words were brief and straightforward, but a shadow of some foreign emotion crossed his face. “I don’t suggest we wait too long to address this issue- but we’ll discuss this later.”

Jin tried his best to force a smile at his friend, with little success. He was too damn tired and stressed. Without another word, he turned. He came face to face with Keiji, but figured that the man needed no words of encouragement in order to perform his job efficiently. He didn’t operate like the others- at least Jin didn’t think he did. Still, he figured it was appropriate that he at least acknowledge the wizard as he left. Offering Keiji a curt nod, he pushed his way out of the office and left the two to discuss whatever needed to be discussed.

As the door shut behind Jin, Oceana smiled at Keiji and Pommel, motioning for them to come over to her desk as she rounded it and sat as she addressed Keiji’s question. “No, there is no issue with the job per say. Dolores has been called away for an urgent issue which she had previous experience with. That being said she obviously is not going to be joining you for this job and likely will return after the rest of you.” Oceana paused to shuffle through the papers she and Pommel had been going through before pulling one out and handing it to Keiji. “This is the job you are taking. Miss Pommel and myself have already arranged your transportation and we called ahead to reserve rooms for you at the local inn. You leave at 3pm.”

Moving up towards Keiji slightly, Pommel fished around her pocket a moment before pulling out an envelope, waving it in front of Keiji. “It’s in my name, but this has the tickets for the ride and the jewel to pay at the inn, so don’t lose it, got it?” Stopping her hand motions, she gave Keiji a moment to take the envelope. “And don’t make any trouble either, I don’t want to be blacklisted in case I need to take any trips out that way.” Pommel added with a huff, turning away. She seemed kind of irritable about the whole thing. Maybe finding out about the absence of Dolores had put her in a worse mood…

”Noted.” Keiji stated as he took the envelope out of Pommel’s hand. He took that one and slid it into one of his pockets, not bothering to check the contents inside. He took the paper handed to him from Oceana instead and started reading. His eyes quickly went side to side like a typewriter, doing his best to memorize the contents before he folded it up and placed it in his pocket as well. Keiji seemed to pause for a second, taking a moment to collect his thoughts on the job at hand. ”Without Dolores, that makes me the only S-ranking member of this team.” Keiji stated, looking up at Oceana. He didn’t want to put down any of the other’s abilities, but this was an S-ranked job, and with a lot of potential for combat it would seem. In fact, it was practically guaranteed that they would have to fight at some point. ”I won’t be able to look out for everyone.” It was simple math, there were too many people on his team for him to possible protect everyone at once should worse come to worse, and he wanted Oceana to understand that. This might be an opportunity for everyone to prove themselves, but it was also a risk for people to get seriously injured or killed.

Oceana smiled at Keiji and rolled her eyes. “Keiji your team, including yourself, has 8 members in it. Even with Dolores and Melinda absent I am absolutely sure that you have plenty of manpower. Besides, we both know that Slick has the magical ability of an S-Class wizard. He just hasn’t won the trials yet. And not to mention Cheneres being with you. I mean, I know he acts like a drunken fool at the guild hall but he usually sobers up and takes his jobs seriously.” Oceana nodded and then went about starting to clean up the mess on her desk. ”I have no doubt in your team’s abilities to take care of themselves. Well, for the most part.” Oceana chuckled and then smiled at Pommel. “Thank you for your help with the preparations Pommy. If you’d like to go back downstairs to finish the parting gift you were preparing for the team you can. I just need to organize this. Oh! And if either of you see Jin can you send him back in here? Thanks!” Without waiting for an answer from either wizard Oceana picked up a pile of papers and turned away to put them in their proper places, verbally and physically dismissing the two.

“Not a problem sis!” Grinning happily with a cock of her head, Pommel moved out and downstairs with Keiji, the smile not leaving her face until they were out of sight and earshot of Oceana. With the door closed behind them, her face immediately did a 180 as it turned stern, the small girl doing her best to stand tall and intimidating. Even on tippy toes, it wasn’t very successful, but she wasn’t about to back down now. “Oceana’s really counting on this, Keiji, so don’t screw it up. I know it’s going to be hard without Dolores leading the charge, but just, try to be as good as she would’ve been okay? If you ruin this, I’ll make sure you regret it, understand?” Getting up in Keiji’s face as Pommel continued to frown in Keiji’s direction, it seemed the little wizard didn’t have nearly as much faith as Oceana, especially with one of her favourite wizards out of the picture. Still, there was something charming about the gusto used in threatening the S-Class wizard.

”When I get back, we’re going to solve this problem that you seem to have with me.” Keiji stated in a firm tone, although it wasn’t quite a challenging one yet. If she were any other wizard in the guild, Keiji would have already nipped this in the bud preferably with a strong worded argument...or his other chosen method of fixing issues. He had no idea what he had done to piss her off, so the first step was to figure that out. That was something for another day though, for now he brushed past her. If she wasn’t going to treat him with the respect his position deserved, he felt no need to do the same. With the paper for the job in hand, he made his way in front of the team...his team? He doubted anyone would let him get away with calling it his team if only for pride and reputation sake. Before he could say anything, the door to the guild hall opened up and Rin appeared more than a few minutes late for the meeting. She took her time getting to her seat, although there was something off about her...was that paint on her face? What had she been doing? Regardless, Keiji was just glad that she had kept her promise and showed up. With the interruption out of the way, Keiji started the mini brief. ”Listen up.” Keiji stated, waiting a couple of moments to make sure everyone was paying attention to him.

”First, let me start by saying Dolores won’t be joining us for this job. Her responsibilities have pulled her elsewhere.” Keiji took a moment to read through the parchment again, wanting to make sure he didn’t miss anything important. ”The job is as follows: A Dark Guild running under the moniker of Laguna Fury has taken over a village and has threatened death on anyone attempting to leave. They’ve started terrorizing the populace, looting, stealing, basically everything that you would associate to these people. The objective is simple...get in there, remove them from the town.” Keiji flipped the page over, just to make sure that there wasn’t any more information that he was missing before folding it up and returning it to his pocket. ”It shouldn’t need to be said, but I’ll state it anyways. Seeing as this made its way to the S-ranked job board, we can safely assume that they have a few wizards of incredible skill to warrant needing our attention. Implying that just because there’s a number of us going on this mission doesn’t mean it will be easy.”

Keiji looked around to the others for a moment, seeing if they fully understood what he meant or if they believed he was simply putting on airs for them. He was more concerned with Rin and Cheneres out of the bunch, not necessarily because their skills were lacking, but because, like himself, they were not team players. ”We leave at 3pm, have everything you need ready by then and meet at the train station. Any questions?”