Play the cards with spades to start (K'thay)

[Avu]

It was perversely fascinating, watching the Riders from Selenitas wander through Burimyu, and even more fascinating to hear the idle trickle of distrust and dislike worm its way through the grapevine. A’emi didn’t particularly care for their arrival either way; if it were up to him those two bronzeriders that weren’t Mi’rah would’ve been killed on the spot but, probably fortunately for all involved, it wasn’t up to him at all, so he coped. Anyway, it felt much more like a Weyr now instead of a hobo camp-out, and even if Kyrahth was sulking about all the new dragons she had to be wary of and snap at, Darkling was thrilled and having the time of her life ghosting from person to person, alternating between sweet fawning and minor pranks.

Anyway, A’emi was only mildly perturbed by the half-familiar faces he’d pass in the halls, if a wee bit wary of all of them—even more wary of the completely unfamiliar faces. They were probably either Northern Riders or Candidates, the latter of which were generally floundering and helpless and the former of which were probably rotting miserably in their unadulterated failure thanks to the planet itself, but the mental justification didn’t actually do much for reassurance.

He hadn’t been really looking for anybody because he didn’t know where to start at all, but as it happened, it was only maybe two days after the last of Selenitas arrived at Burimyu that he stepped out of his weyr with his bow and a quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder and halfway through sliding riding gloves on and immediately stopped in order not to run smack into one K’thay of Castidenloth.

A’emi blinked at K’thay for a minute, teetering on the edge of his balance, and then recovered after a brief glance to make sure K’thay wasn’t suffering any obvious damage via earthquake and therefore incapable of remaining vertical under a physical assault, slung one arm around K’thay’s neck, the length of body plastered against K’thay’s in an appalling unconcern for his own personal safety and K’thay’s personal space, and blurted, “K’thay! Hey, man, looking good for an earthquake survivor!”

Because no, he didn’t believe in things like propriety, so what. He’d actually missed K’thay a lot, possibly because platonic relationships in general were rare for him. Besides, K’thay’s particular brand of half-exasperated affection wasn’t something you could just go find on the street, right?

[Tashe]

Being completely subterranean was... for lack of better words, weirding him out. It was bad enough that the first day or so he'd been at Burimyu he'd been stuck in the infirmary recuperating from his injuries, but now that he was out of that sharding hole, there was nothing for him to do. At all really. He was trained in first aid Healing but did not want to get involved with the mess that was the Infirmary, and because of his cracked rib, the superiors wouldn't let him do anything duty related. Thus, the activities he was limited to were walking, eating, sleeping and talking with Castidenloth. The former of which, K'thay was doing right now.

Which was probably the worst idea ever, in retrospect, since he still had to get even the slightest grasp on the layouts of the tunnels. Wait, that was a lie. He knew the way to the dining hall... sort of. Your thoroughness amazes me. Hey, we just got here. I'm hurt, gimme some slack Casti. Just be careful. I can taste the tension in the air. Rubbing the back of his neck the Bluerider sighed, yet continued on his walk. He'd been keeping it easy on himself and following only the white and blue marked passages, which in the end would bring him back around full circle (or so he'd been told). Looking up from the floor, K'thay stopped in time to not run over a short, blond man. Short... blond... what the shards? He managed a fast "A'emi?" before he was clung to.

"Huu..." The Bluerider winced as the Greenrider's body squashed up against his. "Careful there... I might look good, but I've got broken insides. Sharding rocks cracked a rib." He wrapped an arm around the other man in a hug before letting him go (or tried to, the quiver sort of got in the way). "My chest and shoulders look like I just let someone pummel me till I was good and tender. I'd show you but they've got me wrapped up like a turnday present." He pulled back from A'emi with a grin. "I thought you'd have gotten eaten by a Feline or something even with Kyr watching your back, but, I should have known someone as slippery as you would have managed as a homeless person. Armed to the teeth as always?" Reaching over the Greenrider's shoulder, he plucked an arrow from the quiver and twirled it between his fingers. "Can't blame you, Cas and I can literally feel the "I don't like you" vibes coming from the Wastelanders and the Burimyuans. At least they aren't being subtle about it... then we'd have to really worry."

Honestly, he was happy as songbirds to see A'emi, having thought him permanently MIA and resigned to never seeing him again. It hadn't been until after the take over that K'thay realized that the Greenrider was pretty much his best friend, which as you can imagine, made his disappearance all the more frustrating. Plus, A'emi was the best sparing partner he'd ever had, that was a very hard thing to replace you know. Poking the other Rider in the chest with the fletched end of the arrow, K'thay arched an eyebrow. "You are forbidden to ever again go rogue with out me. Its way too boring otherwise."

[Avu]

He had no intentions of actually letting go of K’thay anytime in the near future, except for the fact that okay, apparently he was hurting the man and that he also had no intentions of, so A’emi reluctantly loosened his grasp of the bluerider, tilted his head to one side and smiled coquettishly. “All the better to unwrap you later,” he answered, and licked his lips in overdramatic seduction, waggling his eyebrows teasingly, an expression that melted into a lopsided grin, A’emi huffing indignantly at K’thay, “You and Kyrahth both, freaking pessimists. I’d like to see a feline try and eat me.” (Actually, even when he had been with K’sel and F’ur and literally living in the wild, they seemed to have been fortunate in the kind of fauna they had and hadn’t run into—or at least, when they ran into it; he never hit a feline when he hadn’t the ability to take care of it.)

He tilted his head sideways to let K’thay steal an arrow, belatedly running a hand down the smooth curve of his bow to make sure it hadn’t been damaged in his overenthusiasm. The bluerider’s comment on the dislike earned him a carefully blank look from A’emi before his mouth quirked wryly up to one side. “Rainbows and butterflies never did cut it for me anyway.” He didn’t expect they would ever quite get along well—if what he heard was true, Selenitas itself was still split, but he also didn’t that the old Selenitas could just reunite either; personal friendships, sure, but on a larger scale, Burimyu was different, unique, separate. And dangerous—not the civilized shiny Weyr Selenitas had been.

His half-smirk widened into a helpless grin at K’thay’s poking and his orders, A’emi reaching up between them to catch the arrow and tug at it lightly. “Noted, I’ll be sure to kidnap you the next time I want to disappear.” He tilted his head to one side, adding, “I missed you too,” briefly and completely sincere before he turned, slinging an arm around K’thay’s shoulders to steer him down the hallway. “You weren’t going anywhere important, right? ‘Cause I was planning on getting out of this labyrinth and Kyrahth’s being a lazy fart and doesn’t want to take me. How’s Casti, by the way? I keep trying to convince Kyrahth that she liked him before, but she doesn’t believe me.”

He was talking too much and too fast probably, but A’emi also didn’t really care; he had a right to be excited, right? (Admittedly, he hadn’t been so exuberant with M’kai, but there was nothing complicated about his relationship with K’thay, and he was also reasonably sure that K’thay wasn’t going to run away from him.)

[Tashe]

K'thay let the arrow go as A'emi said what he couldn't, or rather, didn't want to say. Tucking his hand gently into his pocket so not to jostle his injuries, the Bluerider let himself be steered down the hallway. "I'm not doing anything. The blasted Healers have made me take a 'leave of duty' so that my body can patch me up." Sighing, he fingered the Mark he had in his pocket, briefly he wondered why he had it before answering the rest of the Greenrider's stream of consciousness. "Cas is doing fine, he was fortunate and managed to not get himself banged up during the Earthquake. He doesn't like Burimyu very much, not too fond of the personal Weyrs being so close to the ground. He says it makes him feel like a 'tunnelsnake' or something." The man paused. "Speaking of the earthquake, that bastard, it totally smashed my cabinet of ingredients! I need to get back there and see if some of my jars are still intact... a few things in there are annoyingly hard to find..."

He shrugged. "Also, I'm not surprised Kyr doesn't remember him, she never was too good at remembering dragons and stuff after a while was she? Either way, Casti only remembers her a little. So... it'll be like they're gonna meet for the first time again. Oh, how is Kyr anyways, other than lacking in friendship memories?" K'thay smiled and nudged his companion. "So, when you were out there being homeless and what not... did you end up eating bugs and stuff, at least in the beginning? " He shivered. "Guh. I remember my survival training, I absolutely hated having to eat bugs. Plants, bark and hunting I was okay with but... bugs... in my opinion they're only good for three things. Dyes, a little bit of insect control, and annoying the shards out of humans. Eating is not on that list."

He probably should have been paying attention to where they were going, but having been wrapped up in conversation, the Bluerider had forgotten to do so. Stopping, he glanced around till he found a marker of sorts and sighed in relief. "Well I can get us to the feasting hall or the Infirmary from here... do you know how to get out of this hole in the ground from either of those places? Though, you've been here longer than me... so I'm about as useless as a kid in the ways of Burimyu direction."

[Avu]

He slipped the arrow back into his quiver with the ease of practice, biting back an amused laugh at K’thay’s not-quite-petulant remark. At least it wasn’t worse than leave of duty; he was sure plenty of people were permanently crippled, but quite frankly he didn’t care about any of them. He didn’t know them, after all; they were inherently unworthy of his care until he met them, and then nine times out of ten he still didn’t care, but that was entirely beside the point. A’emi snorted softly at Castidenloth’s quote, shook his head with a wry grin; Kyrahth didn’t care for the personal weyrs either, partially for that very reason (although her wording had been considerably less metaphorical) and partially because she just didn’t trust her neighbors at all.

She probably never would, and that would probably save their lives at some point.

Not that A’emi was paranoid either, shut up.

“Come on, man, glass jars are not conducive to surviving earthquakes,” he said. “Anyway, the jungles around here are literally overflowing with suspicious plant activity, provided you can find your way out of the Weyr.” Which was true; if he hadn’t poked K’thay for information so often before he would’ve been scared to touch any of the foliage in the jungle: All of it was ominous and all of it was probably somehow awful for human touch, never mind consumption. “Kyr is Kyr,” he added blandly, because as far as he was concerned, that said it all. “She still has all her teeth and claws and she’s not likely to forget it.” Or let her neighbors forget it; Kyrahth didn’t outright threaten anybody because she knew that was a one-way ticket to being monitored, but she made her paranoia spectacularly clear.

A’emi paused to steer them down a more brightly lit corridor, continuing, “Anyway, no, thank Faranth, although some of the stuff we got was close enough to bug-sized it didn’t even make a difference. K’sel is the king of hobos, though, no man could ask for a more knowledgeable companion while being a wandering paranormal investigator. Except you, maybe, since you loved survival training so much, but as you may recall, I didn’t get much of a choice.” Admittedly he could’ve probably asked K’thay to join them from the Gather, but the end of that Gather had been as scattered and dramatic as the first invasion, and it wasn’t like he and K’sel and F’ur had been living an enviable life at the time.

“Yeah, I’ve got it from here,” he added. Thank you, Isori. “Or, I mean, I know where I’m going, which is also where you’re going as of approximately two minutes ago, so.” Burimyu—or ‘Selenitas,’ he supposed; A’emi couldn’t quite reconcile the new (or old) name to the place because it wasn’t, the same way it wasn’t and would never be Fort—Weyr needed to come with an instruction manual, ostensibly one with a map featured front and center, but failing that, at least he’d have fun watching people get lost. “There’s this clearing a few dragonlengths away from the river if we get up there, I’ve been going for target practice because usually nobody goes up there, so the chances of shooting somebody is…negligible.”

That might change, admittedly, given the recent population explosion—Selenitas outnumbered Burimyu easily, after all—but until then, it was his clearing.

[Tashe]

He pouted. "Some were clay?" Either way, he was glad to have taken his lockbox out of the cabinet the night before. It contained small viles of most of his prepared poisons, only the ones with short shelf lives where absent from the collection. "Well at least you were with a King of the homeless, your chances of survival definitely jumped up about 50 percent. And what is paranormal investigation?" He shrugged at the quip about survival training. "Hey man, what can I say. I grew up at Fort so I didn't get much chance to be in the wilds until I started field training. It was like a whooole new experience. And that is how hobbies start!" Clasping his hands together, the Bluerider stretched his arms out gently, damn ribs.

"I'm up for a walk, as long as I don't become your moving target practice. Not as fast as I normally am, you know." He nudged A'emi with a chuckled, then returned his arms to their normal place. "Although as I see it, there are enough Candidates running around that if one... disappears... I doubt they'd notice immediately." K'thay's hands tucked themselves into his pockets. "I haven't seen this many Candidates in a really long time. Its weird. One thing the Wastelanders were good at, collecting kids for hatchings... even if their methods were less than nice." He tilted his head to the side and said in jest, "If Elisabeta was still in charge of them, I bet she'd let you us a particularly rebellious one as target practice." Although... honestly he wouldn't put it past that woman to allow it, as long as she trusted the aim of the archer. "Scaring Candidates seemed like her favorite past time..."

Stirring from his power nap on their Weyrledge, Castidenloth yawned and spread his wings before resettling them against his back. He reached out to his human with a question.

"Oh, Casti wants to know if there is room enough for him to sunbathe in the clearing. He wants to say hello to you."

[Avu]

“Ooh, clay,” A’emi answered, unrepentantly and cheerfully sarcastic, “Okay, five tons of solid stone versus a clay pot, we have a winner, ladies and gentlemen.” A pause, as he considered K’thay gravely, mouth pursed in his somber sincerity, and then leaned in, “Paranormal investigation—you know, like, let’s investigate and see if the spirit of your clay pot might still be lurking around, seeking revenge on he who brought it into being only to be kept locked away for its entire life, never to see the light of day until it died in agony—” He abruptly petered out, held up his free hand, and said after a pause, “Only to find that, in light of said creator’s love of hobodom, his best friend kidnapped him to places henceforth undiscovered.”

He snorted a laugh at K’thay, tucking his thumb against the warm wood of the bow, “Damn, gotta get your Elisabeta as Candidatemaster then, trees don’t make enough noise to try to shoot blindfolded and you, I imagine, would make too much, it wouldn’t even be a challenge.” That had been one thing A’emi had been determined to keep up; he didn’t think he could forget how to use his stiletto if he tried, it was so natural, but the bow and arrows were newer acquisitions in the grand scheme of things and he was way too paranoid to let himself relax his training regimen. It helped that shooting things was actually incredibly therapeutic.

The greenrider’s eyebrows went up at the mention of Castidenloth; he’d assumed the blue wouldn’t remember him if he didn’t recall Kyrahth, but then, Casti had always been friendlier than Kyrahth—maybe he just wanted to. “Yeah, sure,” he agreed, “Should we detour to pick him up or can you just get him to between there once we get there? I don’t know where you live,” A’emi added as a momentary afterthought, crinkling his nose in mild dismay; he was used to knowing, even if it didn’t matter anymore, where K’thay’s weyr was and how to get in, locks be damned, if he wanted to.

Now he was just barely getting the hang of getting from Point A to Point B in this stupid labyrinth, but whatever. He’d get there.