2017-06-05: A Rack of Not A Rye to Eat?!
- Cutscene: A Rack of Not A Rye to Eat?!
- Cast: Yarobeleedt
- Where: Adelyn Ranchlands, after the attack
- Date: 5 June 2017
- Summary: Yarobeleedt boasts a healthy self-esteem as he takes a gander at some posted bounties in wake of the Adlehyde invasion.
Showing one's face around Adlehyde's sphere of influence now proves a risk. Showing just about any other part of their anatomy otherwise... even riskier.
Whatever passes for a heart underneath the owner of an overly large cloak beats ever faster as they huddle the cloth that only just barely protects their identity. Through the well-trodden paths that run through southeastern Ignas and the trading outposts that continue business in wake of tragedy, the figure guardedly maneuvers through the harried, the yelling, the grimly resolute, and the sullen alike.
Each time one drew too close, he overcompensated in giving them ample space. Most paid him little heed, too wrapped up in the things that needed to be done to care much one way or the other that the weirdo in the cloak just slid about ten feet in the span of time it takes for someone to blink. Too busy to take on new orders, too exhausted to want to have to bother, too much of a hurry to stay and talk.
Which suited him just fine, he wanted nothing to do with them! Quivering under the robes, they moved along the ground as though the dirt itself were a sort of great discomfort for their person, coming along up to where Guardsman Jeff had just recently finished posting the newest available bounties.
"Bounding tees?!" The hooded figure scowls. "A game of ^Sad Faces^ and ^Multiple Gs^." Dismissive.
"Finally!" An indistinct voice speaks up. "Maybe they got something on those Metal Demons."
"What say?? Must look." The hooded figure's opinion changes drastically in the course of three seconds. Yes. Humans are very good at fearing one another. Now, they have more to fear. For once, he wondered, what it would be like to see the fearsome humans now be in fear before them, without actually being before them, because that is far too scary in itself as they slithered towards the board.
They then slithered at least thrice that distance backwards as a number of Drifters descended upon the bounty board like a flock of buzzards upon a fresh kill. Any one of the names there could prove to be a meal ticket in these trying times.
"So... this Siegfried... they killed the King. It's true, then," comments one such Drifter, a young woman bearing no less than five distinct gunsmoke ARM revolvers on her person, bringing her hands over her mouth, "my word!"
"This Lady Harken's a real looker, doncha think?" Asks another, an older bearded sort with a sledgehammer slung over their shoulder. "With a face like that, you wouldn't think she'd be the sort to sully those pretty hands of hers."
"Let me do the one, two, three of A B C! Mostly do the three!" A shrill voice in the robes comments behind them.
"If they're anything like that green freak... Berserk?! They call that Berserk?! Iiiiii'm not gettin' involved," a lanky fellow with curly blonde hair shakes his head vigorously, and yet subconsciously refuses to relinquish his spot.
"Ain't sure I'm readin' this one right, fellas," says a much older woman in her sixties whom carries a large sack upon her back that seems to have a rocket affixed on either side, adjusting her spectacles as she scrutinizes one of the posters, "who was this 'Riesenlied' deceivin'? Wouldn't have put one past Granny Rocket, no siree~"
"Not read left either!!" The shrill voice behind them whines.
"This 'Vorthuzahl,' another one with a fancy swordsman title. Heh." Snorts a retirement-age disgraced member of the Adlehyde Guard as he hefts a busted shield. "Believe it when I see it."
"Be leave so I can see!!!" The hooded figure's arms flail, demanding.
"You'd think they were bad, I saw a look of this Ebon Zero!" Speaks up a younger girl with a pencil between her ear and hair, opening a small book as she turns through the pages, one thumb lick at a time in apparent ignorance of the screaming thing behind her, "the way they move their sword... it's like the very air itself is their sword!"
"Only thirteen gella for that guy in the green hair?! Why even put up a bounty for that?" Spits a grizzled man in an overly large black hat. "If that's a damned Metal Demon, you bet your behind I'd want ten thousand times that!"
"What a bout of Yarobeleedt?!"
The lot of them turn to look back at the hooded figure, all falling silent as though someone just spontaneously grew a second head behind them. The hooded figure with the shrill voice whimpers, and shrinks.
"Oh, that little Ruby, is that who you mean, sonny?" The little old lady smiles. "That one's still five-hundred if you can bag 'em after you gag 'em."
"Nononononono! Is eight names, not one eaten by mistake?!" The shrill figure stammers.
"Iiiiii, uhh," the man with the sledgehammer brings a hand to his chin, "count only the seven. Should there be eight...?"
"Said when, seven? Nerves even!" The cloaked figure gibbers.
"Awww, don't worry, sugar," the woman with way too many revolvers gently pats the hooded figure on their head, which is a feat easily achieved as the hooded figure seems to sink lower and lower with every pat, "there'll be enough of 'em to go around."
"Butbutbut... Yarobeleedt must be at least as treat as threat as ^Silly Greenhead^...?"
"If they ain't on the board," the man with the large black hat chortles, "ain't sound like they're too scary! We're talkin' some real monsters."
"Ooooh, you had to remind me," the lanky man's knees knock, "barely got out of that warzone with my life!! I-I-I'm sure that's all of them I saw!"
"Doesn't sound like this... Yarobeleedt - heheh, calling something a ^Yellow-Bellied Coward,^ really - is one of those Metal Demons, then," the lowlife of a former soldier breaks out into laughter.
"C'mon, let's get to the refugee camps and figure out more that we can use," suggests the young woman with the pencil hair decoration as she closes up her book, "can't waste our time chasing after every Yiludairies with a lack of notoriety! We'd be set for life!"
An impromptu alliance formed between the seven Drifters, they all leave the outpost with high spirits about claiming something far, far, far above any of their heads, as the hooded figure at last is given a clear view of all the posted bounties.
There is no such thing as a 'Yarobeleedt' here.
"A rack of not a rye to eat?! But... but... Yarobeleedt... is, is..." The voice weakens. Chokes. The shrill voice, unpleasant enough to the ears already, strains ever further under emotional duress. "Is... is... not scary back to human?? Is not scary front to human? Is is..."
"...Stupid ^Tainted^!!" He screams.
"Cursed ^Silly Greenhead^!!" He tantrums.
"To his double hockey sticks with ^Big Flower^ and the constructor of!!" He blubbers.
"Not make fool! Not buy fool! Not outsource fool! Not fabricate fool! Not imagine fool!" Each piece of gibberish is met with the wet slapping of elongated hands up against the post, as heads turn. One Drifter moves to approach, but another rests a hand on their shoulder. They're probably someone in mourning, someone so powerless before what took everything from them as to have no recourse.
"No respect?! Then give them inspect to respec an aspect!!!" The gibbering reaches a fever pitch. "Not like then! Not like then. Never ever ever ever ever--"
"Excuse me, sir," a guard approaches, "I sympathize with y--"
The hooded figure screams in fright and... runs off? The guard has never seen anyone, or anything, 'run' like that. They pay them little further heed. He goes back over to the foreign merchant that had been asking of them as to which road leads specifically to the kingdom, and that one's already been difficult enough to decipher by spoken word as it is.