Well it's my very little wonder and it's one that I will keep

[lesstravelled]

Something was going on.

Something was always going on. The world was a big and bustling place full of the small evils people committed against each other. Road enjoyed that about life. Anywhere you went you'd find people being people everywhere, and it never mattered if those people were tall or short or old or young or lizards or dogs or boring old humes. People transcended the species barrier, and people were awful. Terrible.

Fun.

Sometimes there were the larger evils people committed against each other too, and Road was part of more than one of those. They were Noah. Clandestine, dangerous, remorseless. They had their spoons in more than one pot of evil and gave them a stir occasionally to make sure the nastiness didn't just sink to the bottom and stay there.

They didn't concern themselves with the lowerworld much. Road, and Tyki, and the others, had been busily stirring another pot on Jylland, their usual playground, when the summons had come from Khamja on the lowerworld. They'd had some work from them, in the past, but their relationship with Khamja was normally distant. The Earl had maintained the connection, because connections were good, and maybe once they were done playing on Jylland it'd be fun to find a new place to play, but when the summons had come, he hadn't been able to attend himself.

He'd sent Road in his stead, and Tyki to go with her. It was easier to be underestimated when you dressed cute and sounded cute and looked cute, and had someone that definitely looked like an adult with you.

Something was going on. Khamja were playing their cards close to their chest, but they'd requested the presence of every single member, both shadow and open, for an important meeting.

Road didn't try to surmise what exactly it was that was going on. It wouldn't involve them, at any rate, at least not yet, but there was always the opportunity for new opoortunities. New people, new places, new things to learn and use.

Their directions to the Desert Palace hadn't been the best. The place was hidden, and marking it on maps would be a good way of making it no longer hidden. Not that maps were any help when you were approaching from the other side.

Road gave their transport an affectionate stroke along its bony mask. The journey from Niflheim, where they'd been, to Rabanastre, would have been a boringly long walk if they hadn't hitched a ride. Fortunately, there wasn't a Hollow in existence that would deny a Noah asking a favour.

"Do you think The Earl will be upset if we set off their alarms?" she asked, tilting back from her perch on the Hollow's head to look at Tyki upside down. Her legs dangled down, her feet brushing dangerously close to its teeth, but it wouldn't bite. It wouldn't dare.

The route had been surprisingly well trodden for something in the depths like this. Hollows came this way regularly, but if you were used to Hollows you could tell where they veered away from a spot. They gave population centres a wide berth, or the smart ones did, so you found the paths they took might open out within sight of one, but almost never in one. Not unless they were told to.

The same thing happened here. There were probably wards, or some kind of defense mechanism to keep even the Hollows out of an area that would, normally, be one of their gathering places. Some old, forgotten, sunken ruin beneath the sands, deep in the heart of the Zertinan Caverns would be teeming with Hollows if it wasn't for the fact it wasn't forgotten, or abandoned.

The Hollows stayed away. Whatever was there was too powerful for them to think it worth taking on.

They'd come out of the Garganta into the Caverns, and then pressed on, but now might be a good time to let the Hollow leave. Not that Road was against making an entrance, but it would spoil the fun if everyone knew what they were before they knew what everyone else was.

Comments

[intangibleman]

"I think whoever set up the alarm system would be more annoyed," Tyki said, half distracted, eyes on the cavern around him. It was sandy, but still an improvement on the inside of the Garganta.

Tyki Mikk, a latecomer to the legacy of the Noah Clan, had struggled to get used to their preternatural connection with Akuma, or Hollows as they were called on the Lowerworld. He was long used to it now, just as he had grown plenty accustomed to his newfound wealth, the high quality clothes he got to wear and the food he got to enjoy, but travelling in the dark side of the world, the bits that lay hidden behind the scenes, was something else. It made him slightly uncomfortable, even now. Being out of that and back in the real world was better, but the Zertinan Caverns were still aggressively claustrophobic.

"It won't be the Earl who has to come to turn it off," he added in a mutter, eyeing Road's upside down face with an uncomfortable scowl as the Hollow's hard and stringy form moved beneath him.

He had let Road figure out how to get to the meeting place, the 'Palace'. She'd sorted out the route, the timing and all else. He'd just followed, feeling slightly put upon, and knowing he was playing fake babysitter so that the other members of Clan Khamja took Road more seriously than they otherwise would. He could have been playing cards or drinking away the day, but instead he'd been sent off on an errand, another one, one of many in the past few weeks, to the Lowerworld, of all places.

"Where's this palace?" He asked, voice flat and unimpressed.

[lesstravelled]

"It sank beneath the sand hundreds of years ago," Road said, sounding, for a moment, less childish. "Now it's accessible only by a door in the Zertinan Caverns, unless you have an airship."

She sat up again, and pushed herself off the Hollow's head to land on her feet in a jump. Her skirt flew up as she did, but she landed lightly, and turned towards the Hollow, which stopped obediently.

She could kill it. The temptation was certainly there. She could get rid of it while it was unable to resist and spend a few minutes enjoying it.

But that would be a waste of a good Hollow.

"It's not far from here," she said, to Tyki. There was magic in the air, here. Someone had a few local creatures in their thrall, and probably kept them as guards. "But unless we want to upset everyone, this is as close as an Akuma can get."

It might be fun to test their defences sometime. Although being where it was, it probably didn't need many from its inhabitants anyway.

[intangibleman]

An airship? Tyki's expression went flat, his bright gold eyes dulling for a brief moment. They could have saved the journey through the Unseen World if they'd used an airship, huh? Nice to find out so late.

He looked at the back of the creature beneath him, its skin grey, its appearance sinewy. It didn't feel like an animal, merely an approximation of one. It moved like you'd expect, but there was no warmth in it, no give to its flesh.

"People do get a bit funny about them, don't they?"

That was no surprise. Everybody knew that if a soul didn't move on like they should, return to the planet or Etro or the Farplane or whatever belief or terminology the individual preferred, the soul would eventually corrupt and become a creature of evil, even if the exact reasoning and process wasn't well known. Nevertheless, they had somehow captured the imagination of people, albeit in an overall negative fashion, like poltergeists. They had different names, but they were all the same. They preferred Fiend in some parts of Ivalice, or so Tyki had heard, and Hollow in the rest. On Jylland they tended to refer to them as Akuma, though those of Lucian nationality tended towards using the term Daemon instead. Regardless, they were always the same. Predatory monsters without exception, but varying intelligence.

[lesstravelled]

Road giggled, her mouth twisting into a cruel grin. People did indeed get a bit funny about Akuma, or Hollows, or Fiends, or Daemons.

Road was happy to call them anything. None of them mattered. They were dead, and vengeful, and that was useful, but the only thing that made them really different from other people was the part about being dead.

They consumed each other, and fought with each other, and kept going until the strongest ones came out on top, just like they'd done when they were alive.

Road was one of the strong. So was Tyki, although he was still getting used to that. None of the rest mattered in comparison. They could do what they liked to them. What they felt like to them.

"You're never met anyone in Khamja, have you?" she asked, as she set off walking. It wouldn't be too far. There was Mist within these Caverns and it made her skin prickle.

[intangibleman]

Tyki felt glad to be off the Hollow. He wasn't used to riding astride a beast, as he'd never been in a position to ride chocobos. The closest he'd come was eating one. He'd found out later, from a news crier and definitely not the men who had traded him the cut, that it was likely a stolen racing bird and not an animal raised for meat. He thought, in retrospect, that it was a little stringy, but it was much better than what he'd eaten for the past few weeks. At least it wasn't scavenged.

"No," he said, scowling at sand-coloured dust clinging to the hems of his trouserlegs already. "Why?"

[lesstravelled]

Road clasped her hands behind her back as she walked. The sand was everywhere. It poured from holes in the cavern's roof in great sandfalls in places, and trickled like dust in others. It was fine, and hung in the air, and clung to clothing, and shoes.

"Because people get a bit funny about them, too," she said, turning to flash Tyki a dangerous smile. Their little Akuma wouldn't scare most of the people inside Khamja. Gotei Captains and worse called this place home. "Or they would if they knew who they were."

She could see the entrance ahead. She could feel it, too, the magic binding it and protecting it. Someone had taken measures to keep the world out.

Or the biggest monsters within.

[declaregamuza]

Kreeth was the first of what was set to be a veritable onslaught of new people into the Palace. Nel had never been so glad of having sent Szayel and the more rambunctious Arrancar away to retrieve Aizen's children than she was at the moment she'd learned that. Szayel would have tried to cause problems with the people already there. Give him people that didn't know him to play with too and he'd have definitely started something. To say nothing of the risk of Grimmjow and company finding someone they butted heads with. They didn't need a rehash of their introduction to Kadaj.

Information on Aizen's welfare was thin on the ground, too. He was in D-District prison, and that was all anyone could say. L was trying to break through their systems to get access to their security systems and computerised information, but he wasn't currently sure if he could do it at all, and even if he could, it would take days.

It left Nel feeling like she was spinning her wheels in the Palace. The day was a long routine of waiting for more information, and hoping Grimmjow and the others weren't in a rush to return. She whiled away time in the kitchen because if she was there everyone knew where to find her.

When the Palace's doors opened she lifted her head. More visitors, inevitably, more Khamja members, were on their way in.

A few seconds later something changed, and Nel felt what she could only describe as her Hollow cowering. The two that were approaching were Dark elemental, which was enough to set her own teeth on edge although she'd learned never to judge by an elemental alignment, but that wouldn't be enough to frighten Gamuza.

Still she could feel it, that fight or flight response coming from deep within, hotwired into the back of her own spine where her instincts met the Hollow's. It was definitely pulling in the direction of flight, fighting almost vanished as an option.

Her fingers tightened around her cup, her newspaper lying forgotten on the table as she looked up at the doorway.

[hagsfiend]

Kreeth had grown used to the palace. In the past few days, she'd explored what she'd cared to explore, met a few more of the residents (thankfully none as dreadful as the hilariously prickly Professor Hojo) and settled in as best she could without the ability to easily fly away from the place.

It wasn't too bad, for an underground base. She wouldn't have chosen something without a real sky herself, but it was good enough.

She rather liked Nel, even if she was somebody else's experiment and somebody else's subordinate. She was pleasant, even to her, which was rather nice. Kreeth was used to being treated like something of a pariah, even if she could be useful with her lotions and potions and eldritch spells when people needed them. It was for that reason that she scowled when she saw Nel's discomfort. The lines of her hands grew hard and she felt her tension in the air. It was almost enough to set her feathers standing on end.

She looked to the door, head turning around just a touch too much. Newcomers. Those chakra signatures weren't here when she'd arrived. Dark Elemental, much like herself, but not the same. It was said there was more variation in that element than any other and, at this moment, Kreeth believed it. She recognised one of them, if only vaguely.

"A Noah," she said softly.

Nel was right to be afraid.

[declaregamuza]

Kreeth was weird. She was Dark elemental, and one more piece of evidence in why you shouldn't judge by an elemental alignment. She moved wrong, and the wings made her size and frame deceptively tricky to figure out with a glance.

Nel liked her. She was respectful towards those that were respectful back, and had made a fantastic first impression on Hojo that had instantly endeared her to Nel.

She also knew a lot. Nel hadn't asked Kreeth much about her activities, just in case she didn't want to know the answer, but she got the impression that Kreeth had been around the block a few times, and run into plenty of nasty things on her travels. Probably done them, too, to be a member of Khamja.

So when Kreeth named the thing that was approaching that had set Gamuza's hackles to rising, Nel didn't doubt her. She just didn't know what the name meant. "What's a Noah?" she asked, feeling the presence approaching.

She made herself let go of her cup in case she squeezed it a bit too hard.

[hagsfiend]

"A clan with the ability to subjugate Hollows like Beastmasters do animals," she said quietly, quickly, and under her breath. "Don't show your fear, dear."

The Noah were well-dressed predators, to Kreeth's recollection. They dressed rich, pranced about wearing their name like a badge of honour and moved in the higher circles of Jyllandi nobles, particularly in the Niflheim, Tenebrae and Uberwald regions. They had influence, and power, and they used both. It was better not to turn your back on a creature like them, nor show them you were vulnerable. Kreeth would know.

[intangibleman]

Tyki pushed the kitchen door open and, this time, he didn't hold the door open for Road to enter first. Instead, he walked through it, upright and confident in his continued safety.

He looked at the two women at the table and rather hoped that his suit didn't look too dusty after their walk through the caverns. Well, first impressions mattered, didn't they?

"Good afternoon," he said in the common tongue of Ivalice, his Jyllandi accent rather different to Kreeth's. The smile he provided to accompany the words was, he hoped, disarming.

[declaregamuza]

The ability to subjugate Hollows like Beastmasters do animals.

That was the source of Gamuza's dislike. It wasn't her own fear Nel had to keep under control, but the Hollow's fear was rare, and infectious. Nel found herself having to keep conscious control to maintain a steady reiatsu.

When the Noah entered the room Nel was struck by those predatory yellow eyes, and the dark grey skin. If his presence wasn't making Gamuza so concerned she'd have taken him for a Mist Mutant and left it at that. There were enough of those in the Palace, after all.

The charming smile didn't help one bit, either. Nel wasn't sure what she'd expected, but an attractive man in a nice, if slightly travelled in, suit wasn't the first thing she'd have conjured to mind.

"Hello," she said, because staying silent and hiding behind Kreeth, even if it was only conversationally, wasn't going to help her not show her fear. "I take it you're the ones that have just arrived?"

There was a girl behind him, with pink hume skin. She didn't flag so much on Gamuza's radar, at least not with the man around, although Nel could sense the Dark in her.

[lesstravelled]

Road could practically smell the fear before she walked in the room. Tyki made someone in there very nervous.

She could feel the Holy elemental controlling herself even before she rounded the doorframe and got a look at her. Green hair meant she was a Selkie. There were a lot of them in Khamja, she knew, and a lot more of them on the lowerworld than on Jylland.

She was pretty.

The other one was an Aegyl, she could spot that right off. There weren't many of those around, these days, and they tended to keep to themselves, so finding one here drinking with a Selkie was fun.

Road clasped her hands behind her back and tilted her head, looking between the two women. She gave a bright murmur of confirmation. "Are we early?"

[hagsfiend]

"Not as early as I was," Kreeth said, her abrasive voice cutting through the silence that hung after the girl's question. "I think you're the only other ones to arrive so far, so ... yes, I'd say so."

They were both Noah. Kreeth could feel Dark Chakra clinging to both of them, though it was far more pronounced in the man. He hadn't bothered to keep his family-related Mutation hidden as the girl had. They made the usual suppression effort of the magically powerful, but no matter how much most tried, they could still be felt and she suspected that Nel, Holy Elemental as she was, felt them both acutely. She was, after all, in a room with three powerful Dark Elementals.

"Better to be early than late," she added, and then grinned. "Better pick of the rooms."

[lilinette]

There were new people in the Palace.

There were more and more new people in the Palace these days, and there were going to be more still. Mostly she spent her time with Halibel, or Stark. Stark because around him was a good place to hide; no one went to bother Stark unless it was really important. He'd been bothered a lot recently, with Aizen being imprisoned, but it wasn't enough to warrant him doing anything yet.

Halibel had effectively taken her under wing to train. Halibel trained anyone that needed it, or that came to her, and Nel had passed her off to Halibel because Lilinette found Nel easy to wind up.

When Lilinette wasn't around either of them she liked to go and stick near Nnoitra. The Palace was boring, and she didn't have anyone to play with. Not that Nnoitra played with her, but he was at least not as dismissive of her for being a kid as the rest.

But Nnoitra needed to do things like train, and shower, and sleep, so she couldn't find entertainment in him all the time. That was usually when she'd go to the infirmary and bother Szayel until he chased her out, and then keep going back, but Szayel wasn't here.

So Lilinette was bored.

Which was why, when she sensed people that felt like Ulquiorra in a Nnoitra mood, she decided to go and see them. Nel wanted her, and most of the others, to stay away from the new people that were coming in, but that was all the more reason not to, for Lilinette.

She could feel Nel in there, with them, which made Nel a hypocrite if she was telling others to stay away.

Lilinette walked into the kitchen, bold as brass, and looked around. There was a girl with dark spiky hair and skin that was dark grey, not the pale grey of Ulquiorra, and the creepy winged woman Lilinette had seen lately. She looked at both of them with a critical eye, and then at Nel.

Then she turned back to the strange new people. "Hi," she said, as if she was challenging Nel to stop her.

[hagsfiend]

Kreeth looked up at the girl. She'd seen her once, perhaps twice, since arriving, but never for long and never to speak to. Too young to be a member in her own right, she was obviously the minion of somebody. Given the defiant little greeting, after staring Nel down with the same 'you try and stop' me attitude seen on the faces of cats knocking things off shelves everywhere, Kreeth guessed that Aizen was her master, too.

"Hello," Kreeth said, raising a hand in greeting.

If she was one of Nel's peers, she didn't show the same fear of Tyki and Road's suppressed reiatsu as Nel did.

[intangibleman]

Tyki stood outside, just far enough to stop his cigarette smoke crawling in through the door and annoying the Selkie woman. He didn't rush it, though. Not even when he heard a new voice in the kitchen. It had been a long and uncomfortable ride and he hadn't smoked once on the way, so he was going to enjoy it, even if he had been put out like a dog.

When he finished it he looked around for something to drop the end into. After Nel Tu's firm warning not to smoke in the kitchen, he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to risk dropping the nub onto the floor.

"Uh," he said, exhaling his last lungful of smoke before sticking his head back around the door frame. "What do you want me to do with the end?"

He also clocked the young girl who had entered. He wasn't aware that Clan Khamja dealt with children. Well, other than Road, if you could call her that.

[lesstravelled]

Road turned and observed the girl that had walked in. She was a little younger, skinny, with pale green hair and pale pink eyes. A Selkie, then, another one.

She gave a hum as she looked the girl over, chin resting on her palm. From the way the girl was acting, she was one that had to take instruction from Nel. Considering Nel definitely wasn't a member of Khamja, that was interesting.

"Who do you belong to?" she asked.

[declaregamuza]

"Lilinette," Nel said, the name itself being used as a warning in that trick used by mothers the world over. It was already too late, though. Lilinette was obviously intent on being a nuisance from the look on her face.

Stark must be asleep, Halibel and Nnoitra must be busy. Or not as interesting as newcomers.

Tyki's question distracted her, and she turned towards the doorway, flashing him a smile. "If you're brave you can feed it to a Malboro," she said, with a slight grin. "Or you can flick it in the grass," she offered, "it's fine." The fact he had the forethought to ask was nice. They should probably get a sandbucket or something out there for discarded cigarette ends. Tyki might not be the only one to smoke that was coming to join them in the next few days.

"Something will either eat it, or use it for nesting," she added.

[lilinette]

Lilinette gave Nel a defiant look, which became a tongue out and an eyelid pulled down when Nel looked away to the man at the doorway. She made sure to quickly tuck her hands behind her back after doing it, and then stepped closer to the girl.

"Captain Aizen's," she said, as if this information was boring to her. "Who are you?" she asked, looking from the girl, to the bird-woman.

The man was dark grey, too, she noticed, and dressed like he was going out somewhere.

[intangibleman]

Tyki looked mildly surprised, expecting to be shouted at for carelessly discarding the cigarette end, but since Nel Tu didn't seem to care, he flicked it away with a shrug of the shoulders.

He was not, definitely not, going to be going up to one of those distant, wiggling plant monsters and offering it a snack. Malboros were seen all over Spira, both on Ivalice and Jylland, so Tyki had a good idea what an encounter with one entailed, even if they looked somewhat different to those he'd seen pictures of. Perhaps it was just a regional difference.

"There's more living out there than just those things?" He asked, shielding his yellow eyes from the glare above with a hand.

[hagsfiend]

"Kreeth," she said, raising her eyebrows at the girl.

My, my. Wasn't today just the day for assertive young girls? Between the Arrancar and the Noah, she suspected the day was going to be interesting.

"And you are?"

[declaregamuza]

Nel gave a nod, even though Tyki wasn't looking at her. "Birds," she said, "insects," worms in the ground, she thought. If it was necessary for a garden ecosystem, Marluxia had shipped it in. "There are fish in the lake, too, and one of us keeps Dreamhares." She smiled, thinking about Wonderweiss, and his Dreamhares. Animals of all kinds loved him, and he'd come such a long way in such a short time.

"The only dangerous things are the Malboros, and they're pretty good about staying near the greenhouse." She paused, and considered something for a moment. "Although the Dreamhares will give you a vicious headbutting if you try and kick one." They did not like Szayel one bit, after all, and he might deny having tried to kick one, but this was Szayel.

[lesstravelled]

Road looked the minion girl over. She wasn't scared of them, like Nel was, but she also wasn't Holy elemental like Nel was. In fact, she felt barely stronger than someone you might find on the street.

And she was Aizen's? What did an Akuma hunter Captain need with a minion like this?

"I'm Road," she said, sitting up a bit on her chair and letting one leg drop down.

[lilinette]

"Lilinette," she answered, giving the bird-woman, Kreeth, a flash of a toothy grin. "Are you mist mutants?" she asked, not bothering to dodge around the issue like others would.

Either she'd be called rude, in which case the answer was yes, or she'd get an actual answer. Either way was fine by Lilinette.