spira_rp | It's hard to find true equilibrium.

Lindblum was, in Lumi's opinion, a singularly awful city.

Built atop a mountain, or possibly a cliff, it bore the sort of architecture that made it amply clear that it had been added to over time, that it had started off much smaller and had grown, almost organically, outwards and then upwards, like a particularly unpleasant fungus of mismatched brick and tile all contained within the immense castle's fortified walls.

Lumi's nose had wrinkled as they made the approach to the Falcon's Gate via airship. Even from a distance he could see that, without more space for the city to crawl beyond the walls, as most seemed to when they outgrew a castle's ramparts, it had just gotten ... taller. Idly, he had wondered how it would fare in the event of an earthquake.

Once the airship had docked and he and Marluxia had disembarked, he decided that the city was even worse than it had looked from their approach. The winding streets and irregular buildings did little but compound the fact that the city was not purpose-built. Some of the houses leaned like drunkards and some of them had larger, over-hanging upper floors, as though they had been added to at a later date by a less skilled builder. It looked disorganised, ramshackle and untidy.

With any luck, they wouldn't be there long.

They were in the city on a mission, or, at least, a favour. In deference to the alliance he had made with the most recently recruited of his old ... "colleagues", Marluxia had agreed to make a trip to Even's old home to pick up some items that he hadn't thought to bring with him on his would-be temporary relocation to Daguerreo. It wasn't safe for him to go himself, on any front, and Marluxia had the freedom of movement accorded to an established and voluntarily joined member of Clan Khamja.

Lumi stood in the street outside the Air Cab station, a frown on his face at the feel of the uneven cobbled floor under the soles of his shoes. It was a warm day, but it was growing clear that Summer was on its way out in this part of the world. The breeze that blew down the street carried upon it the scent of woodsmoke, hanging baskets and the promise of rain. It was, despite the pleasant day, cool enough to make Lumi stiffen where he stood. He scowled, looking up. The sky was, at least, still blue, though grey clouds were visible in the distance.

He looked to Marluxia for direction. It was he who had the address of Even's old residence.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

gracefuldahlia

Contrary to Lumi's opinion of Lindblum, Marluxia found it quaintly charming. It was clearly an old city, that had bowed to the inevitabilities of increased demand for housing and work by adding on to its existing infrastructure wherever there was room to do so. Space wasn't wasted in Lindblum; the city no longer had the space to waste.

It had been an informative few weeks for Marluxia. Firstly there was the fact that Vexen, now regularly going by Even but some habits died hard, had allied himself with Skite well enough to travel with them. Not only to travel with them, in fact, but also to return in one piece, having earned the respect of some of them. Particularly the Summoners, it seemed.

It had been an informative trip for Vexen, which had also made it a useful one for Marluxia. He had, apparently, witnessed an Arrancar open a Garganta, he'd even traveled through it. In concept they weren't dissimilar to the corridors of darkness the Nobodies had once used, and found closed off to them on their arrival on Spira. The only real difference between them was that, unlike the corridors, the garganta could only be used to travel within the confines of Spira.

This had not presented an issue to either Vexen, or Zexion, both of whom had seen the potential benefit of a mode of behind the scenes transport that they could utilise from anywhere.

It made journeys shorter too. To an extent. It could not be used to make a journey of a thousand miles in a few steps, but it could be used to traverse a long and winding road as the crow flew. Or as the Hollow traipsed, to be wholly accurate.

Getting to Lindblum to hold up Marluxia's offer to retrieve some of Vexen's personal effects had required the airships. The journey could have been made using a portal, Marluxia still thought of them as that, and even Vexen and Zexion slipped in and out of that old habit, switching between thorough accuracy and the familiar terminology at will, but it would be easier to transport things back by airship, and why not travel in relative comfort to begin with?

On arrival, Lindblum put Marluxia in mind of a rabbit warren, but there was a certain charm to the place, and a certain cultural stuffiness that Marluxia could see fitting Vexen. Saix too, if one considered his clipboard wielding side ahead of his inner wild animal.

He'd made sure to get precise directions from Vexen. Wandering an unfamiliar city didn't appeal to Marluxia, especially one in which other former members of the Organization had set up their new home.

"This way," he'd told Lumi, and led him down the cobbled and twisting streets of Lindblum towards the place Vexen had previously lived. Autumn was on its way in this part of the world, and Marluxia smiled, faintly. This was the season of apples and blackberries, which, fresh from the plant, were pleasures Lumi would not know.

Education may be in order, amusing as it was to see him scowl at the sky as if threatening it against even thinking about dumping water on him.

He led Lumi along the streets towards the address they'd been given, keeping one eye on the mismatched architecture as they went. There was a certain smug pleasure in getting to poke around Vexen's former home.

From:

thesilentstorm

"Mmn," Lumi said, giving a nod.

The district wasn't as busy as Lumi had thought it would be. There were people, of course, but as soon as they headed off the main street and into smaller roads the bustle died off somewhat. The temperature dropped sharply as they headed into the shade of narrower streets.

As they walked, the smells changed. The air felt less fresh off the beaten path and the buildings close on either side blocked out breezes and kept the air from circulating. More than once he caught the sour, warm odour of a beer-soaked carpet drifting out of the open door of a pub and the sweet, cloying scent of burning herbs or incense escaping from apothecaries through the cracks in doors or windows.

He spied people standing around at the far ends of the streets they passed, saw (and smelled) homeless beggars hunched in doorways and couldn't fail to notice those who were furtively selling wares out of coats and cases from less conspicuous locations, presumably to avoid the attention of guards or police, whichever applied.

It was populated enough that Lumi didn't think it was likely they'd be targeted for any reason and he walked with the air of somebody unworried by his surroundings and those in it. Nevertheless, he was glad of his concealed weapons. He had left his sword at home, something he didn't usually do and that left a curious sense of unease in him in spite of his dislike of it, but he knew what he had brought would suffice should anybody see fit to make today the day they made the worst decision of their life.

The area of Even's former home wasn't exactly affluent enough to be notable, but it wasn't a slum, either. It was respectable without getting above its station, the most any bar royalty or nobility could hope for in Lindblum.

From:

gracefuldahlia

There were a few benefits to being taken for a Selkie on Spira. For one, it meant that Marluxia and Lumi, traveling together, didn't attract attention. Ordinarily any pair that looked like they did would have been the subject of stares and comments, but Spirans were used to it. For two, Selkies had a reputation. This reputation was best summed up as 'they are basically all like Grimmjow', a presumption that Marluxia had thus far found to be hilariously inaccurate. That said, given the prevalence of Selkies in Skite, for example, he could see how people reached such conclusions.

What it all meant, really, was that he and Lumi weren't particularly notable, and were also given a respectably wide berth by the general populace.

Vexen and Saix had made their home in an area that was respectable enough; one or both of them must have maintained a predictable income, but the area wasn't so stuck up that Selkies drew attention. Of course, Saix would have needed to fit in as much as Vexen, so that only made sense. The house itself looked small from the outside, although it was hard to judge how deep the building went from the front.

Marluxia had Vexen's key, and he didn't bother to lurk around looking suspicious before he unlocked the door. A big part of going unnoticed meant looking as if you were supposed to be somewhere.

From:

thesilentstorm

Lumi followed, the very picture of casual.

He waited patiently behind Marluxia as he opened the door to Vexen's house. He didn't peer around, or look as though he was taking in his strange, unfamiliar surroundings, nor did he fidget or look awkward. He was too used to breaking into places he shouldn't be to make any of those rookie mistakes.

From what he gleaned of that which he did see, he saw that the house, at least from the outside, looked to be fairly compact. The location was a fair one, not posh, but not run down, and in a location that provided easy access to the local shopping area.

When Marluxia let himself in, Lumi followed.

From:

gracefuldahlia

Marluxia closed the door behind Lumi. Inside, the house smelled as if no one had lived here in a few weeks. It wasn't the smell of a house that had stood empty while its owners were on holiday; this was an abandonment that had gone on longer. It smelled slightly dusty, and yet almost sterile underneath that. No one had cooked, cleaned, or breathed here with any regularity in a while.

The first door on the left was ajar, and Marluxia pushed it open cautiously. The hinge creaked at the end of its swing, revealing a living room that may not have been that often used anyway. There was a television, a sofa, and a single chair. Saix and Vexen clearly hadn't been the entertaining type, and Marluxia suspected the chair existed so that one or the other could sit here without it seeming like an invitation to the other, and the sofa was because they had occasionally chosen to sit together.

There were books on shelves around the room, an entire bookcase in one corner with some gaps in it suggesting someone had removed books and not returned them. The decor left something to be desired, but that was Marluxia's opinion of the house in general. He preferred the finer things in life, and whoever was responsible for this room had been much more pragmatic. It did what it was supposed to, and wasn't out to impress anybody with the fact that it could do that.

"I'm impressed they haven't been broken into," he said, his voice, like their footsteps, intrusive in the quiet of the house. Empty houses attracted that kind of thing, but, perhaps, people knew the inhabitants were with a clan, or perhaps they knew they had little to steal. There were a multitude of reasons possible for why no one had bothered.

From:

thesilentstorm

Lumi paused as Marluxia closed the door and proceeded down the short hallway.

For a moment, he didn't move. He wanted to get a feel for the house. Sensing Reiatsu was less use here than it could have been. It was old, easily upwards of a hundred years, and had seen many owners in its lifetime. Despite this, nothing notable had been performed in it recently, if ever, nothing that had sunk in too deep, not beyond the spiritual background noise that one could expect of any building of reasonable age. The fact that the house was one of many in a row, in a large and old city, didn't help matters. The scents were much more telling.

It smelled mildly unpleasant. It wasn't a scent that was outright disgusting, but the air of abandonment that swirled in the air like the dust that their entry had disturbed was, nonetheless, quite pungent. This became all the more apparent when Marluxia pushed the door open wider. Lumi wrinkled his nose as the disturbance in the air brought the scent of old fabrics, papered walls and a multitude of aged books to the fore.

Over the top and intermingled with the odour of neglect he could detect the scent of people, albeit not particularly strongly. He doubted anybody had been there in the past two or three weeks. He recognised Even, a faint smell beneath the layers, but there were others, those fresher, who wove through and sat atop it. One was obviously Saix, though he would not have been able to say which. The other, or others... guests, perhaps.

The smell of nervous sweat was absent, so Lumi felt certain that nobody had entered without permission.

Under the dust he could smell the location of the kitchen to the far end of the house. Nothing had been prepared there for a while, but it still lingered in the background like a light trail left imprinted on the eyes after one had closed them. Some smells faded very quickly, but the smell of food preparation tended not to, not when the same location was used almost daily over many, many years. It lingered like the sour tang of tobacco which, Lumi was sure, had been a vice of one of the house's previous owners, if he was any judge.

"Did they protect it from entry without a key?" Lumi asked, looking around.

His gaze fell upon the banister. There were hand prints in the coating of greyish dust that lay upon the worn wood, something so careless that they probably belonged to one of the owners, more than likely Saix. He had no reason to disguise his entry or movements; it was his house. Nevertheless, those marks had been covered with fresher dust, more evidence that he had not been back in some time.