As Noah reached the bottom of the staircase and entered the tunnel he looked left and right. There was piping everywhere and valves scattered throughout the passageway, the steam emitting from them made it a little difficult to see, but it wasn't too bad. The figure that he had seen however was nowhere to be seen, and Noah wasn't sure which way they had went. Just then someone bumped into him, as Elise explained Noah turned around to see the person who had bumped into him, his expression turned to anger as he saw who the person was.

"You're with us, huh!?" Noah said as he grabbed the collar of the new man again and slammed him into the piping, he was over reacting, "Give it," He said through clenched teeth.






Above the large cavernous drop off into the watery obscurity below, D watched as a faint light showed up, he could barely see it through the darkness and the mist from the waterfall. Had they all gotten away?

Just then Shianna and her other two compatriots showed up. She had a look of outrage on her face when she saw that D was alone.

"Where are they!?" Shianna demanded. D flinched.

"th-they... they transported away..." D lied, and as nervous and scared as he was he actually sounded convincing. At least to Shianna.

"tch," she said as she turned to the other two who had hung back behind her a few feet. "Well... this will certainly slow things down..." she said as she pulled the hood back over her head. she turned to M, "I assume that you have found the location... correct? Even if we don't have all the items we can still put our other plan into motion..." she smirked a knowing smile, D came to stand by Shianna's side, he looked up at her, he didn't know what was going on, she had never discussed this plan with him. It seemed like there were a lot of things that she wasn't telling him.

"J," Shianna said as she turned to him and took an object out of her pocket, it seemed to be some odd wrist watch, the band was leather and the face of the watch had various different dials pointing to numbers and other numerals beneath a bubbled glass face, "I want you to find them," she said as she handed the item to him, "The objects are integral, I can only trust you to find them," she said laying it on thick with a flirty face she knew how to play him. She then turned back to M.

"Let us go," she said as she began to walk down the hallway they had come from, D followed after her, lost in his thoughts.

"Ouch," Sterling gasped as Noah shoved him against the wall. He lifted an arm to rub his sore head, let it drop to the fist at his collar.

"Sheesh, kiddo, calm down." He smiled and waved his other hand dismissively, letting it drop to his pack. He unzipped it and shoved his arm into the thing, rifling around. He scowled as he failed to find the pocketwatch immediately and used his other hand to bring the back up to his shoulder. He shoved the length of his arm into the small pack and swung his arm around. As his fist finally closed around the metal object, his features brightened. He let the bag drop to his side once again, pulling the pocketwatch out with him.

"Sorry about that, it must have fallen off the shelf. Here." Sterling held the watch out to the angry kid. "I think this is yours. As for your request," he said to Elise. "There's not much you need to know. Well, not much to be said, I suppose. Not now. Quite frankly I'm not too sure what you're doing here either. I thought the last Article Bearers were still, ah, in possession of their titles.

"I can't tell you why we - er, you - are here at this particular spot at this particular time. I really don't know myself." He took a nervous look around the chamber and rubbed the back of his head in thought. "But as the Cardinal Article Bearers, you'll naturally be drawn to one another. Doesn't matter if you're from different worlds, different planes of existence. So get used to each other's faces - you'll be seeing a lot of each other from now on." He paused and looked between the two.

"Er, but I suppose you already knew that. Well, the same applies to the Bearer of the Southern Artifact. She's not going to be too keen on avoiding you, you know. Tch, it's really so much easier if you all got along. Easier to collect the Artifacts, that is, and that's what you should be doing, like it or not. Of course you know about the Artifacts for the cardinal directions. Those are the most important. But there are Artifacts for the ordinal directions too, and those are going to be harder to find. They're not associated with the Holy Order."

Sterling paused in his explanation. "Um, that is, they aren't as far as I'm aware." He looked between the two again, crossing his arms over his chest. "Boy, you really pissed the Holy Order off, you know that?"

Noah snatched the watch from Sterling then with a pouty face murmured "thanks" because after all, if he hadn't taken it from Shianna there was possibility that she'd still have it. He inspected it and then put it back in his pocket.

"So there's more...? And why the hell do we have to gather them? Also, how do you know so much? And it was that old guy's fault... he was trying to control us, so why the hell should we have gone along with whatever he wanted. They're pissed off at us!?" Noah laughed shortly, "Well I'm pissed at them!" Noah said as he folded his arms across his chest. He looked from Sterling to Elise, Wil, Echo, and Gate(Gonna assume she's still there). So they'd all have to get along huh? He guessed that made them a team of some sort. hmm... a team... a team needs a name, right? How about... Team Noah? Nah... not enough flow... Team Awesome? Now that was just dumb...yeah ...uh no... as he was lost in thought thinking of dumb things there was a sound behind them, like something small and metallic clanking to the floor, as Noah turned to look in the direction the sound had come from he saw a wrench on the ground, there were then running footsteps, and they could hear the door above them slam shut and lock.

"That... can't be good..." Noah said flatly as the craft jolted and shook a little, "Shit, are we going down!?" Noah exclaimed as the shaking became enough to make them all loose their balance. Noah grabbed onto a pipe before he fell over and steadied himself. He got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, the kind of feeling you get when you go down in an elevator, yeah... they were definitely diving. The metal hull creaked as the water put pressure on it.

With a lazy salute, he grinned a 'you're welcome' at Noah. Just as he was about to answer the sudden, but expected barrage of questions, the ship they were on began to sink. After the initial jolt, he fixed is footing and looked around.

"...Biscuts," he cursed. "There's gotta be a control room around here, right? This thing is like, the demon's submarine. Oh god, that means someone's gotta be driving it." With a hesitant glance, he looked around the group then peered over Noah's shoulder to look down the remainder of the hallway. He wordlessly shifted through his bag and pulled out the same pad of paper and pencil he had used to make notes before and jotted something else down.

"Well," Sterling said as he placed the notepad back in his pack and wrung his hands. "I'm not going first."

Elise frowned between Noah and Sterling. Come to think of it, why had the run from the Order in the first place? They were far less intimidating than that woman–Shianna–and really, she couldn't consider the spoon her own in the first place. It had fallen into her possession, it was true, but she still assumed that was temporary. It was in her spice shipment by accident–she hadn't ordered it or specified it.

Before she could voice her opinion, the enormous metal thing shook and she was thrown off balance to lean against the wall. The machine, which could presumably be some kind of submarine, was going down.

“It's the only way out,“ she said to Noah. She looked at Sterling again and got up. “I'll go first, but why can't you tell us what's going on? Look, to be frank, I want to go home. I'll do this. I'll go along and fulfill my duty and whatever, but it isn't my dream job to wander around with no purpose or meaning. If you know what's going on, tell us, please.“ He wore his glasses on his head, Elise noticed, which was too bad. Glasses were an attractive feature.

She glanced down the hall and started to walk down it slowly. “You'd just better tell us soon. Preferably before something else happens.“

Sterling wrung his hands again as Elise posed her questions. "It's not like I have all the answers," he muttered. "I'm just a guy who really likes books is all, and I ended up reading a lot about the Holy Order. So I went to visit them. Er, without their knowledge. They have an awesome library, though. Lots of places to hide.

"They're not too keen on their plans going awry, that's why they're so angry. The Cardinal Article Bearer's in the past always just sort of went along with whatever the Holy Order did. It's not like they had a stupendous amount of knowledge on the subject. No one asks to be an Artical Bearer, and they all get pulled into it so quickly." He shifted his gaze to the ground, face falling. "And no one makes it back home either." He winced in anticipation of vocal onslaught but before he could be interrupted, he continued.

"Look, no one knows what happens when all the Articles come together. Well, I'm guessing the Holy Order knows, but they burned all the books that said anything about it; it's verbal knowledge now, and you can bet they don't talk about it. All I know is that once all the Articles are brought together, they and their Bearers get pulled to some unknown world, and no one hears from the Bearers again. The articles, though, they get scattered back across the universes over and over. Who knows why? Maybe they've all been doing it wrong. I don't even know what they're trying to do." He shrugged and averted his gaze.

"That's, um... That's all I know. Frankly if I were you, I'd be pissed to. I am pissed, but at least the Holy Order stays out of my hair for the most part." He shuffled around in his bag and pulled out a broken, old key tied to a black cord, the letters 's' and 'w' etched into the metal. "I've got the South-West Article." He shoved it back into his bag and pat it reassuringly, then looked back up at the group with apprehension.

Noah looked at Sterling flatly, what the hell could he have to write about?

"No one was asking you to go first..." Noah grumbled at Sterling and looked down the hallway, had he mentioned something about a demon? Did this guy know more than he was letting on?

"You're telling us everything you know later," Noah said as he pointed at Sterling, emphasizing what Elise had said to him. He then began to close the distance to the end of the hallway, he didn't like the idea of Elise going first though, who knew what the hell was on this ship. he looked around the corner cautiously and saw nothing but more hallway. He then looked down and saw the wrench that had dropped earlier. There were people here or at least something alive besides them, more than one at least since the size of the ship would have made it impossible for the person who had been spying on them to also be piloting the ship to make it dive.

"I'll go first now," Noah said to Elise and walked past her. As he walked cautiously and looked around he didn't see any doors or other passageways, just this long piped hallway. The craft that he had discovered in the lagoon back then was constructed very differently, but then again it had probably been smaller. Now that he thought about it, how big was this ship? They couldn't see much since it was so dark in the cavern. Maybe it was a lot bigger than any of them could have imagined.

There seemed to be fewer lights, the darkness seemed to be coming back. Noah stopped as he saw something before him. The darkness at the end of the hallway, seemed to be moving... moving across the ceiling... he could have sworn that he saw a white slitted grin in that darkness.
It was a sort of primal fear that he felt then, the way that a caveman would look at fire and know it was dangerous, the primal fear of something equally primal and unknown. He felt all his muscles tense, telling him to run, but he almost felt that if he did the darkness would descend on him.
The darkness seemed to phase out, almost like the way static on a tv looks. You could almost see the outline of a head, an arm through the swirling dark. Noah put his arm up so that none of the others could pass in front of him. He thought that out of the corner of his eye he had seen a door a little ways behind him to the right, about equal to where Elise was standing behind him.

"Go," He whispered to her quietly, you could barely hear him, "All of you go," he continued.

The darkness smiled down as it reached an arm forward to begin moving at them. There seemed to be two slitted eyes above that mouth, the mouth stretched well past what would have been normal for any natural creature. Maybe Sterling had been right, maybe this was a ship of demons.







((OOC: Francesca may remember this creature from the ShadowHearts RP, I don't think Alicia was there for it...? OR maybe she was...? Basically it's a "creeper" a dimensional traveling demon who feeds off the memories of creatures, it can read minds, very creepy... and I feel like it may be bad to explain it... it's much creepier as an unknown thing, but then again...))

As the thing inched toward them, everyone moved for the door on the right. Wil opened the door and urged them all through and followed them inside, shutting and locking the door behind him without taking any time to actually inspect the room before entering. Then he heard something. It was muted, but definitely noticeable. Someone was... humming? Was someone there?
Wil turned to see a lavish room, someone's personal living quarters, decked out in gold and treasures acquired from what seemed to be many different civilizations. There was most notably a table and seating, a large bed with throw pillows and silk sheets, a globe, a dresser with a large mirror attached and a door leading to perhaps another smaller room. Wil cautiously walked over toward the door for it was from within he heard someone humming. Much to his surprise, the door was ajar. He moved his arm across the length of it and slowly pushed it open. Steam rolled past him as he stood there, unable to make any words for what he had seen. There was a scream followed promptly by the word "PERVERT!!!"

((OOC: Okay, so it is weird, I know. I didn't have anything in mind for this so whoever wants to go next gets to make up whoever is in the shower. Man, woman, creature... you decide I guess.))

As Sterling followed quickly behind Wil, he shot solemn glances at the rest of the group. He had told them all they needed to know, but that Noah kid seemed far more perceptive then he would have liked. That and Sterling didn't particularly enjoy being threatened, but even he would be pretty suspicious of himself. He really couldn't blame them.

However, he was particularly worried about that shadow. Up until that moment he'd believed they had vanished a long time ago. Scowling at the thought, he poured over the information he had trying to find a reason for its existence to no avail. He could recall nothing about the shadow creatures aside from a note in a very old text about their removal from an unnamed world. What would one of them be doing on such a boat?

Wil lead them into a rather lavishly decorated room; one that he certainly didn't expect to see on this vessel. As the door slammed behind the group, he heard the shadow bang and growl against the metal. He leaned against the door trying to restrain it, but with the same indistinguishable hiss of steam from a kettle, the shadow ceased its attention on the door. Keeping his back to it, Sterling looked up at the door jamb curiously.

A loud scream of "PERVERT!" distracted him from his thoughts and he jumped three feet in the air, his glasses falling on his nose haphazardly. Wil had pushed open a door full of flowery shower steam, and an angry woman was screaming in his face.

"What the hell are you people doing on my boat?!" she was screaming as she pulled a foreign looking sarong over her body. "How did you get in here? You have no business here! Get the hell out!" She was pointing towards the doorway angrily, still glaring daggers at Wil.

"Well ma'am, we rather love to vacate your, er, lovely facilities here," Sterling spoke up from against the wall as he adjusted his glasses. "But unfortunately for us, your boat seems to have sunk into the water." The woman paused as he said this and looked around the group with a rather shocked expression.

"You mean, this thing is moving?" she said as she fixed her gaze on Sterling. "What did you do?!"

"We didn't do anything. Didn't you feel the jolt before?" Sterling asked with a raised eyebrow. The woman scrunched her face.

"I'm used to it; things hit this boat all the time. But it never moves. Not on its own, and I'm the only driver..." She crossed her arms over her chest, gathering up the edges of the sarong.

"Then what about the shadow?" Sterling asked, his lighter tone more somber. "Why is there a shadow aboard your ship? They're supposed to be destroyed - extinct. Yet there's one on here." He glared at her hard, hands on his hips. "How did you get this vessel? This is ancient technology. It was supposed to be destroyed eons ago. None of this is supposed to be here."

"Shadow?" the woman asked in an exhausted tone, choosing to ignore the other questions. "I don't know what you're talking about. I parked this boat here six months ago and haven't moved since. It's just been me and my treasures." Her tone was much calmer, as though she decided they weren't a threat. "Never mind all that," she said with a wave of her hand. "Who are you people?"

“We're not from around here,” Elise said quickly. “I'm sorry. We don't know where we are. If you could just let us stay until the nearest land mass, we'd be grateful.”

At the moment her greatest concern was the strange creature. She realized, as she turned Sterling's words over in her head, that she couldn't worry about anything but now. She may never see her family again. It was a terribly sad and frightening though, but she couldn't cry. Not now. Not when they were flipping through dimensions, being captured and chased and dumped with a group of people that–she was now aware–they had no basis of trusting. But she did. Within reason.

“Well,” The lady said, looking at the group, “you're one of the most non-threatening bunches I've ever seen. I suppose I'll give you a moment for the benefit of the doubt. If you go out into the hall while I change, I'll check the control room to see what is going on. If it turns out you're right,” she glared at Sterling, “I'll bring you to the nearest shore.”

“Thank you!” Elise called as they shuffled out of the room. They weren't eager to move back into the "haunted hallway", but again, they had little choice. “Maybe we should move to some other section of this thing,” she said to no one in particular. “I'd feel better if we could be in a room where we can see all of the corners.”

She moved a little ways down the hall they had not yet seen. “Once we do find a place, though, we should make some kind of plan. It'd be nice to have control of our lives again.”

Sterling's face lit up and he grinned widely at Elise's words, as though the past hour hadn't transpired. He followed her out of the doorway and faced her.

"So you mean I can go with you guys?" he asked, hope and happiness laced through his words. He didn't bother with the shadow creature anymore; he figured if it really wanted them, it would have gotten to them by now. "Yes, let's find some place lighter. This entire ship is dark and dank - so depressing!"

With a joyful hop to his step, he walked the length of the hallway fearlessly. He was certainly glad that things seemed to be going smoothly with the group so far. It really would be a pain if they didn't get along with him. Well, he reasoned, even if they didn't get along, they would eventually. His eyes gleamed. This whole adventure would make an interesting story to tell once he got back home. As he marched, he saw out of the corner of his eye a well-lit, mostly empty room. All that seemed to be there was a round table and a couple of dusty looking chairs.

"How about this room?" he asked the group with an innocent smile. He sat down in one of the chairs and a puff of dust exploded out at him. Sterling couldn't help the cough, and he pushed the glasses back onto his forehead to rub at his eyes.

"Okay," he said as he fixed a wary grin on his face. "If you have any more questions, I'll see what I can answer."

Noah had followed the others inside the room right as the creeping dark monster stalked toward them with it's jittery movement and closed the door right as it lowered it's head to get a better look at the group. Then there was nothing. For some reason it hadn't tried to get in.

As Wil seemed to be causing a disturbance with the captain of the ship, Noah found himself a little lost in thought for once, and not really paying attention to the situation around him.
He had never really given it much thought, why was he here, and why wasn't he more concerned about going home? Elise seemed to want that very much, Wil and Gate probably had their own lives that they wanted to get back to as well, not to mention the newcomer, Sterling. But he didn't want that, he had no desire to go back. He had spent his whole life searching for the mysteries of the forbidden continent, but why was that? He was an archeologist, yes, but he didn't care too much about culture, it was mostly just the fact that he was trying to discover something that no one else had. He had loved the thrill of trying to find out the truth, and the fact that it was illegal made it all the more exciting. And now that he was in this situation with these people, traversing dimensions and seeing things he had never seen before, he realized that he had been waiting for something like this all his life. So while the others may not be enjoying their uprooted life, he couldn't be more excited.

Before he knew it, the captain seemed to be giving them the go ahead to stay with her. The others filtered out of the room into the hallway that now seemed to be devoid of of the creeping darkness they had seen earlier. Had it just been observing them? What was it's purpose?
Noah now realized he was the last one still in the room and the half naked captain was looking at him rather questioningly.

"You too, bucko," She said.

"Is there anyone else on this ship?" Noah asked, ignoring her comment.

"Didn't I already say? It's just me and my treasures," Then she seemed to remember something, "oh yeah, how could I forget, I got me a first mate and a few kids who clean up the place. This place is huge though so I go days without seeing anyone sometimes."

"Hmm... maybe that's who was running around earlier... that shadow thing was completely silent and was using the ceiling..." Noah said quietly to himself.

"What was that?" The captain asked.

"Do you have a monster problem or something? We saw... er... something..." after he said it he could have sworn that he saw something flash in the captains eyes before she replied.

"What're you talking about you crazy kid? Now get! I gotta get changed, see," she started to forcibly push Noah out the door now. "Anyway, there's enough cabins for all of you, right? So get goin'!" And she slammed the door shut. The others had gone quite a while he had been talking to the captain. If he had been smarter he may have been suspicious of the captain, something just didn't seem right, she had accepted them all to easily, there was no way that she couldn't have had some sort of ulterior motive, or did she? But Noah being who he was didn't think about that, he had some sort of instinct telling him something was off, but he couldn't explain the how or why of it. So instead he jogged up to where the others were just in time to hear Sterling say he would answer any questions they had.

"About time!" Noah said as he slammed his fist on the table and looked Sterling squarely in the face, "Why are the other articles harder to find? what happens when we find them? Do you know what that Shianna chick is up to? How did you know where to find us? Why is that "Order" thing the only place that knows about the articles? Don't they like involve the universe or something?" Noah took a deep breath after letting out the barrage of question, "And lastly, what the HELL was that thing we saw back there?"

Sterling faltered a little as Noah let out a barrage of questions, and he leaned forward a bit in his chair. It's not as though he lacked the answers, but he wasn't especially prepared to rattle off an encyclopedia of information at them. It had taken him years to gather and fully understand the Order and the Articles and the purpose of it all, to sum it up in a few paragraphs would be rather difficult.

"Relax a little, okay?" he said instead to Noah, gesturing to a chair. "It's a lot of information to take in, and it seems as though we finally have a few moments to sit down and sort it all out. Being all high-strung about your situation isn't going to make it any easier." He leaned his elbows on the table and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“To answer your first question, the Order only needs the cardinal articles. The other articles don’t matter to them. From what I’ve come to understand though, er, various sources, the cardinal articles are the keys that possess the power to travel to that ultimate, unknown universe. Understandably the cardinal articles would be the most powerful. They’re the most pure, the most direct – the ordinal articles have only a portion of their tandem cardinal power. Uh, its sort of like… hm, what’s a good metaphor. Like, you can mix milk and water together and I guess it’s drinkable, but it’s nowhere near as awesome as milk by itself or water by itself. Are you following me?” He paused to look around the room. At the blank faces, he scratched the nape of his neck in frustration. Mentally shaking it off, he decided to continue on anyway.

“The Holy Order has no need for less powerful articles. Regardless of whether or not they’re even aware of the ordinal articles, they wouldn’t care in the least. The cardinal articles are enough to take them and the bearers away to that unknown world to do god only knows what, and that’s all that matters to the Order.

“As to your question about the Order, well, apparently quite some time ago someone discovered the existence of the multiverse – all the connected multiple universes. This is just an educated guess on my part so take it with a grain of salt - I could be wrong. But I’m beginning to believe that the Order was created to keep the universes from knowing about one another, and that whatever the articles and their bearers do in that distant universe is the means to keep it that way. If that were the case it would only make sense that the bearers be destroyed upon finishing their task – after visiting all the universes and gaining all that knowledge, their continued existence would be trouble for the Order. It would defeat the purpose of their plans.

“From what I’ve read, in the past the bearers would be called together immediately upon their discovery of their object and unless the Order had any secondary task for them to do, they would immediately be sent to the other universe and be required to perform whatever task awaited them. Shianna’s rogue ambitions threw a wrench in the Order’s plans. I’m guessing they asked that you retrieve her article? It appears that Shianna learned of the ordinal articles and wished to bring all sixteen of the items together instead of just those of the four cardinals.

“So,” Sterling said with a bit of hesitation. “I know the Order already made a request of you, but you should know that no matter how vague or untrustworthy the Order may be, if Shianna brings all the articles together nothing good will come of it. As the cardinal bearers, you need to find the ordinal articles and keep them away from Shianna. Your articles have powers, have you noticed them yet? Only the cardinal ones have that ability. They – you – are the only ones strong enough to protect the rest of the articles.

“I wish I could tell you what happens once the cardinal articles are brought together. Heck, I wish I could tell you what would happen with only the ordinal ones involved. Unfortunately that is a piece of information that I do not have.” He shrugged his shoulders dismissively. “All I know is that nothing Shianna could possibly be planning would be beneficial. After all, this process has been going on for who knows how long and I guarantee that your universes have been relatively okay on the macro. Maybe the Order isn’t the most kind-hearted organization out there. You can hate them all you want for doing this to you, but their process works.”

Sterling sopped and sighed, taking a breath from the long-winded explanation. Time and space travel was so complicated; he hoped he answered it as simply as possible. He wasn’t particularly good at explaining things, especially something so complex. Especially when he wasn’t able to see all the sides of this multi-facetted theory. He knew about himself, though, and while he expected questions about himself, he wasn’t particularly fond of answering them.

“I, on the other hand, knew how to find you because I come from a place very much connected to all the known universes. It wasn’t too hard to track you down with your items ripping through space and time like wet tissue paper. But your items should bring you to universes that have the remaining articles in them. Even though there was that run-in with Shianna earlier, you were probably brought here for a reason.

“And that shadow thing?” he suggested with a sigh. “That is very, very complicated. I don’t really trust that woman, nor the people she seems to be harboring here. This is technology that was supposed to have been destroyed a very long time ago. I’m sure you’ve all had ancient civilizations in your past who become so technologically advanced for their time that they end up being the bearers of their own destruction, yes? A very similar thing happened with the culture that created this.” He gestured to the boat with vague disdain.

“That shadow… those creatures… nothing good can come of them. I believed they were destroyed long ago – even longer before the fall of the creators to this boat. They’re evil; pure evil. There are a thousand metaphors about good and evil, light and dark, yin and yang as it were. It’s true that good cannot exist without bad – that without the dark, we could not know light, and vise-versa. But those shadows… They’re their own anomaly. They are the only thing to have ever existed within any range of time in any known or unknown universe to lack a counterpart. There is no light, no good within existence that can chase them away.

“But people are smart and they figured out a way to get rid of them. I don’t know how they did it, only that it happened and that the shadows should be only a thing of legend. Key word there being ‘should’, of course, since it seems that one lurks around here. I don’t think we should be here any longer then we need to be.” He looked around the room suspiciously, cheerful features long since gone.

“So, did I answer your questions?” Sterling asked with a slight grin. “Or did I create new ones? Apologies if I did, you know. I’m not omniscient, I just… read a lot of books.”



((OOC: Holy McShit, this is like a fucking novel. :/ And sorry if I made Sterling say weird things, I don't know what you guys had in mind when you started this so I sort of made it up... If it's dumb, I can always change it.))

Sterling talks too much, I'm glad I didn't have to sit there and listen to him, lectures are boring... blah blah blah... hey, isn't that...

"TOOLS!! I found a whole box of them!" Gate exclaimed, bursting back into the room where everyone was sitting, "They were all in that room over there. It's so weird, these seem to be just what I need." Plopping herself onto the ground, she began to rummage through the box, pulling out this and that, eying it just to make sure of its size and then tossing it to the side. "Actually..." she trailed off, looking around the room intently, "Everything here looks familiar...ish... Kind of like where I'm from, but newer." It was true, the room seemed very familiar, reminding her of a briefing room she had once heard another boring lecture in, though she couldn't have walked out of that one. The pipes in the hallway, just the architecture in general seemed so... She couldn't quite put her finger on it. She knew they had naval war machines, though she had never been on one, normally her squad was flown everywhere.. What was it about this place? Gave her the chills...

Just now noticing the deafening silence, Gate realized that everyone was giving her a look as though she had just bust into a funeral home during a service. "Hey, what's with you guys... you're kind of creeping me out..."

Before anyone could say a thing, there was a slam on the door, breaking the silence and giving everyone a good start. "Oi! Why the hell'd you lock this!? Get out here!" It seemed the "nice" lady from earlier had finished whatever it was she was needing to do and was ready to go. Looking very much confused and on edge, everyone sifted out of the room without saying too much of anything, except the orange haired kid who seemed to be eying Sterling with a very annoyed look, what a weird person...

Making their way through the rest of the dark hall and up a flight of stairs, there seemed to be no sign of the shadow creature for some reason, no other nearby bio-signatures in the general area either... Why is it so dark in here? Even the other hallways we went passed were dark... "If you're wondering why it's so dark, I like to save power on my boat, so get used to it." Oh...

Coming to a set of double doors, the captain lady shoved them open. "And here we are." She said in a lackluster tone, as though what would be found through these doors would be of no surprise to anyone.

Noah listened to Sterling's explanations... most of which went over his head, he did catch a few things though.

"So basically, the order wants to use us and kill us, Shianna wants to steal from us and kill us, and we don't know what these article things do exactly but we have to gather them all anyway.... right?" Noah said as he folded his arms across his chest and tilted his head. "Also Shianna is basically just up to no good... and those shadow things are pure evil of some kind... also you read lot of books," Then Noah seemed to think of something, "That's right, where the hell are you from? Also what you said about that lady we saw earlier-"

Before there was any time to answer or for Noah to finish his thought, Gate burst in holding a tool box, then followed by the captain of the ship. She led them to a new area as well, through the double doors was what seemed like a control room, there was a particular chair that seemed more prominent than the rest which most likely belonged to the captain. There were several tiers of chairs as well, some of which needed stairs in order to access them. the room itself was large, towards the back of the room was a large glass window which allowed them all to see outside, and in front of that window there was someone standing, She was a tall woman who seemed to be around the same age as the captain, she was dressed primly as was the captain now, it didn't seem like they were wearing uniforms, but the outfits resembled each other, maybe it was the fashion of this world? the woman turned as they entered and seemed to have a very flat expression on her face until she laid eyes on the group of them, she seemed a little shocked for a second then faded back to her previous flat expression. Her eyes seemed to linger on the men for a second longer than the women, it didn't seem to be any sort of alluring interest that she had in doing so, but something else, almost as if she was calculating something that none of them could understand.

"Yo, Balsa!" The captain said casually to the other woman.

"Where in heavens name did you find that circus currently standing with you? They look positively filthy," the other woman, Balsa asked, ignoring the jovial greeting and keeping her flat tone, her face seemed a little pinched and stuck up, she wasn't exactly attractive, but not unattractive, basically she was somewhere in between.

"Hey!" Noah exclaimed as he glared at the woman, who had no reaction to his outburst.

"They just got on the ship somehow, got no idea how or why, said we'd take 'em to the next landmass we find," The captain said as she started walking over to Balsa.

"We haven't run aground of land in quite awhile, what was it, weeks? Not to mention that we lack the resources to support this many," Balsa said as she turned her back to the group and began to look over a monitor, the captain joined her.

"Eh, we might as well look for one then, right?" The captain said as she half turned to the group who were now just awkwardly standing there, "Just take a seat, there's plenty of 'em, we'll get one'a the kids to bring you some food in a bit, 'kay?" She then turned back to Balsa, their heads were low and they appeared to just be analyzing the monitor, when in fact they were having a discussion out of earshot.

"So, a maybe half a day, eh?" The captain whispered.

"I believe so, Neut calculated the distance to The Market," she pushed a button on the screen which revealed a map, their current location and a line suggesting their current course, "Drakham is expecting our shipment," she then turned her attention from the monitor to look the captain in the eye, "This is quite unexpected though..."

"Tell me about it, it's not like money just falls in our laps every day like this," The captain said with a devilish grin, the woman returned it with a half smile, it seemed to be all the motivation that she felt like showing, "did you see how many there were? The three men will fetch quite a price, not to mention the women, young girls like that are extremely popular right now, not to mention they're pretty," she smiled knowingly then stood upright and looked around, the group seemed to have either sat down by now or stayed where they were, discussing something. None of them had heard a thing. She seemed to notice something about Gate though when she scanned the group and their locations, did she know that gate wasn't exactly human?

"Weeks!?" Noah said exasperatedly to no one in particular as he slouched forward in exasperation, he turned to Wil, "Aren't you an engineer or something? Why don't you engineer us a faster way out of here?" he then turned to Sterling, "If we knew how to use these things maybe we could just leave on our own... you don't know how to do that glowing light warping thing do you?"

The captain walked over to another monitor which seemed to have a speaker and pressed a button, "Hey, Pam, you in the galley?" She took her finger off the button then and awaited a response.

"Oh, uh... yeah," a voice crackled over the receiver, they could hear some sort of music playing in the background that made it hard to understand the speaker.

"Turn that bloody box down!" The captain yelled over the speaker.

"Sorry captain," the voice said, it seemed like a strangled sort of voice it seemed impossible to tell whether or not it was male or female.

"We got some guests up here, mind bringing them a special meal? Gregrian specialty?" she turned to the group with a smile, "It's a famous dish where I'm from, the spices are-"

"Yeah... uh yeah I think we got some'a that stuff left," The voice cut in.

"For 5-no wait, me and Balsa too, so 7, make sure me an' her get extra spices," she said as she gave the thumbs up to Balsa who decided to ignore her.

"On it captain..." The voice said and just before their finger was taken off of the button you could hear the music turn back on.

"Ugh," the captain said exasperatedly then turned to everyone else, "It won't take long, but I guarantee the taste is to die for," She said with an approving smile, then walked back over to where Balsa was.

"Very subtle," Balsa said to her quietly.

"That's tha point, they won't suspect a thing because of it," The captain smirked.

"Now that I think about it we've just been running everywhere," Noah said as his stomach grumbled, almost as if it was doing it on purpose. "Ahah.... yeah... food would be nice..."






((OOC: Haha, lol, talk about Novel length... anyway, setting it up for some bad times for our team, looks like the crew does Slave trading and who knows what their "shipment" is, I'll leave it up to you guys. I figured since the captain noticed that Gate wasn't human as well she'd be able to drug them all thoroughly >.<' bad times... anyway, hopefully writing this much was okay, it didn't seem to interfere too much with any one's characters so I think it's okay...))