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Post by Rhona Hall on Nov 12, 2021 22:09:24 GMT -8
She let out a whoop and started laughing as she was lifted and swung. It was a whole soul filling emotion and she was so hyped to this whole family that would be able to answer the part of her that went ignored for so long. And the relief that she still didn’t have to pile on the expectations of the world still held true. Sure Matriarch was no shrug off job, or so she would think, but it sounded like she hadn’t had anything to worry about in the mean time.
“Let’s meet up and get breakfast. I know this taco place that will be about opening up for the day, I’ll buy. The kids get breakfast there often since it’s so close to the school. You can buy straight ten pieces of bacon by itself if you wanted to.”
She went and grabbed her things like her clothes and she poured what was little left of her water bottle on a towel she pulled from her bag and wipes herself to get most of the sweat and work out funk off her skin. After she hopped about to get her sweat pants on over her sneakers and track shorts with haste balance.
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Post by Zack Asiv on Nov 13, 2021 17:30:08 GMT -8
Kirin would nod and call the group and text to meet up at a taco place. Getting various responses, some more responsible than others. But it would be Rhona's lead to get to this place.
"Lead on."
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Post by Rhona Hall on Nov 13, 2021 17:48:48 GMT -8
When she was dressed she finger combed her soft wavy hair on the way. It really wasn’t far and it was just a little breakfast taco hut, the kind that handmade their tortillas which were fluffy and warm on arrival. A real easy breakfast before the day started. The metal tables outside were bolted down but clean and freshly painted to prevent rust. She already saw a few of the students on their way from the place. Most lived at the academy but if you had the same weekly cafeteria food for the last eight years you might grow tired of that too. So they left campus and ventured here often. The workers and owners didn’t seem to mind if anyone was meta or normie. Business was business one might just assume.
Rhona could not help but search faces to wonder who came. It was sudden but she was so excited she didn’t want to hesitate.
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Post by Zack Asiv on Nov 13, 2021 18:09:34 GMT -8
After a while a Few of other males in the family would show up. Causing Kirin to introduce each of them. "The youngest one is Sylvester, we call him Sly. The one in black is Marko, the blonde is Aeser, and the brown haired man with the scowl is Theodric, or Theo." |
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Post by Rhona Hall on Nov 13, 2021 19:31:30 GMT -8
She extended her hand to each one and nodded in greeting. “I was told about Sylvester and a Judge Raymond… but there are more of you. Did you all arrive on the Arc?”
She couldn’t actually remember when she was so nervous and unsure what to expect. Rhona really wanted to control the heart in her chest from beating audibly and quickly but she was just too stoked or surprised.
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Post by Zack Asiv on Nov 13, 2021 19:39:49 GMT -8
They each shook her hand, Sly grinning wide.
"Yeah, I got a bit of a reputation." He beamed with pride brushing his thumb under his nose.
Aeser would nod.
"I am Judge Aeser Raymond. This is all of us."
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Post by Rhona Hall on Nov 13, 2021 22:19:35 GMT -8
She listened and saw each of them in the face. They were closer than she could have ever expected.
“Father… didn’t talk about you all much I apologize for him. Most of the family I knew were my mother’s. They were good to me but I always wondered and even made plans to find you all. I can hardly hear myself think to even know where to start.” She smiled sheepishly and a hand scratched the back of her head.
She remembers her dads goofy smile with his terrible middle parted chin length hair cut and always wearing headbands and sweats much like she did. “I suppose if there are as many of you here as there are… exactly how big was the rest of the tree prior to the Arc? Why were you all on it at the same time anyway? I get Kirin was there because of me but…” she exhaled through her lips creating a small vibration through them. “I don’t know I’m a bit frazzled over everything.”
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Post by Zack Asiv on Nov 20, 2021 14:26:52 GMT -8
The one introduced as Marko would speak through his cloth mask to respond. "We all had different instructions that put us on the Arc. Following other people considered VIP's either for protection or assassination, or information gathering. Lots of big names and important people in one place. As for how big the family was before... I'd say we numbered around fifty? Does that sound right?" Taking the hint Aeser spoke up. "Right it was just under fifty. I think out of the first generation I'm the only one left." He would look at Rhona who was surely confused. "Excuse me, We measure generation by millennia. We have three generations in total. I am one of the first of our bloodline to awaken." |
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Post by Rhona Hall on Nov 20, 2021 15:34:19 GMT -8
“That no doubt is going to be a long story and I had a hard morning workout… tell me what you guys want and how many, I’ll go make the order. You all can get comfortable at a table” And so she did.
She went to the hut with everything they said. Mostly however she needed a moment to think. She fiddled with her pearl earrings and she felt maybe she was doing that too much today but their smooth surface really calmed her down. She leaned forward resting her folded arms against the counter of the booth. She thought it would be a bigger family, her mother’s spanned hundreds but certainly they were not the type to make a big deal out of it. It was just a family, these people sound like they have made something big out of the Hall name.
Why did her father really keep his family in such a secretive light? Did it have something to do with how he was killed? Could she truly trust them? Could she be over thinking all of this? She was so happy to have her family, she has been waiting for this day since she was a little girl. Maybe she should just ask them what she really wanted to know. And maybe doing that would ruin this for her.
They say they need her, that she believed was the absolute truth she could rely on. And most of all she was happy to help if it meant she would want to be among them. But would it be worth it if they betrayed her trust? She just could not fathom that. She was so afraid of the negative thoughts running about in her mind becoming reality that she was putting it off when it really could be nothing at all.
She paid and grabbed the fixings along side their food; little cups salsa, salsa verde, guacamole, grilled onions. What ever could be given… she didn’t really know these men so it seemed right not to leave anything out.
“Alright… so if I can count, with three millennia we’ve been around maybe closing in on two thousand years and we’ve only had fifty members of the family in that time.” She looked to Kirin as she sat the tray down with all the food. “I see what you mean now.”
She looked to the rest. “Did any of you lose family of your own? Like children or significant others.”
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Post by Zack Asiv on Nov 30, 2021 0:04:43 GMT -8
The orders would be quite a bit of meat for the majority, but they weren't against their greens, it was just obvious there was a carnivorous feel to the orders. As to her statement Kirin would respond.
"Three thousand years, and yeah... We all lost something. Except maybe Sly."
Sylvester would chuckle.
"So I'm a bit of a mut, sue me."
Marko would pull down his mask to eat, large scars shown on the bottom half of his face, four on the right side dragging down from his cheek to this chin and jaw, and one of the left. The others all enjoyed their meal as well. Aeser would speak next.
"If you are asking if we lost children... Yes, I lost a son. The others have not had their first offspring yet."
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Post by Rhona Hall on Nov 30, 2021 6:50:52 GMT -8
She listened and burned it in her mind her eyes might have darkened a moment. She rubbed the back of her neck and her bitter feelings became prompted to make themselves known. It’s easy to tune in to her families abilities if she could hone on that anger. It was almost like she was tallying up what she lost or never had. She wasn’t a usually angry person she held onto what ever caused her to change that.
She made a grunt swallowing a partially chewn bite and her hand smacked her forehead. Her face flushed beet red in embarrassment. “So I CANT count. And a ten year old girl is about to get a couple of questions wrong on her quiz. She sometimes spaces out and hears voices when she does, it’s her Qi. Some of the teachers think it’s radio and transmission signals. She gets embarrassed by it as it effects her randomly and often. I suppose when she needed to take notes she either heard wrong or wrote down anything that came to mind and that’s what I helped her study. But I didn’t remember all of the numerals either. I’ll have to make it up to her later, I really let her down.”
She looked back at Aeser. “I don’t suppose your boy was young enough to have been Raptured here?” Certainly that had to be the answer. It was no secret when everyone arrived eight years later than they did Xepham had a great many kids collected and did everything he could to reconnect them with their parents. There were very few parents to reconnect with however.
She watched all she could and saw Marko’s scars. She studied the wounds just a moment making an account of what they looked like and what caused them. She was no stranger to scars some particularly deep and nasty ones could be seen across her left collarbone and some smaller and yet deep ones across her own cheeks. Burns and slashes of all kinds. She looked at her kin and realized they were all very handsome and yet she no doubt gets punched in the face… a lot. She didn’t think she was ugly or misshapen even so. Rhona felt she was about as endearing as any girl next door type, if that girl next door was being seen constantly doing pull ups and lifting weight. Rhona despite her mother’s efforts was not a woman who usually dated run of the mill men. Honestly she recalled someone telling her that a guy punching her might like her and she thought to punch back… then she punched them again for getting angry at her rather stronger punch. Her thoughts wandered if she was required to have a kid with this position she was chosen for. Geez… what would she even do with a kid of her own? The thought made her chest tighten. Before it wasn’t possible, her body heat was too high with her false Qi, but now?
She made a gaze to Sly yet another question popped up for her to ask.
“Hm… many questions. Kirin was brief in explaining some things. I did open up our meeting with some flying knuckles. Explaining the hierarchy of our family was most of it. But might I get a bit of history? How we started, what we built, how we developed. To start from the beginning I guess. From the reasons you guys were on the Arc,” she kind of grinned at how silly it was going to sound coming out of her mouth. “Are we kind of like a Mob, like the Sudeki clan or something?”
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Post by Zack Asiv on Dec 4, 2021 1:34:22 GMT -8
The Judge shook his head. His son was many hundreds of years old. However, to her next bit he grinned and also shook his head with a chuckle. Rhona's keen eyes could probably guess the marks were from someone or something grabbing him by the lower jaw with claws. He would speak to answer her question.
"No, not a mafia in a criminal sense. We are more aristocrats? The first of us like Aeser, outlived their villages, the nobility, and pretty much everyone around them. Eventually amassing enough land and profits to just declare themselves as feudal lords. A testament mostly to survival really, changing names, changing who would be the public view so as not to raise suspicion of the longevity they had. Eventually alliances, rivalries, and favors became the goal. Unlike say the Sudeki who were mercenaries for hire by anyone, we operated more... Like assassins."
Aeser would cough into his hand to interject.
"It's not a thing we took lightly either. Our heightened senses and tough bodies and reflexes made us the perfect agents for our lands and alliances to curve evil deeds. If someone in our lands were forcing drugs on it's people to improve profits, heavily taxing the commoners, or any other debauchery that our Matriarch declared to be detrimental to continued survival of as much life as possible... We ended it. Quietly, discreetly, and usually at night."
Sly would laugh to also butt in on the conversation.
"Yeah imagine a bunch of people in medieval France and Germany witnessing these guys suddenly muscle bound and hairy, and with a temper in the dead of night sniffing and snarling like hungry wolves? Suddenly there were tales of wolfmen and werewolves. How do we stop them? Precious metals and stopping the full moon of course! They only come out a night! What a joke!"
Sly would begin laughing rather hard.
The quiet man Theo would speak up remaining serious.
"Which was why some of us were in the Arc. Our pray was there. Investigations were in progress to report to the Judge to see if they warranted assassination or if they should be allowed to continue."
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Post by Rhona Hall on Dec 4, 2021 3:54:29 GMT -8
She listened intently pointing out highlights in a mental reserve of where she wanted to create clarification in a moment. But she kind of forgot to eat through most of it and rarely got but a nibble or two during the lesson she was getting.
“Qi wasn’t really a known or a common thing back then so it makes sense.” The way they phrased things using hunt and pray also queues Rhona they’ve been quite balanced with their beasts for a long time. She didn’t really know how to feel about this progression.
There was a familiarity that sent an ache through her chest and a heavy weight dropped in her gut just before it got seemingly cold from the inside out. She took a deep breath, she might not be able to hold back the questions that have been eating at her this whole time.
She looked at Sylvester. “Don’t suppose you are all that sneaky and covert?” She rubbed an itch with a knuckle quickly across the underside of her nose. “I’m certainly not.”
“Anyway what goes into this Matriarch job. Sure she tells you where and what and there’s some instinctive bond to keep you all from actually going wild… like is it just a natural I’m here and we’re clear or do I have to go through some funky stuff? Also… also I’m not unaccustomed to getting my hands bloody for a cause. But I’ve got no experience in building what ever we aught to make this.” She snapped her fingers. On that note, What do we even want to do here, where we really have no stake on the land we occupy? What is in our best interest, don’t say what I want because I want to know what your thoughts are.”
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Post by Zack Asiv on Dec 4, 2021 4:12:05 GMT -8
Sly would shake his head and grin big.
"Not at all."
Marko and Theo shook their heads, but Aeser listened to the next bit.
"There is a bit of Ritual to it, nothing too far beyond a formality. Honestly you can make this whatever you want. There were three Matriarch's before you. The first had us be more of a knighthood, the second used us a diplomats and warriors, the third saw our potential as assassin's for the good of all. However we have always done all three in most cases as were needed, it was just what was needed the most at the time."
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Post by Rhona Hall on Dec 4, 2021 4:24:06 GMT -8
“Three huh?” His answer is one that still felt more vague than she wanted but giving the bit where he spoke of her predecessors made things a bit clear in some aspect rather than none. “What kind of person was auntie?”
She finally started to eat again. “When and why did we make the trip west from old lands and what territory did we set up base there?” She inquired.
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