Princess of the Timber Forest Owls

Stranger and stranger. The other-her, the Rinoa that Lady Caraway felt like she was tracking through time and space, apparently owned a store in town, at least according to the tiny blonde Sorceress who worked there. How had she come to settle here? Mr. Sta- Jono said that the Rinoa he knew had gone to school here, but Rinoa had been privately tutored most of her life.

They still had no real progress on the other question, what had caused the rifts and portals, but the emergence of new faces on the island seemed to indicate that more and more of those were opening, almost as though cracks were appearing in a dam just short of bursting. It wasn't a reassuring thought.

The benefit of everyone assuming you owned a store was that you were perfectly free to make use of the merchandise, and so Rinoa had helped herself to several of the books from the back of the room. She would put them back when she was done, but for now, one of them might help.

She was in street clothes today, as there was no one to impress, and she'd replaced the bottle of chianti from the other night with a pinot noir. Rinoa sprawled out on the couch, one of the heavier tomes on her lap, hoping to find something, anything, that might explain what in the world (worlds? universes?) was going on.

(open for housemates or visitors!)

There were at least forty-seven things Rinoa hated about being back home. Near the top of the list was the bowing and scraping.

( Bowing and Scraping, a Phone Call Gets Through, a Text to a Knight )

Packing. There was so much packing to do. Someone was going to have to clean up these scrolls. Surely one of those suck-up weirdos wouldn't mind.

(ESTABLISH-A-MUNDO. furnaceface was cool with the phone call, yo.)

Seifer was back. The world hadn't ended. The island was restored. The paperwork was still here and in order. She hadn't killed Topher over that D&D game thing (or let Squall kill him, either) and ... okay, maybe she had used a lot more power than she had meant to while she was protecting the forcefield, and maybe she almost hadn't come back, but that was okay. And by "okay" she meant she absolutely wasn't thinking about that just now.

There was one very important thing left to check, and a phone number that could not ring fast enough.

"I need to speak to the general, please," she told the secretary. "This is his daughter, the Sorceress, and it's more important than whatever he told you about holding calls, so either you put this call through right now or I'll come there and set you on fire."

Well, that was one way to be patched through quickly.

"General Caraway," said a brusque voice in her ear.

Oh Hyne he was alive, and he was okay, and he wasn't gone forever. He really, really wasn't.

"D-daddy?" she said. "I-it's so good to hear your voice. I th-thought ..."

That was all the further she got before she started crying. So what if maybe, she actually told that man that she loved him, for the first time in years. Maybe it needed to be said every now and then. Shut up.

(establishy, will have links later! can be open post-phone call i you like)

( Rinoa hadn't been having a good week before she'd gotten the call )

They had caught a portal back, and she had stayed quiet, trying to meditate some structure back into her frayed shields. And now they were -- wait.

"This isn't the way to the dorms," she frowned.

(Just for her Knight. That the two are heading out there is fine for broadcast, but everything else is NFB, please.)

More corridors, and more monsters. The group ended up going down a long elevator, only to turn around and take another, nearby elevator all the way back up. It was a good thing Fujin and Raijin knew where they were going, because it was easy to get hopelessly lost. After fighting through one monster that was bigger and tougher than the rest, they came to the room that was their destination. At the far end, with his back to them, was a boy with short blond hair in a long white trenchcoat -- almost Squall's mirror image in every way.

( Confronting Seifer )

( Throwing Down )

( And Rinoa Loses Her Nerve )
(Post 5 of plot. Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Post 8.)

(Dun dun dunnnnn! Okay, here we go! Preplayed with the incomparable, best-ever whateverknight, trigons_child, glacial_witch, life_inshadow, and furnaceface AND NOW WITH special guest star Kym (formerly our asgardcreated and gotyourmateria) serving as our amazing kick-ass Seifer Almasy. ♥ Still NFB and NFI, but as always, OOC is love.)

It was Saturday night. She'd been here a week without checking in. Conveniently, she had so very handwavily found a store to sell her a computer -- wireless, they said, which was confusing but she liked it.

So now she had no excuse not to e-mail Quistis and ... no, scratch that, Quistis didn't exactly like her. She didn't take it personally. She figured most of that had to do with the sulky dark-haired boy who'd declared himself her Knight.

Selphie, on the other hand? Selphie would appreciate the gossip. Especially if she started with the most important part.

( Dear Selphie: Squall Is Taking Sex Ed Class )

Angelo was asleep on the foot of her bed, and the door was open.

(will be linkdroppy as hell once I edit those in. yyyyyup, links ahoy! all squall-mods (like finding his schedule) were permitted by the mun. also open!)