"Hide me." Ike spun around, barely restraining himself from pulling out Ragnell as he heard the whisper from the, well, Whisper standing behind him. "Please," Sothe added as the older man gave him a stern look.
"What are you doing here, Sothe?" Ike asked, now considerably more at ease. He and Soren had faced several dozen groups of would-be assassins between the fort and the Daein port town they were now in, so he had been a touch on edge. Of course, nobody in any of those groups could do any damage to him, but Ike always got antsy when Soren was out of his sight.
"Running from Tormod." The eighteen-year-old's (or was he nineteen now? Ike couldn't recall) amber eyes darted around, and with a soft "eep", he dove behind a crate and into an alleyway.
Said Arcsage came running along the street, and seemed to notice Ike before the mercenary could join Sothe in hiding. "Ike! It's great to see you! Say, have you seen my future brother-in-law?"
Ike blinked. "What?" He subtly tilted and shook his head, wondering if there was something in his ears.
"Oh, right," Tormod beamed, "you wouldn't have heard yet! Sanaki and I are visiting Daein because, well..." The redheaded teenager blushed, orange eyes no longer attempting to meet the older man's blue ones. It really wasn't hard for him not to maintain eye contact, since Tormod really hadn't gained anything in height and Ike was thus nearly a full metre taller than him.
Ike, despite all rumours to the contrary, was actually pretty savvy. He spent a good fraction of his time around Ranulf back when they were fighting together (and during the years between the two wars), and currently was almost constantly with Soren, so some of their social smarts and general intelligence had to have rubbed off on him. Also, he had common sense to the degree that any military and mercenary commander needed, seeing as he had been one for about a quarter of his twenty-four years, so all in all, Ike was a pretty smart guy.
More to the point, he wasn't deaf; he had heard the rumours about seeds of puppy love (kitten love? Tormod was the adopted son of Muarim, a tiger Laguz, after all) when Tormod and the other children had been left behind with the Apostle for a mission in Begnion during the Mad King's War, and again at the end of the war, and AGAIN as the three armies met up to ascend the Tower of Guidance. He had also heard about Mist getting fed up with the tension between them and, with Rolf's help, making them "accidentally" collide in such a way as to make them kiss. At the time Ike had been worried that his little sister had made a personal enemy of the Empress, but Sigrun had spirited her young boss/charge off and immediately begun talking her through how and why to have prudence in a relationship, and by the time they had exited the tower, Sanaki and Tormod were more or less officially courting.
Now all that had Ike confused was how, exactly, any of that related to visiting Daein. As he stood there contemplating the matter, and as Tormod awkwardly looked at and shuffled his feet, Sothe sneezed. Ike momentarily considered leaving the kid to his annoying friend, but he was a nice guy, so he pretended to sneeze as well.
"Uh," Tormod continued, "so, you probably know that I'm Begnion's Laguz Relations Officer, right?" Ike nodded. "Well, ah, and... It involves working pretty closely with the Apostle sometimes, and... Um... Sanakiproposedtome!"
"What?" Ike asked again, raising an eyebrow, though mostly out of reflex as a couple seconds later he figured out what Tormod had said. It was exactly what he had already figured out, but the Fire Arcsage in all likelihood didn't think Ike had deductive logic skills.
"SanakiproposedandIsaidyessowe'regettingmarriedoncewe'rebothlegallyallowedtoinBegnionandwecameheretotellMicaiahwhoishersisterinperson!" Tormod shouted. "Whew, it feels better having gotten that out. Anyway, Sothe ran away after I pointed out that this makes us future brothers-in-law, and I've spent the last twelve hours chasing him through Nevassa, then out of Nevassa to wherever we are now."
"Future... Brothers-in-law?" Ike repeated. If it was possible, which it really shouldn't have been, he raised his quizzical eyebrow even higher.
"Mhm! You know, since Sanaki and Micaiah are sisters and Sothe is Micaiah's brother." Tormod explained. "So, have you seen him?"
"Uh... No." Ike could practically hear Sothe's sigh of relief, though only practically because a large part of being a Whisper was not making noise while hiding.
Tormod frowned. "Oh. Well, okay." The young magician looked around, and seemed to notice someone further down the street. "Nolan! Hey, Nolan!" He ran off, probably to talk to the merchant. (Nolan had gone back to his old profession, and was quite successful as he had business partners in Muston, Aimee, Jorge, Daniel, and Ilyana, as well as having Phoenician and Kilvan friends so his ships were seldom attacked.)
Ike sighed, feeling the tiniest seeds of a migraine coming on since he wasn't used to dealing with Tormod anymore, and walked into the alley to join Sothe.
"Now do you see why I'm running?" Sothe asked, and Ike nodded. "So, what brings you here?"
"Soren and I are going to explore, see if there's anything past Hatari." Ike explained. "We didn't really want to trudge through the desert for longer than necessary, and this is the nearest port, so we're going by boat."
"Okay. Mind if I come along?" Sothe had that hopeful look in his eyes, the one that had caused Ike and Soren endless consternation during the Mad King's War when the thief had used it to make them bring him along in battles when he should've been left behind. Evidently, seven or eight years had done nothing to detract from Sothe's insane kitten-eye powers.
"Well... I guess not..." Ike tried to think of a reason Sothe shouldn't come, other than the fact that he and Soren just wanted to have a peaceful, adventuring life without all the attention from being heroes. "Hey, don't you have to protect Micaiah and whatnot?"
Sothe sighed dejectedly. "About halfway through our first battle in the tower, Micaiah pointed out that I'm not allowed to protect her anymore seeing as she was the one protecting me throughout... Uh, pretty much everything involving the Disciples of Order."
Ike snickered, and Sothe glared at him. "What? Now that I think about it, that's completely true. After all, you stopped being able to deal non-negligible damage to anything sometime around 3-12."
Sothe glared harder. "Oh come on! Just because you're the main character doesn't mean you can just break the fourth wall whenever you feel like it!"
Ike shrugged. "Fine. So moving on, I guess what Micaiah was saying is true, since the Disciples of Order were tough and skilled and all." It took a lot of self-control for him not to say that the mentioned enemies had had decent DEF and not-terrible accuracy scores.
"Yeah. And yet she was still obliterating all the cavalry with Thani..." Sothe looked really, really sad, like a small rabbit that had been kicked repeatedly and sat on by a herd of elephants. "Micaiah doesn't really need me around anymore."
"Um." Ike wasn't quite sure what to do. "There, there?" He patted the green-haired boy on the back awkwardly.
And the glare was back. "I'm not a little kid anymore," snapped Sothe, slipping out from under Ike's arm. Due to his height, he actually had to duck a fair bit; even though it had been roughly six/seven and a half years since that hadn't been the case, it still surprised Ike. Then again, a lot of things surprised Ike; the fact that anyone — least of all Tormod — had managed to put up with Sanaki and her bodyguards for long enough to fall in love with her, for one. Kids were weird, which was why Ike planned never to have any of his own. He could only imagine how the parents of all the young people in their army — actually, make that pretty near all of the Beorc in their army, and maybe half the Laguz depending on what the age standards for their tribes were. Anyway, Ike could only imagine how their army's parents would react to basically everything that happened throughout both wars. Except Titania, Shinon, and Gatrie, everyone in the core of their army during the Mad King's War had been under twenty-five (or the equivalent adultness threshold for their tribe, as previously mentioned). Including the whole Order and Chaos thing, Ike imagined that it'd be enough to give five Greils five-to-the-fifth heart attacks. Each.
"Tormod!" Ike heard a familiar, officious voice from outside the alley. He and Sothe ducked further behind the crates. "Finally! It was awfully rude of you to run off like that, you know." Sothe and Ike both tuned out the lovey-dovey conversation that ensued between Tormod and Sanaki, because well, they were Tormod and Sanaki and their idea of romantic was most assuredly weird and likely implied pyromania.
Once they were gone, escorted by Sigrun and Tanith in a shower of shedding Pegasus feathers of course, Sothe let out a large sigh of relief. He and Ike stepped out of the alleyway, much more at ease.
"Heeeeeeeeeeelp!" Ike barely had time to turn before Ranulf barrelled into him. It was quite odd hearing the cat sound so awake and alert – not that he wasn't usually both of those things, but his voice always sounded sleepy.
"Ranulf?!" Ike and Sothe asked simultaneously, though Ike's voice was somewhat choked from being knocked over by their friend.
Ranulf got up, chuckling sheepishly. "Sorry," he said, and seemed like he would've said more if not for the shouting off in the distance.
"Ranulf! Ranulf! Where is that stupid..." Lethe began to say some probably very uncouth things in the Ancient Language. Ike could only assume they were swear words, but Sothe had heard Micaiah use some of the terms to refer to particularly unpleasant aristocrats (and Lekain, who had been in a category all his own).
Ike sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Alley," he stated simply as a warning before shoving Ranulf into said alley. Sothe followed him and, despite the cat's yowls of protest, lifted him into a crate. The thief climbed into the next crate over, because though Lethe wasn't specifically mad at him, an angry Lethe was still thoroughly terrifying.
"Ike," growled Lethe as she approached a few seconds later, "have you seen Ranulf? I can smell him somewhere nearby."
"Oh, you're looking for him? I think... I-I think he went that way." Ike pointed further down the street, where a mildly-scorched Nolan was continuing to sort through his inventory for the next shipment to Crimea.
"Hiding in the water, eh, Ranulf?" Lethe snarled. "Exploiting the fact we're both cats won't save you, amasikanietias!" With that, she stormed off, and Ike was pretty sure that he would die horribly if he was still there when she returned without finding the blue-haired Laguz.
"C'mon," hissed Ike to the two crates where his friends were hiding, "let's go before she gets back!" The three of them walked around the town in a roundabout route to the docked boat.
"So, Ike, what brings you here?" Ranulf asked as they went, blending into the crowd as best they could.
"Soren. Leaving. Boat. Explore." Ike replied, knowing that Ranulf would be able to translate. Or at least, hoping he would.
"Ah," Ranulf nodded sagely, "so you're going east to and past Hatari."
"How in the world did you glean that from those four words?" Sothe looked confused.
Ranulf ignored him. "So, can I come along too? Mordecai, Kyza and Lethe will do just fine keeping Skrimir in line, and I'm pretty sure I've made Lethe's instant murder list for life..."
"Sure," said Ike with a shrug. "Say, what got you on that list, anyway?" Ranulf chuckled sheepishly again and launched into his tale.
~{story}~
It was a nice day in Gallia. Most days were, compared to the vast majority of everywhere else, but I thought that this day was particularly nice because Lyre hadn't come to pester me in precisely eighteen months. Also, Giffca had deemed Skrimir to vaguely resemble almost kind of responsible, so there was that. All in all, it was a wonderful day.
("Get to the point," urged Sothe, knowing Lethe wouldn't be delayed too much longer.)
Yeesh, alright already! Okay, so although I didn't realize it at the time, Lyre's record of not bothering me pretty much exactly coincided with Zihark visiting and staying in a town near the castle. Only, this wasn't a coincidence so much as they kinda totally got together and well, yeah... So they're together now, and Lethe blames me.
~{end story}~
"That," Ike stated flatly, "was a terribly-told story." Another thing that had rubbed off on him from the company he kept was a large amount of snarkiness.
"Well he made me rush," whined Ranulf, pointing to Sothe.
"Anyway, why does she blame you?" Sothe asked. Ranulf shrugged, and that was that. They probably would've chatted more, but they reached the boat. Ranulf gave Ike an imploring look, and Ike sighed.
"Fine, you can come too." At this, Ranulf and Sothe both ran onto the boat and belowdecks to avoid being spotted by Lethe (and potentially Tormod, because who knows).
Soren approached Ike as they were setting sail. "Ike," the Arcsage began, crimson eyes conveying the demand for an immediate, honest response, "how did we end up with a group of four?"
Ike told him, and the Arcsage pinched the bridge of his nose. No, not his own nose, but Ike's nose because they were close like that. Ike would have said something to the effect of "ouch", except this was Soren and his strength is about one percent of Ike's defence even without Ragnell. Nonetheless, he decided not to simply Arcwind the sail and blow them back to port, though he had an itching feeling he'd later regret that decision.
(And boy, did he ever, but that's another story.)