Relena: DM/Dungeon Master (loves the group, but often wants to TPK them)
Heero: Drow Ranger (Quatre had to make his character for him)
Duo: Tiefling Bard (likes to play up "that bard" to Relena's annoyance)
Trowa: Tiefling Rogue (dresses "like a bard/clown" to confuse enemies)
Quatre: Aasimar Cleric (lone healer of the group and all that prevents a TPK)
Wufei: Dragonborn Monk (extremely particular about his character)
Hilde: Tabaxi Barbarian (used to grapple the others as needed)

Clockwork Chaos as usual.

"...Can I hit the bard?"

"I'll allow it...but it's in-game only and you will do no actual damage-"

"'Lena! Why is he getting to hit me? What'd I do?!" Duo interrupted with a quick flail of his hands. Considering the glare that Wufei was giving him at the moment, the long-haired former pilot gave a quick internal thanks for his blessings in having not only the game table in between himself and the other, but also having Hilde, Quatre, and Trowa between him and Wufei on one side, and Heero and Relena between them on the other. "I can't be faulted for a bad dice role!"

"Duo." Relena said, steepling her fingers against her chin as she leveled a firm look on the brunette. "Did you, or did you not, attempt to seduce the captain of the guards?"

"...Er, well...yeah?" Duo admitted, giving a small shrug of his shoulders as to dismiss the fact completely. "But we're all gonna be arrested for having that map to the forest where the bloodgrass that we need for the vampirism cure is, so-"

"How many people, in-game and out-of-character, told you that attempting to seduce the captain of the guards, in this situation, was probably going to be a bad idea?"

Duo opened his mouth to answer...only to see Hilde waving both of her hands in the air, Quatre raising one of his hands as well as holding up one of Trowa's hands, Wufei continuing to glare but now holding up his own hand, and...finally Heero uncrossing his arms just enough to raise one finger, though not the middle finger like the last time. Duo groaned and sunk down into his chair like a puppet whose strings had been cut. "Okay, so everyone told me to not do it...but it seemed-"

""-like a good idea at the time"." Quatre and Hilde chimed in, speaking in perfect unison outside of Hilde doing her best impression of Duo's voice.

"Duo...you do recall that Wufei told you that his monk would hit your bard if you did what he suspected that you would do?"

"...Ain't monks supposed to be all peace, love, and all that non-violent jazz?" Duo interrupted the diplomat in a blind hope that maybe, just maybe-

"My monk is the kind of monk who will beat the stupid out of you." Came the Chinese pilot's angry growl...only for Heero to add in: "Well, that hasn't worked so far, has it?"

"Shut it, Yuy!"

"Enough." Relena said, cutting off the potential argument between the pair before she returned her focus to Duo once more. "Now...Duo, if anything, what I am allowing Wufei to have his monk do is a 'roleplay only' type of hit. Your character would not suffer any injury from it and, as it is 'roleplay only' I am willing to allow you the opportunity to roleplay your bard's response. You are free, in the 'roleplay only' moment, that you can have your bard manage to dodge the hit-"

"Wait, what?!" Wufei tried to interrupt only for the diplomat to continue on as if she hadn't even heard the other speak. "Or even just try to...and that's only one pair of options. Wufei wants to hit the bard, he is allowed to try, and you are allowed to have the bard avoid the blow by any means outside of something that I would have to require a dice roll for."

"...Seriously?" Duo questioned, as the others looked on in interest at this ruling. Relena smiled some at the brunette. "I'm annoyed with all of your attempts to derail everything at every turn, but I'm not going to treat you unfairly or let your character be abused because of it. If Wufei gets to have a 'roleplay only' attempt to hit the bard, then you have the same attempt to avoid the blow. It's only fair...and that does extend to everyone."

"I...legit? I can just roleplay not getting hit?"

"If you'd let me finish my sentence earlier, I would have said exactly what I just finished saying." Relena said as she took a sip from her water bottle.

"But...the dragon incident." Duo said, raising a brow at the memory as he moved to sit up straight in his chair...though his eyes quickly narrowed in suspicion. "You all but threw that at me."

"That was because you did something incredibly dumb during a combat encounter and it still fell into the category of 'combat' and not 'roleplay', Duo." Relena stated, settling back in her seat some as she watched the others from over her screen, partly to gauge their reactions and partly to see if they were all paying attention. "And, how did the dice fall during that excursion?"

"My CON save was, I think it wasn't that high and..." Duo paused a moment then... "You...let me run and everyone else got to kill the dragon off 'cause the dragon..."

"Was distracted and at a very large disadvantage as a result." The diplomat finished, giving the group a small smile. "I'm not a sadist, Duo. I may put you in a situation where you will wish that you had chosen a different option, but I'm not going to punish you too severely if I can help it. This is a game after all, and games are supposed to be fun."

"Oh." Duo muttered...before giving a small shrug. "Okay...then if Wufei's still gonna hit my bard, I guess my bard'll just take the hit and maybe yelp in surprise or something since my bard's not exactly that fast and probably wouldn't think that the monk was serious about hitting him."

"Alright. Wufei, do you still want to hit the bard?"

"...Yes."

"Alright, then...At the sight of the monk striking the bard, and the bard's yelp of surprise, the Captain just stares at your party as if he has just come to the realization that all of you need to be taken in for further questioning and for the good of the general public. A gesture of his hand calls over two dozen heavily armored guards, weapons sheathed but still ready to be drawn should they be required. The tension in the air is palpable, almost like the moment before a storm breaks loose. The Captain shifts his stance, an armored hand resting firmly on the pommel of his sword...his voice falling to a rumbling growl as he speaks once more. "I believe that it is in your best interest for all of you to come with me"." Relena glanced around the table, letting her words hang in the air a moment...before steepling her fingers against her chin. "Now...how do all you wish to proceed?"

"You said two dozen guards?" Hilde asked, her chin resting on her fist as she examined the map laid out on the table then looked down at her sheet. "And all of them are heavily armored?"

"Correct on both counts, but you also have the Captain himself...so you are all facing down twenty-five trained warriors outfitted in armor, while half of them have swords and the other half have polearms." Relena answered, adding the last bit as she knew that someone would have been asking about that next. Judging by Wufei's furrowed brow and the now rapid study of his own sheet and accompanying notes, the diplomat knew that he would have been her questioner if only so he could attempt to devise a suitable plan...that the entire party would discard in favor of their usual breed of clockwork-chaos, to the Chinese ex-pilot's nigh-eternal frustration.

"I imagine that my rogue might not be able to hide his deteriorating condition from the vampire curse should a battle occur." Trowa said after a moment of thought. Sure, Relena and he had set up that the curse was progressing slowly...but that was the physical aspects that might alter his character beyond being a tiefling. The thirst for blood was already quite strong...and the sometimes-clown could already picture the image in his head: combat ensuing, strikes landing and blood spilling on the ground, the thirst overpowering his rogue's control to the point that the party would have to physically restrain his character and potentially escape from the large town that they were in while being pursued in a borderline manhunt.

It was honestly an enticing and dramatic set of scenes and Trowa would be lying if he ever said that he didn't want to play through it just to see how it could go...but he was well aware that the dice could fall in any which way and it could turn into a disaster that Relena would, at worst, have to retcon out of existence.

"Your impression is completely in the realm of possibility, Trowa." Relena said with a look that told the former pilot that the odds were very likely that she'd had a similar dramatic scene in her own head for the encounter...but was equally aware of just how wrong it could go depending on the whims of both dice and party.

Heero frowned as he looked at the map, then at his sheet; his ranger was in somewhat decent shape at the moment to be fair, but the odds of his character surviving a fight with the guards...well, even he was aware that the outcomes of recent events in-game meant that he might need to round those odds downwards in his character's favor, but... "Could we beat the guards and the Captain if we resisted their arrest attempt?"

"Well..." Relena couldn't help the sly, almost sinful smile on her face. "...you can all certainly try."

"Betcha the guards would call in reinforcements." Duo added in at seeing that particular smile on the diplomat's face, earning a nod of agreement from Hilde, who glanced around before letting out a small sigh. "For the record, my barbarian's still kind of worn out from the fight with the wyvern that attacked us when we were getting the nightshade plants."

"As is my monk." Wufei muttered, sounding irritated about having to admit to that...but the wyvern fight had taken a lot out of all of them, even with the round of after-battle healing from the cleric. At least the 'fetch quest', as Hilde had called it, wasn't boring; the harder to get pieces had so far provided good combat challenges, like the wyvern, despite the toll the fight had taken on all of the party, and he could only imagine that the remaining pieces would be a worthwhile excursion.

"Well...we managed to get the garlic, sage, and rosemary that we came into town for, you know, before we caught the guards' attentions..." Quatre said quietly, dutifully ignoring Duo and Hilde's playful muttering about "we're buying herbs not drugs", and checked over the notes that he had for the 'communal' inventory. "Heero...your ranger did go back and collect the remains of blood from the vampires that we originally fought, right? The ones responsible for infecting the rogue?"

"He did. " Heero said after glancing down at his sheet. "You just didn't write it down because of the wyvern descending as soon as my ranger caught up with all of your characters again."

Why had they split the party then, when the cardinal rule was to "never split the party"? Well...the two items that they needed to collect at the time, the blood and the nightshade, were relatively close to one another and, in all honesty, the ranger had been the one with the best chances of getting back down into the dungeon without falling victim to anything that could have cropped up...especially since the rogue had been almost completely out of commission at the time due to the rogue needing to be grappled and knocked almost cold after an encounter with bandits had almost caused Trowa's rogue to give in to the thirst during the fight.

That had been an interesting bit of player-versus-player and roleplay between Wufei, Hilde, and Trowa, now that Heero thought about it.

"Right." Quatre said, quickly penciling "blood of the sire(s)" onto the notes. He leaned back against Trowa, who merely tightened his arms around the blond's middle and laid his head to rest against the back of Quatre's own. "So...we do need to go get the bloodgrass and...the last thing was a vial of ashes?"

"Yeah, that we need to get from an 'unguarded' sacred temple." Duo chimed in as he almost leaned over onto Hilde...only for the former freedom fighter to grab his braid and give it a playful tug as she pushed him back into his seat. "Translation, we don't really need to stay in town any longer."

"So...is there a chance that I can talk our way out of this encounter?" Quatre asked, looking up at Relena...who could only smile fondly in return before: "You can certainly try."

"Okay...then I'm going to use diplomacy and try to get us out of this mess." The blond said as he picked up his dice, to which Relena nodded...while Heero and Wufei shared a look just before Duo spoke up with a wide grin, good mood fully restored for the game now that they were well passed the earlier issue. "And the rest of us should get ready to fight for our lives if needed, but mostly to run like we just stole a buncha junk."

"Speaking from experience there, Maxwell?"

"Cram it, 'Fei. Quat's the only one of us who's never stolen anything."

"Uh...sure...yeah, let's go with that." Was all Quatre muttered, to everyone else (minus Trowa who only stiffened and glanced at his boyfriend in confusion) turning to stare at him in varying degrees of "wait...what" as he rolled his dice, letting them land before anyone could question him on that particular subject.

I had this idea pop in after the last chapter, and just had to do it.

Also...I can't help but HC that Trowa's the most dramatic one even if most of it's in his head. There's no way that he's not got some kind of dramatic streak under everything. (Though all of the guys have their dramatic moments, let's be real.)