Wow. I really shouldn't reward people for pestering me to write more by updating. Then they learn it works and they keep doing it and then I get annoyed and then I make bad your mom jokes.
"Does anyone else find anything funny about the name of the city 'Asgard'?" Caroline asked out of the blue. Walking down the Ossa Trail, having recently beaten up Sheena, remarking on how her clothes were, 'unique' and killing a Sword Dancer. A more appropriate topic would have been commenting on how badly they did on the Sword Dancer fight, such as, "If Colette hadn't been spamming Angel Feathers, it was obvious that they would've lost. But of course, if everyone hadn't been yelling at her to keep using Angel Feathers, she would have proceeded to constantly use Ray Thrust on the big ol' Jack Skellington wannabe." or "Raine kept eating Life Bottles like a mad person."
"No," Genis replied. Obviously Genis didn't know anything funny about the name Asgard. Kratos muttered something that sounded like, 'So immature.'
"You're boring," Caroline said, sticking her tongue out at the midget half-elf. "Ms. Hawkins was more exciting than you."
"What?" Lloyd asked, not having heard most of the conversation and only heard, 'You're more exciting than you.'
"What?" Genis asked, confused as to why Lloyd was suddenly talking to him.
"What?" Colette joined in, knowing that even if it was explained to her, she wouldn't catch on to what was going on.
"EXACTLY!" Caroline exclaimed, running on a bit to catch up with Raine and Kratos, both of whom had started ignoring the rest of the party and were concentrating on not falling off the rest of the Ossa Trail. All three of the people left behind exchanged confused glances and shrugs before trying to catch up as well.
"Welcome to Izoold," A woman at the entrance of the town yawned, not talking about how great the town was or anything, like the person at Triet had.
"You're more boring than Genis," Caroline muttered before being elbowed by Raine to not start any fights here. Or maybe it was because she had insulted Raine's brother.
"Let's look for a boat across the sea to get to the next seal," Kratos said to the remainder of the party, then turning back to the woman. "Are there any boats currently running?"
"Well, there was Aifread's boat... but he's gone. Went back to Luin," She wasn't being helpful at all.
"Anyone else still here that could lend us a ship?" Lloyd asked.
"Maybe Max could-"
"Ok! Let's go find Max!" Lloyd said, running off into the other part of town, asking every man he saw if they were Max. With a sigh and an anime sweat drop, the rest of them followed him, when their search ended with an abrupt argument between a woman and a man standing at a dock.
"Let me on your ship, dammit!" The woman yelled at the man. "I have to deliver this letter to Aifread!"
"No! I will not help my rival take away my love, and besides; the waters are dangerous now, I'm not letting you go into danger!" The guy retorted.
"Max, if you care about my well-being, let me on your boat or I'll WALK to Luin," The woman said. Max had nothing to say to that and grumbling, took the letter from the woman's hand and then got onto his boat. Then he left Izoold. Without the party.
"That wasn't supposed to happen," Caroline said as the woman walked by them. "Max was supposed to take us with him."
"Wonderful. We're stranded here," Genis said dryly. "Maybe we could swim to Palmacoasta."
Raine, on the other hand, seemed grateful that Max had left, since she kept a cheerful look on her face and had let out a sigh of relief as the boat had disappeared from sight.
"Or steal someone's boat," Lloyd offered.
"We could walk," Colette said.
"No, Hakonesia Peak is blocked off by some guy and if you don't have a road pass, he doesn't let you go by. It's a million Gald for a pass, and each person needs one. We don't have six million Gald, unless Kratos is hiding some in his pockets," Caroline said matter-of-factly. Everyone just assumed she knew that because she had told them she was from Palmacoasta, so she'd know about travelling between continents.
"Let's get out a map and see if we can go from there," Raine said, trying to find a logical solution to the problem. "We may be able to get to the other Seals by foot."
"But Re- my father said that we had to go over sea," Colette protested.
"Unless you plan on flying us over the water one by one," Caroline said, anger creeping into her voice. "We're probably going to be walking or riding on Noishe."
"Eh, she's right," Lloyd said. "Colette's dad did say that we need to go over the ocean. By going some other way, we could be messing up the Journey of Regeneration and screwing up Sylvarant even more."
"Let's stay at an inn. I'm exhausted. Let's think about it tomorrow," Genis said, his fatigue showing. With no better ideas, everyone else agreed to Genis's plan, since they were also tired. The Ossa Trail and the Sword Dancer had sapped most of their energy, and it wouldn't be wise to spend the last of it arguing over how to get to another continent.
As it turned out, after the sun rose, there was a race in Izoold to see who could get to Palmacoasta first. One participant needed a crew to help him in the race, since he didn't have one to start with and most of the others did, the Chosen's party hitched a ride there. The boat they were riding on came in dead last due to the fact that one of their crew members was too busy stressing over tiny waves rocking the ship to be of much help.
"Oh, dear land... sweet land…" Raine crawled out of the boat and onto a dock in Palmacoasta, caring very little as to what others were thinking of this display. "I never want to go onto another boat ever again."
"Erm, Professor Sage? We need to get out, too, before that guy realises he came in last and not first," Lloyd said, anxiously looking around as if the man who owned the ship was still around and listening in on their conversations.
"Oh, yes. My mistake," The teacher stood up and brushed herself off, moving away from the boat and near the market area of the city. Everyone else got off the boat without a dramatic thanking of being able to be on solid land again and began looking around the market. While they were buying some Apple Gels and Life Bottles, a thunderous roar came from the direction of the boat.
"LAST PLACE? AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN WAIT FOR ME TO GET BACK? UUUAAARRRRGH! I'LL KILL THOSE KIDS!"
"Oh, dammit! Run!" Lloyd grabbed the items they were buying, dropped Gald into the store owner's hand and took off with the rest of the party. Colette was running so quickly she didn't notice the group of people turning the corner she was running toward along a building and had another klutz moment, breaking the potion that the person she had bumped into was carrying.
"Oh! I'm sorry!" She said as she got up and extended a hand to help the teen she'd knocked over up. He swiped at her hand and got up himself, his face purple with rage.
"What the hell were you thinking, running around like that? Don't you know anything? Why, I've seen-" His string of insults was cut off as the rest of the party came crashing in, stopping too abruptly to end their running. Caroline screamed, "KINETIC ENERGY!" as everyone fell to the ground, including a couple of members of the other party. Almost as soon as they recovered their senses, they noticed that one of the people in the strange party...
"Hey, you've got wolf ears like Caroline!" Genis observed, looking over one of the girls that had also fallen over.
"Uh? Wuh?" The other girl looked over at who Genis was pointing at. "Hm. Yeah. That's nice, kid."
"Imposterz," Caroline muttered, getting up and looking at the group they had bumped into for a moment before disregarding them. "They've got to do a better job of looking like us."
"What? We're not wannabes!" The first guy that Colette had bumped into initially said indignantly. "If anything, you're trying to look like us!"
"Hey, what's this?" Lloyd picked up a book that one of the people had dropped.
"That's ours! For the Journey of Regeneration! We're the Chosen's group!" A smaller kid said.
"We're the Chosen's group, please, 'kay, thanks," Caroline replied, shoving the bigger teen. "Go pretend to be Dorr. We can prove we're the Chosen's group, fakers."
"Say what? You broke our potion, this freak is stealing our stuff-" Lloyd threw the book to Colette, who surprisingly caught it and looked it over.
"Yep, this is the book, the only record of Spiritua's Journey," Colette said. "I wonder how they got it…"
"Because WE'RE THE REAL CHOSEN'S GROUP, DUMBASS!" The guy yelled again, pushing Colette, who proceeded to fall over and have her angel-y wings pop out of nowhere.
"Holy cow!" One of the fake party members said, wearing white clothing. "They really are the Chosen's group!"
The leader of the group hit the outspoken girl on the head.
"You idiot!" Realising that their cover was blown completely and they had no chance of facing the real group off here, the leader fled, with his friends following along. As they disappeared out of the city, Colette began reading through the book.
"Hm… this tells all the locations of the seals! The journey will be much easier with this!" She exclaimed, putting it away. "I still feel bad about breaking their potion…" Then everyone's attention was drawn to the red liquid on the ground.
"I thought that was blood," Lloyd said.
"I thought it was your mom," Caroline replied, picking a piece of glass off of her shoe that had very nearly pierced through to her foot.
"Enough of the your mom jokes!" Raine yelled. "Let's just... go do something more productive than lounge around here!"
After a brief voting session, they entered a nearby shop in order to get more items, since Raine did eat Life Bottles too quickly for anyone's liking. Upon entering, some Desians were demanding lower prices on some items. Specifically, two Gald for a Life Bottle, which everyone wished was the case with the real prices on Life Bottles.
"Look, lady, we can get this place closed down like that," The taller Desian snapped his fingers to emphasise his point. "Either accept our prices or we'll spread some nasty rumours about how this rundown shack rips off its customers and only sells fake Apple Gels."
"Yeah, right!" The shopkeeper replied. "You're all talk; you can't do a single thing you threaten to do!"
"Why, you inferior-"
"Stop," The shorter Desian, calmly grabbed the wrist of his companion, who had just been that close to whipping the girl. "We'll exceed our quota for the year. We need Lord Magnius's permission to go any further." With that said, he turned to leave, ignoring the group of six stationed near the door.
"Grr, you'll be sorry for this," The violent Desian gritted his teeth, but followed his friend out the door.
"..Wow. Some people just don't have any taste in fashion," Caroline remarked after the Desian left.
"Lovely," Kratos said in response to Caroline's comment, and then walked up to the shopkeeper. "How much for ten Life Bottles?"
"..Three thousand Gald," The girl replied.
"Chocolat, were you starting a fight with these people?" A woman came down, obviously the girl's mother, glancing in the direction of the party.
"No, mom, it was just some rotten Desians," When Kratos handed her the money, Chocolat gave him a bag with ten Life Bottles in it. "They wanted two Gald for a Life Bottle! If we lowered our prices like that-"
"Then tension between Palmacoasta and the Desians would decrease… I do wish you'd think things through before performing your actions," the woman sighed. "It can't be helped, I suppose. Don't you have a pilgrimage of some sort to be doing?"
"Um. Yeah. I guess it is time for that… I'd best be early," Chocolat almost ran out the door and nearly knocked Genis over. Apparently being scolded like that in front of company was too much for her to want to deal with personally.
"Alright, then, let's go stay at some inn," Lloyd yawned. "I'm starting to get bored and I'm tired."
"You're always bored," Genis replied. Raine glared at Caroline to not make a your mom joke. Where would teens be these days without your mom jokes? But around Raine, it was best not to annoy her. Since she could forget about you in a fight and never heal you.
"..Your face is always bored."
I had to make it original somehow. And cutting out the 'OMG IMPOSTERZ' was very fun.