"Something wrong with you, too?" Helena said, folding her arms on the table and resting her head on them.

R.D. grunted once before forking a bit of food into his mouth.

"R.D. had a... bit of a bad encounter at the laboratory," Alasea explained. R.D. rolled his eyes and snorted, as if what Alasea stated was the understatement of the century.

"What happened?" Hugo asked.

Matt pointed at the Mettaur with his tilted can. "That's classified."

"Shut up and tell me."

"We met Re-Tuul's original creator," R.D. muttered after a moment. "And that he had helped make Re-Tuul replenish the numbers in his race."

Alasea looked off to the side slightly. "Because of Dr. Anstine, Re-Tuul's no longer just a single demon. There's thousands of Khaglessi now. R.D.'s been in a foul mood ever since."

Edited by RisingDragon on June 23, 2009 at 16:01:51.

"What?" Hugo snapped. "We couldn't even kill ONE demon and now there's THOUSANDS of them?"

"And now you know why I'm in a bad mood," R.D. muttered, pushing his plate away entirely.

"Well, I hope the doctor's got a plan for killing them all," Hugo said.

"He doesn't," Matt chirped.

"Great."

R.D. suddenly stood up, and left the table. There was a brief flash of emotion on his face, one that disappeared far too quickly to be deciphered, and then he was headed for the door.

"... what could have happened between him and Re-Tuul to make him so upset?" Alasea wondered out loud. She looked troubled as she watched him leave.

"I dunno, but his little hissy fits are starting to piss me off," Matt said.

Helena sat up straight. "This coming from you."

Matt leaned his elbow on the table and balanced on it like some greaser from a 60s sitcom. "You don't need to point out my temper, Helena. I already know about it."

"Then don't make fun of R.D. for being angry."

"I wasn't making fun of him. I was mad at him being mad."

Alasea kept her mouth shut as she looked first at Matt, then at Helena, then back again as bickering began to start up between the two. Strangely enough, Ileyna only looked slightly exasperated by their actions. Which meant that Ileyna, at least, had witnessed something like this occur often enough for it to be normal.

It wasn't normal as far as Alasea was concerned. Sure, back in the past, Matt and Helena had bickered often. But it wasn't like this. Not at all--Helena looked truly angry. And that startled her.

"He's got a lot on his mind, Matt," Helena said. "It's no big deal."

"He needs to cool down," Matt said with a point. "I may get wild every now and then but he's the level-headed one here. He threw that doctor against the wall because he was so pissed, did you know that?"

"Then give him a break!"

Matt's frown deepened. "You're acting snippy today. What's wrong? Did that session with the dragons not go well?"

"It went fine. I'm not being snippy."

"Sure acting like it."

"Does uh, this happen a lot?" Alasea whispered, leaning over to Ileyna.

The girl nodded a bit. "All the time," she whispered back.

"Hey!" Matt snapped, pointing at Alasea. "Don't whisper about me where I can't hear it!"

"Don't yell at them!" Helena said, with a little bang on the table.

"Then they need to bring their concerns to me, this isn't a secret message party I'm running here."

"They're not soldiers, Matt, they don't need to answer to YOU."

Now she was getting too loud for comfort. "Calm down, Helena, you're makin' a scene."

"You started it!"

"Shut UP, Helena."

She banged again. Louder. "You don't tell me what to do!"

Matt leaned in close, almost spitting in Helena's face. "I'll tell you what to do if I god damn want to!"

Helena's hand, now laden with claws, shot out and grasped Matt's throat, and he gasped in wide-eyed surprise with a gurgling choke.

"HEY!" Hugo shouted, leaping down onto an adjacent chair.

He couldn't stop Matt from grabbing the weredragon's wrist, and, in a sudden fury, decking Helena across the face with his other fist, sending her sprawling into another empty table nearby.

Alasea started slightly when Matt snapped at her and Ileyna, causing both girls to stare at him in surprise. As their argument started getting louder, weary soldiers in the mess hall began looking in their direction, and spoke amongst themselves. This sort of thing usually happened after battles; tensions rarely died down after them these days.

So it was no surprise to them when fists began flying. Shouts of shock and surprise issued among them, and from the two other girls present, when the fighting began. Some of the soldiers got up from their seats.

Matt just seemed to freeze. He slowly grabbed his wrist and drew back in his fist, quietly breathing.

Hugo leapt off the table and bolted over to Helena. "Helena! You all right?"

She cradled her face and said nothing.

Hugo turned to say something at Matt, but he was already leaving the lunch area.

Both girls cleared from the table and went over to Helena as Matt fled. Neither made any attempt follow him, though many of the soldiers kept an eye on him.

"Are you alright?" Ileyna asked, looking concerned as she dropped down onto her knees next to the older girl. Alasea, on the other hand, leaned down and offered her a hand to help her back up from the ground.

Helena took Alasea's hand and pulled herself up. She was covering her face, but blood had already slicked her chin-Matt must've tagged her good. "...yeah," she said, congested.

"Here, let me, see," Alasea said gently, easing Helena's hand away from her face while Ileyna stood back up. "Let me take care of this."

Flexing her hand slightly, Alasea began working healing energies through it and out her palm, just as Riul had done after Malvettix had assaulted her in Japan. As her palm began to glow a light pink, she held it an inch away from Helena's face, where Matt had struck her, and let the healing energies emitted from it do its work.

Helena's nose straightened back and the blood stopped flowing. She wiped the rest off with her fingers and a bit of spit. "Thanks, Alasea."

Alasea nodded when she saw that the spell had done its work, and cut off the flows from her hand, allowing it to return to its normal state.

"Ileyna, stay here with Helena," she said, looking down at the young girl. "I need to go find Matt and knock some sense into him."

She turned to leave.

"Right in the face, too," Hugo muttered, falling in line behind Alasea.

(OOC: Time to put the RPG back where it belongs. Up at the top of the forum. D:)

However, when the two left the mess hall, neither R.D. nor Matt were anywhere to be seen. After a bit of searching, Alasea started to growl. "Well where the hell is he?!" she demanded, growing frustrated.

===Sector D-7 Training Control, Aube===

"... and that should take care of it," the technician said, moving out from beneath the computer console, and standing up with R.D.'s proffered arm. "Thanks for your help. All that's left is to test it to see if it works."

"Want me and Matt to test it for you then?" R.D. asked, looking back at Matt. "We could use the workout anyway."

"Sure, that'd be great. I'd like to make sure its capable of distracting those damn monsters again during the next attack," the technician said. "Go head down into the chamber and wait for us to get the system ready."

Edited by RisingDragon on July 1, 2009 at 19:42:18.

"Okay," Matt said, curt and a bit impatient.

R.D. nodded and turned to follow Matt as activity broke out across the control room, as technicians moved about to ready the hologram settings. The doors quickly closed behind him and they turned down a hall towards a short elevator.

As the two of them entered and the doors closed, R.D. leaned against the wall as the car rumbled and started moving downwards.

"So, ready to tell me why you need to get this out of your system?" he asked, after crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"No." Matt pursed his lips and glanced around lightly.

The door rumbled to a stop and opened, leading them into a small locker room of sorts, presumably filled with training equipment. They ignored it; they didn't need any of it. They exited out of the room and entered a large, half-dome structure made up of bright white panels. On one side, high up on the wall, was the pribnow box that the control room was in, and the technicians were working in.

R.D. walked past Matt and made his way to the other end of the room, in a designated circle painted on the floor, then turned to face Matt in the other circle.

"Alright, now we'll set you up in a basic wasteland battlefield simulation," came the voice of a technician. "Just stay in place while we load up the matter waves. We don't need any accidents with the system while its loading up."

R.D. nodded, making a hand signal to the pribnow box to let them know he understood.

"Alright, before we begin, do either of you have any questions?

Edited by RisingDragon on July 1, 2009 at 20:14:19.

"Nothing comes to mind," Matt called out. He cleared his throat with a deep grunt and laid his hand over his fist, drumming fingers against his knuckles.

"Alright, get ready, you two," said the technician.

There came some sounds from a computer, and a rising hum. Almost immediately, the hum began to rise steadily in pitch, and silvery light, like liquid, rose up in a wave up the dome walls. As it passed upwards, the scene around them began to change. White metal floor became cold, cracked dirt and stone, dead and gray. Large rocks and boulders appeared on the ground, and the domed ceiling disappeared, replaced by an unforgiving sky that was only too familiar to R.D. and Matt. The pribnow box was nowhere to be seen.

As if to add to effect, a cold breeze was blowing through. It really looked as if they had been transported to one of the many new wastelands that had appeared in R.D., Alasea, and Ileyna's world.

Matt glanced up at the sky, hands on hips. This definitely rang familiar. "Nice setup."

"Let's get this started," R.D. said, holding out his hand forward. A sphere of energy, the same blue color as his Phase Blade, manifested in front of his palm. R.D. knew that he couldn't use his Phase Blades in combat here--they were, as far as he could tell, the most lethal melee weapons he'd encountered next to the Goldion Hammer.

He closed his hand on the orb, and it disappeared, instead creating a stable blade of energy that lanced out from the top of his fist, hovering just above a small sphere, not unlike a Phase Blade would. Another smaller beam emanated from beneath his fist, also seemingly floating in the air. R.D. fell back into a ready stance, the energy blade held out in front of him.