OOC: Poor Taim. I head off to my Chem Final and the poor guy has to sit quietly through 9 new pages of posts.


"I'm right here," Taim spoke up for the first time from behind the knight, "if anyone cares, that is."

Kazuki looked back toward the billowing cloud of smoke.

"Is anyone still inside?" he said to nobody in particular.

Thid examins the recovering group. Wimps, that's nothing compaired to a level 3 fire ball. *shudders with the memory* the pain....

*sits down next to Lynx* "I told you we shouldn't have come here."

"And how were we to know this was a trap. We are servants of the kingdom, it's our job to protect it's people."

Kazuki looked around. Thid was sitting beside Lynx and complaining about the trap they had walked into. Cid the guard captain was talking about duty, though nobody seemed to be paying attention. Kalimare the werewolf had just lumbered in, from god only knew where. Vace was still with Dawn, whose robes were singed from the fire. Tamakatari was still glowering at everyone. And Celes was looking back at the flames.

Kazuki shook his head. They'd walked straight into it, and it was pretty much their fault too. There wasn't a lot of teamwork - hell, there wasn't any teamwork here. Tamakatari didn't seem to care about the group, Celes had trouble relaying her premonitions to everyone, Lynx was as bad as Tamakatari sometimes... and then there was the matter of himself. He'd somehow tuned out of everything while the group had followed the old man, and when disaster had struck, he'd acted just like any other commoner, struggling to save his own ass first.

Clueless, self-absorbed, useless to the group... God, I'm pathetic beyond words!

It was time for affirmative action.

Kazuki stepped up to the fire and reached into his gi for a scroll. He unrolled it and laid it on the floor, then he concentrated, feeling the familiar tiredness as his strength was drained to produce chakra. As he forced the chakra into his hands and fingers, he rapidly made the series of gestures needed to focus the mystic energy more fully.

"Fuuinjutsu... Fuukahouin!"

He slammed both hands down on the scroll, and the flames were drawn into it. Kazuki rolled it up and tied it tight, still feeling the heat from within.

This fire may be of use to me still...

He turned back to the group.

"Well," he said, pointing at the smoky hallway and the staircase. "Shall we go back, or shall we go up?"

"That's a nifty trick. Too bad you couldn't have done that BEFORE we got through. I'm getting out of here. And hopefully, you guys will do the same. I'm not coming back for you."

Tamakatari began to head up the stairs, keeping his katanas and his new warhammer by his side.

Dawn just tossed down the cloth, giving a glancing look at Tamakatari as he started to leave. Her eyes then shifted to look back towards the area they had just come from, it still being a bit smoky down in there.

She let out a bit of a sigh. She would suggest that they continue on since they no longer had to worry about the fire, but who's to say there wouldn't be any other traps down there? And was it really worth their lives to try and go back in there again?

Of course it is... There are possibly others down there who need your help!

Torn between what to do, she turned and looked at the others members of the group now.

OOC: I like how whenever someone lists the party members they conveniently forget Taim. : P

Taim shook his head sadly. No wonder it was so easy to fleece people. They were apparently all stupid. But that was fine. It meant that he might be able to get some kind of recompensation when he escaped. Although, unfortunately, he was pretty sure that in the middle of a hostile fortress wasn't the correct place to make a break for it.

He spoke up. "Well, if this /is/ supposed to be a funneling trap, which is what I'd do, then I'd vote for going back the way we came. Since, you know, it isn't on fire anymore."

Lynx stopped cleaning himself long enough to respond to Thid. "It's good that we came here. No one is injured, save a few small burns the mage can heal. And I now know some new things about some of you. Take Cid for example, his solution to being trapped is to burn things. And Tamakatari's solution is to smash things." Lynx began to clean himself again.

"I honestly doubt there are anyother people in here." Cid made his way up the stairs.