Board Thread:Role Plays/@comment-25119920-20150417182333/@comment-26130256-20150508051404

Azulius grew a little somber. However long ago it had been, the tension in Iris's shoulders was a clear sign that she still had some mental hangups about what happened. With being chased almost to death by a pair of raptors, he didn't blame her.

"Sounds at least a little like my story.  I was always a real curious kid, and I could never decide on a job.  So when I got out of school at 17, Dad set me up as an 'auditor' for the family.  Basically, I'd travel the kingdoms, check up on operations, and lend a hand where they needed me.  Not a bad way to spend a few years, and I got to see some interesting sights."

"We were just outside this village near Mistral.  Violet had this idea of setting up a couple Dust-refining stills, producing on the cheap, and underselling the SDC by a good margin.  We finished setting up and were rolling back to town when a mess of Grimm attacked.  We held them off as well as we could, but it was obvious we couldn't save the town."

"Just as we were planning to evacuate everyone we could find, a crew of Huntsmen and Huntresses showed up and cleaned house.  It wasn't pretty, but the town's still standing.  I struck up a conversation with some of them, and I was a little confused at what I heard."

"Now you've gotta understand, you work with a Mob family, nothing comes free.  If you're doing something for someone, it's in exchange for something:  money, Dust, equipment, or even just a favor you can call in later.  And trust me, the favors are the most valuable of them all.  So you can understand my confusion hearing that those Hunters risked their necks for next to nothing.  I just had to understand.  So I pulled some family strings, set up a decent fake ID, since Cardoso is my mother's maiden name, and passed the entrance test."

Having finished his tale, Azulius leaned back in his chair, with a strange half-smile. "And here I am now.  I don't know entirely why I chose this back then, I don't know now, and I may not know by the time I graduate.  And that, Dollface," he said with a wink, "is why I'm a Huntsman-in-training."

Azzie looked Iris in the eyes, and he realized something. Dollface was Old Vacuan slang for addressing a woman, especially one with whom you considered yourself close. He had said it enough times to various people that it was almost just a word, like all the others in his vocabulary. But as he saw Iris in the moonlight, he realized how appropriate the title was for her. Her petite frame, long hair, skin like porcelain, and those eyes, so deep only a master painter could have made them; all could have qualified her as doll-like. As he thought this, his scar flared again, and he scratched harder.