Adele didn’t have any coherent thoughts— just a fuzzy red tinge to her vision as her hands balled up with all the pressure of a cast iron press.  Her mug quivered in her hand. The way the others had been callously blinded and dragged into the poor excuse for a pub, she was surprised no one had dropped the carelessly juggled alcohol between “captors” and “captives.” Merry words fell deaf on her ears; claps and thunks fit to break a spine were numb on her shoulders as her last teensy string of self-control squeaked against the tension building up in her chest.

[i]Barbarians. All of them. Handling a woman like that and then drinking themselves into a stupor the night before we head off! Don’t look at Reau. Don’t look at Reau. The second I do, my fist is going to be making a chip in her nose.[/i] Adele closed her eyes as thought filtered through the steam raging beneath her skull. If her superiors weren’t right there knocking ale onto the floor with everyone else, she would have ripped them a new one. They had no business attacking their comrades like that, even in play. What if someone had overreacted and fought back? Passed out? The overexcited, beer-guzzling mercenaries would have had no one to blame but themselves.

When the gurgle and guzzling of agreement died down after Thorpe’s cheers, Adele’s tone—so warm it chilled her lips—was the first to pipe back up. “What an [i]adorable[/i] little prank, fellows. I can barely [i]contain[/i] myself at the thought of leaving Belencrest.”

She glanced down at the sticky, yellowed liquid drizzling down her fingers and her brow twitched. It was tempting to shake her hand out and toss the mug at the nearest grinning idiot, but with a grace borrowed from manners tempered from birth, she set it ever-so-gently on the nearest table. “Even so, I’m afraid I need a bit of fresh air.”

Her lips were glass with a vat of lava seething behind them as she smiled, turned, and shoved herself out from the stifling clouds of body odor and alcohol that were people and back out the door from which she’d been so carelessly shoved in.

“Aaaaaaaaah.” Adele let all the steam out once the door was closed behind her. Her shoulders slumped as she stepped against the pub’s wall and leaned against it, her hand rubbing gentle circles into her forehead. Who’d have thought a group of combat hardened men and women could act so childish? No, she’d seen them pull off lesser stunts like that before. Living on the edge apparently meant partying hard, too.
She, however, didn’t want to be hungover for the following morning when they were to leave. In addition to sending off some letters before her next journey with the company of mercenaries, she would have to make sure to pack carefully. Machinery was so much more delicate than it looked, and without her brain being as crisp and quick as possible, her only strength within the group of fighters would be nothing. Her treat for the evening was instead the muffled revelry behind the wall and the clear evening sky.

Every night she gazed about Belencrest, the same thought came to mind—it wasn’t Bossart. Though the infrastructure of the city was roughly similar, the nightlife had always been so, well, [i]lively[/i]. Here, there was only silence and the eerie blue light of lantern-totems. Even if that magical energy was more efficient, she preferred the warm light of oil lanterns. Given the light drizzling from the houses she’d passed earlier, she had to wonder if the citizens didn’t share the same opinion, or perhaps light totems were simply too expensive for the average person in Belencrest.

“Ah, well. It doesn’t matter.” Adele smiled mildy to herself as she straightened back up and slipped off her backpack. Her notebook came out and she flipped idly through it, thinking on whether or not she ought to bring more raw material for her cannon filters. Even if the other mercenaries called the escort trip “cushy,” she felt the more fitting word was “annoying.” Travel was interesting enough, but that would provide a poor environment for tweaking her Sound Cannon I and there were [i]so[/i] many things she was yet to do with it—so many things she [i]needed[/i] to do with it.

Otherwise, all this putting up with the rowdy group of soldiers and every other risk that came from their particular practice would be for nothing. It had already been months since she left Bossart and she [i]still[/i] hadn’t figured out the key to her latest idea—a dual amplification filter that could mesh the effects of two different elemental totems. None of her filter patterns had worked despite several different reversions and, well, this was just one of those nights when the lack of inspiration felt particularly sore.

[i]"The most potent feature of our work? Hope. That’s what makes us do crazy things; we get a grain of promise and then we have to watch the miracle unfold before our eyes.”[/i] That’s what Professor Godat said at times like the one she was experiencing now. Adele chewed on that as she closed her eyes, waiting for the revelry inside the pub to die back down before she’d risk going back in again.