[@FlitterFaux]

[b]Luke Schwarz

"Relax,"[/b] I started, figuring it'd be best if I addressed her overwhelmingly apparent guilt first out of everything. [b]"It's what we do as huntsmen. Helping people who need it— That's the whole reason I decided to attend this school." [/b]

The whole reason, I said, with a perfectly straight face.

It was a comforting lie. The reality, though, would have been a lot harder to worm into this conversation. In any case, however, while the motivations were false, the intentions weren't— Whatever reasoning I made up for it, I couldn't just sit here and let this person stay lost forever.

I decided to play it all off with a pithy joke. No need to start getting down and make this poor lady think she was really getting to me with this...

[b]"Besides,"[/b] I continued, feeling my lips part into a wry smirk. [b]"Compared to throwing my life on the line every Friday, taking a tour through Vale isn't so bad."[/b]

Manticores never got in here, after all, and I wasn't liable to act as an extension cord.

...Wow.

What an exemplary sentence to call part of my life...

[b]"They'll be fine without me in there, too— Probably. My sisters can be pretty loud and rowdy, but most everyone else is a patient sort. I'm sure they won't mind me popping out."[/b]

Knowing them, those two have probably already stolen whatever show I was setting up, anyways. And that was fine, really. Today was, despite my griping along the way, going well— I had started to mend a major bridge that was close to burning with April. As for Dawn, she was more of an enigma, but we hadn't gotten on eachother's nerves yet...

Huh. How ironic.

Leave the nest and suddenly things start looking up with the flock.

I just hoped they didn't end up planting any weird ideas about me in everyones' heads— I may have made a fairly good first impression, or at least I hoped as much, but those two and their gift of gab were nothing to sneeze at. Any mischief from them was probably a fool's errand for me to try and stop...

Please, April-sama, Dawn-sama, no old embarrassing or incriminating tales today! I'd die of shame if they heard about the "wishing for reincarnation as a tree" line! That phase and that phrase are dead and buried and gone!

It had been a day with a good outlook— but I doubted I'd ever stop firing on all cylinders.

Still, a teasing relationship was better than a punching one...

And if I had complaints about it, I needed to put them on hold and worry about the person right in front of me— Or, in this case, just behind me. Whatever damage two teenaged girl's could do to a guy's reputation was second banana to someone needing to get back to the hospital.

[b]"Okay, so you never caught the name— Do you remember any landmarks close by?"[/b] 

If she was good at reading the land like she mentioned earlier, surely there was something we could work off of—even in a crowded metroplex like this, full of bright colors and loud noises, there had to be at least one thing that stood out in the surroundings, right?

Even in a place so crowded.

There had to be. I'd pull up the online map with every hospital as a landmark just in case there wasn't, but surely there had to be.