[h3]Alexander[/h3]

"Talons, and I thought the Stormwall was temperamental with its weather," Alexander said as he quickly sloughed off his jacket in the face of the now scorching heat. The group trudged along beneath it, everybody now sweating and panting- save for Wash. In fact, he didn't seem bothered by the heat at all- a far cry from the lad Alexander remembered. Either he'd toughened up considerably in the last year or so, or whoever was willing to go to war over food was screwing with them and leaving him out of it. Quite possibly both. He stood there right as rain, not bothered at al by the scorching heat as he took a swig from a canteen, then extended it toward Alexander. For a brief moment, muscle memory took over- when your shipmate offered you some water on a hot day, by the sky you accepted it. 

"Top mast of you mate, I'm parch-" he managed to say before his brain caught up with everything, "Wait. Wash. Where's the water from?"

Wash looked at him confused for a moment, and in the silence Alexander thought he could almost hear the gears in Wash's head clicking. "Oh!" the lad said in sudden clarity, "Right, yeah, it would be from here, wouldn't it? Haha, whoops. Sorry, wasn't thinking was I?" he said almost sheepishly as he took the canteen back.

"Ah, don't ruffle your feathers," Alexander replied jovially, "Neither of us knew it meant droppings until today."

A short while later and they stood in front of a magical extending ladder that the girls were climbing up ahead of them. "Welp," Wash began to say, "I guess this is goodbye. Again. At least I get to say it this time, eh?"

"Ah, don't be like that Wash," Alexander said as he suddenly pulled the younger boy into a headlock and playfully rubbed his fist on Wash's scalp, "Until today you were a dead man, who the hell knows what'll happen next?"

With the deft movements of a sky sailor Alexander began to nimbly clamber up the ladder after releasing Wash. He all but leapt up the first few, then turned and hung off of it by his one hand so he could turn back to his old buddy. "At the very least I'll try and make one last stop-in once we're done. Sit tight, I doubt it'll be long, yeah?"

"Yeah," Wash said, his glumness evident, "Good luck, with whatever it is!"

"Bah, you know what we always used to say! Luck's got nothing to do with it!"

With that, Alexander put two fingers to his own forehead, flicked them away in an ultra casual salute, then returned to his climb two rungs at a time until he was at the top.