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[hr]Zarra analyzes the situation, while he could attempt to use his powers to shift away, he knows it’d be futile, he’s already strained himself using it and it’s failed him in situations like this before. As he considers his option, he decides the best thing to do is throw the rioters off their game with a good old fashion taunt. He charges his manas as he talks, using what time he can bide as much as possible.

[color=6633cc][b]“False crusaders, you don’t care if I’m a noble or not, you just beat people up. Traveler protects everyone from people like you.”[/b][/color]

His tone of voice is condescending and inconvenienced, designed in such a way as to sound as deeply self-righteous as possible. He then turns his back on the possible assailant, smug smile still glued to his face as he knows just enraged them all with a single sentence. While they process what he said, Zarra uses the charged energy to fling a nearly hammer into the leader’s face, even if it doesn’t do any damage, it’ll definitely wound his pride. As soon as he does this, he does the only thing an exhausted skinny mage would ever do against 3 grown men; run away. He heads towards the nearest flight of stairs, intending to go to the higher parts of the ship and lose them there.

[b]“What did you say??”[/b] Perhaps as expected, the man who was mocking and threatening Zarra earlier, who seems to be the leader, takes the condescension with anger. He is about to rush forward at Zarra, fist raised and with clear violent intent, when the hammer flung onto his face, making him flinch and hold his face from the pain. [b]“Shit, boss, you okay??”[/b] one of the others says while the third who was stalking towards Zarra stops in his tracks.

It is then that Zarra takes advantage of the lull in their concentration and runs away. [b]“Hey, get back here!”[/b] the first man says. [b]“After that scum!”[/b]

The third man is the first to take action as he runs after Zarra, following him to the flight of stairs that would lead to the 1st Upper Deck. The two other men follow behind the third, while the fourth takes his time to pocket some kind of objects before trailing behind the rest. The chase is on.

At the top of the flight of stairs, Zarra continues to take full luxury of the messes the other rioters have created. He picks up a guitar and throws it down the fight of stairs, fully intending to throw the chasers off balance. While his understanding in magics outside of his specialties are limited, he does know a basic level of arcane magic, and uses it to freeze the top of the stairs, still soaked from the various leaks from the ship.

He’s breathing hard as he’s running, he looks around for a place to hide at this point, and hilariously, he chooses a women's bathroom. He can feel himself starting to get nauseous again and he has to hog the stall walls to keep his balance. He gets to a mirror, where he looks much more exhausted than he realized. Somehow, it’s mostly undamaged here, but he changes that by quietly using binding to leave cracks in the mirrors, a sinister strategy in mind. After this he goes into one the stalls and locks it then stands on the toilet holding the wall to brace himself on it. Now all he has to do is wait it out, at least that’s the best possible scenario in his mind.


The third man, who is frontmost, is hit by the guitar that Zarra throws down the stairs, though it doesn’t stop him for long as he just flinches a bit before resuming to chase after Zarra. Still, the brief moment gave Zarra enough time to freeze the top of the stairs without the man realizing it, causing him to slip on it. The man’s back hits the others that are also chasing after Zarra, and almost comically causing them all except for the fourth and backmost man to lose balance.

By the time the men manage to reorient themselves and resume the chase, Zarra is already hiding in the women’s bathroom. [b]“Where did that blasted monkey go?? Nevermind, spread out and find him. Nobody hits me with a hammer and gets away with it!”[/b] The leader shouts, loud enough that Zarra can hear his voice though not necessarily comprehend the words, that sound muffled due to where he is hiding.

Soon enough though, Zarra can hear the door of the bathroom open followed by rather heavy footsteps coming in and getting closer to where he is…

Still believing he has the enemy fooled, he remains perfectly silent, however, he build his energy, intending to strike if the buffoon tries anything stupid. The mirror strategy is only a last ditch effort if all of them try to corner him, he can handle a single dude, even when taxed. Thinking on his feet a little, Zarra subtly binds the lock mechanism into itself, making it nigh impossible to open without shattering it, and by the time they do that he’ll already be very ready.

Only one man entered the women’s bathroom. Though Zarra couldn’t see which one, it probably doesn’t matter. The man looks around the bathroom before then mumbling to himself. [b]“Man, what am I doing here…”[/b] Seemingly having second thoughts about searching the women’s bathroom while being a man himself, he sighs, and then starts to walk away. The sounds of his heavy footsteps are heading for the exit when it suddenly stops.

[b]“Oh whatever. I’m already here anyway. Besides, who cares in this situation? Ha.”[/b] Then his footsteps move closer and closer again until it unmistakably stops in front of the stall that Zarra is hiding in. Almost immediately after that, the door seems to be pulled from outside, though it doesn’t budge due to the little bit of binding magic that Zarra had applied to it. The man stops pulling, and then says simply.[b] “Hey, who’s in there? Come on out!”[/b]

Zarra nods incredulously, does he actually think that was gonna work? Being that you can’t see the Gift user’s feet from outside the stall, he’s not just gonna give himself away now. Though he’ll have to be ready for when the guy inevitably tries to view the inside of the stall.

Seeing as how whoever is inside refuses to answer his call, the man concludes that it must be the person he and his pals are looking for, which is Zarra. [b]“Aha! Got you,  you rat! Come on out now! You know you got nowhere to go! Heheh!”[/b] He starts banging on the door of the stall and pulling with all his might. The door shakes and rattles, but refuses to give away, causing the man to click his tongue in annoyance. [b]“What the hell, what’s with this door?? Bah! Well, let’s see how it will like some hammer banging on it, ey?”[/b]

After saying that, the man starts to leave, his footsteps moving across the bathroom towards the exit.

Zarra, genuinely thinking this is a good idea, gets down from the toilet and crawls over to the other stall on the right. He then stands on the toilet of that one instead, reasoning that they’re going to get very annoyed and leave right away when they find out that guy totally cried wolf on his friends. He refuses to budge, thinking about the possibility that the guy is waiting for him outside the door. But, Zarra is a trained mage with the gift, that guy is drunk and itching to fight, it’s pretty clear cut in his mind who can wait out the other.

For a while, nothing seems to happen. After about five minutes however, the door to the bathroom opens again. In come multiple footsteps now, followed by the voice of the same man from before. [b]“Yeah, the rat is hiding in here, boss! Did something to the door of the stall though, it wouldn’t budge!”[/b] Another voice, that of the leader that Zarra threw a hammer at earlier, replies with a snort. [b]“Yeah? Well, let’s see what a door’s gonna do against this. Hey, gimme the axe!”[/b]

There are some chuckles from the men followed by the sound of footsteps stopping in front of the stall that Zarra previously hid in. It seems clear what is about to happen next.

Zarra actually struggles to not laugh, of all things. Regardless, he prepares his magic as while he thinks he has them fooled, he's taking no chances and prepared to turn this whole bathroom into a glass bombing.

And so the axe falls. Again, and again, and again, all the while the men cheer on their leader. [b]“Time to give up and ask for mercy now, boy!”[/b] one of the men says, imagining that Zarra must be behind the door of the stall, petrified with fear. But then, as the axe finally breaks enough of the door for the men to look inside, they find nothing but an empty stall. [b]”What the- Erik, you said he’s in here!” [/b]The leader looks at the man who looked for Zarra in the bathroom by himself earlier. [b]“I swear, he was!... Wait, maybe he’s hiding in this one instead!”[/b] the man replies while pointing at the door of the next stall. [b]“Lemme take a look, alright?”[/b] Only now he realizes that he can just look under to make sure, and thus he goes to do just that…

"Smash" is the sound of porcelain being thrown into a man's head. While ready to once again expend magic, Zarra did not appreciate the man's attempts to snoop and throw the lid of the toilet directly at his exposed skull. Before the other 3 process the attack, Zarra steals the axe from his hands, officially arming himself since this all started, it's surprisingly heavy. He speaks right away. [color=6633cc][b]"I just gave him a concussion. I can keep him from long-term brain damage, *if* you let me free. This was your idea after all. Don't cry victim for defending myself".[/b][/color]

[b]“By Oraff! Erik!”[/b] The other men react by pulling Erik, now nearly unconscious from having his head hit by significant blunt force, away. [b]“This kid is crazy boss!”[/b] says one of the men. Another nods frantically while putting one of Erik’s arms around his back to carry him. [b]“He just bashed Erik’s head like it meant nothing! He’s crazy alright!”[/b]

With each passing second, the men grow more and more frantic. The leader eventually decides that the boy that they thought was a helpless kid simply isn’t worth the trouble. [b]“Look, this is all a big misunderstanding, yeah?”[/b] he says while gesturing for his men to leave the room. [b]“We’ll leave you alone now. Just don’t do anything rash…”[/b] Then he himself bolts as the men all retreat from the room, carrying their wounded friend with them. Zarra had managed to keep himself from being lynched by this particular mob of rioters.

Zarra finally allows himself to breathe and he leaves the stall. He actually takes off the shirt because at this point it's more trouble than streaking half naked. Being his size, one can clearly see his ribcage and other likely unappealing parts of torso anatomy. He checks the corner of the bathroom, making for sure the coast is clear. 

The earlier goons are nowhere in sight. While of course the general chaos remains as the riot continues throughout many parts of the ship, it doesn’t seem like there’s any obvious threat that is targeting him around. Of course, that might change for whatever reason considering the general disorderly situation, but for now the coast is looking clear indeed for Zarra to proceed.

The scrawny character exits the bathroom and proceeds to steal the clothing of the nearest person of similar size to him. As Zarra takes the shirt from the bloodied guy, he can’t help notice a giant axe wound in his leg, [color=6633cc][b]“Unfortunate”[/b][/color] is all Zarra can really muster aloud as he wonders how sloppy of an axe user you have to be to hit someone’s lower body.

The shirt he took has an obvious bloodstain on it, but he doesn’t really care and puts it on anyway, replacing the staff uniform he had asked Hugo for previously, he wouldn’t have needed to if a certain 2 people had actually done their jobs quelling the riot, not considering the fact he had basically bullcrapped to their faces that he’d help with that. Regardless of the state of the ship now, Zarra leaves the axe in the bathroom, thinking it'll be more suspicious to just ominously carry it around. Eun-Ji and Manfred probably already ended the meeting, seeing as he was gone for easily several minutes. Still, it doesn’t hurt to try, maybe he’ll run into one of the other students and join in whatever task they were assigned.

Zarra goes back to the hallway he had ran through, ready to track down the other- Woops. Someone forgot they had frozen the top of the stairs. Zarra had put his full weight into the step, causing his whole leg to slip off and collide with the next step. What happens next isn’t pretty. Zarra goes down face first, having failed to brace his fall with his realigned ankle. It stuns Zarra for a second, and he starts rolling down the stairs. Rather than using some sort of complex levels of logic, as one tends not to do when falling down a flight of stairs, he puts all mental energy into becoming intangible a final time, his last thought being that at least he’ll be safe. Not really understanding the repercussions of this, Zarra manages to defy all exhaustion and become incomporial, and now falling downwards from momentum and into the lower floor of the ship. Zarra goes unconscious from the sudden jolt to the head and mana depletion, still falling.

While Zarra had been out cold for several minutes, He wakes up with a splitting headache. Despite the deeply complex nature of the human brain, Zarra had taken the time to learn how to replace synapses and undo concussions, as he relies on his own intelligence so much that healing the brain always interested him more in classes, well, the ones he wasn't kicked from anyway.

As one could guess from his antics in this mission, Zarra is a problem child. His grades are incredible, but it came at the cost he was always the center of some crazy scenario he created. For example, Zarra incidentally caused a school fire after sarcastically telling a less bright student to "Put sodium in the pool" or when had shifted into the basement of another school without permission and found less than savory things they kept under there.

After relieving himself of the headache, Zarra tries to see where he is… Only, he can't. It's nearly pitch black and he can't do a single bit of ship movement. He ultimately decides to just go back to reality. This was a mistake. Zarra had found himself at the bottom of the river, water pressure and lack of oxygen striking him like a truck. He panics, but remembers a life saving technique taught in elementary binding and chemical class. By turning 2(H2O) into O2 4H+, aka stealing the oxygen from the water and turning it into a breathable bubble around you, you can extend your breathing time for as long as your RAS can allow.

This has the unforeseen side effect that the water above him literally starts boiling as hydrogen gas is released from underneath. Now Zarra just needs to get back on the boat while in croc infested waters. Riveting.