songerein | Half My Life's In Books, Written Pages

Who: Soldier: 76 &anyone
Which: Open Interactive Dream; Quest #0901(Baby Tapirs) || Open Log
Where: Dream || Edge of forest and fields
What: The task of feeding baby tapirs within a dream || Recovering after a run in with some red caps, but also there's a fairy cow covered in blackberries.
Warnings: Weirdness that dreams can take on, especially ones edging bad. || Injury.

A.Tapirs

A rich orange sky with yellow clouds and streaks of blue as if it couldn't decide if it was daylight or sunset, fields and corn stalks well over six feet high. Went on for miles, stretched out as far as the eye could see. An old barn, farmhouse- all too far apart to be normal. Smoke rising in the distance but whatever fires they had to be coming from out of sight.

Quiet, with a man standing near some fencing just beside what looked like the start of a corn maze. A scowl on his face, one that didn't fit the young face just by the look of him- "Of course it's one of these," muttered, aware of what was happening to some extent. These were the types that could pull him in, but something had interrupted that.

There was a baby tapir by his foot, gnawing on an ear of corn that looked as if it was glitching between yellow and multicolored. Another wandering a little.

Sounds of groaning machinery was keeping it's distance, at least.

"How many of you got in here?" Little punks.

notice; replies for this prompt will be coming from statued

B. Blackberry Bramble

Had it been the smartest idea to take up the redcap iron hunt from the board alone? Possibly not, but he'd needed to do something, and why not take up one that would have had him fighting? Didn't imagine it would have been like stepping on a fire ant nest the moment he'd gone in to the ruins and brushed against some vines within. Gotten out, gotten some of the farm tools back along with some scrap he'd stashed away.

Currently? 76 was seated on a fallen over log, jacket set aside and already patched up, instead checking over bandaging on his arms. Not alone, however.

Grazing just beside him was one of those Fairy Cows, green leaves and ripe blackberries adoring it. He'd found it on his trip back-

"The moment this is re-wrapped?" A grunt, winding a bit of fabric around his forearm, talking to the cow, "You're going back. Probably safer for you back in your field with your friends." Hell of a day, really.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A low hum, "Yeah. Self-appointed these days. I'm a soldier," and now a vigilante that's cleaning up the streets in his pursuit of answers. A mission was still a mission, all the same. His hand moved under the blackberry fairy cow's head again to get her attention, rubbing ears when her coarse went back on track rather than trying to stray away.

"Infiltration, information gathering, fighting," the whole nine-yards.

"A soldier?" Roxas knew what soldiers were. That was another name for a fighter, and he knows fighters all too well. He nods a couple of times, looking down the road.

"Sounds a lot like what I used to do. I used to do missions like that before, when I would go to a new world."

"Just an old soldier," and that was as far as he'd go with it. Best to keep it as vague as possible, because it was all he felt he was. Nothing more, nothing less, and a reason he was fine going by his old number that was meaningless and at best random to those that simply had no knowledge of its origin.

Those that would know could take it for a warning as far as he cared.

He knew what Roxas meant, but he wasn't going to speak up some other version told him. Keep some bit of distance there. Differences. "One way to get a lay of the land."

"Well, just because you're old doesn't mean you're not able to fight." Roxas knew that all too well. All one had to do was look at Xehanort, or Xigbar, or Yen Sid for that.

"Yeah, that's what we had to do. I didn't really get why at first, but... well, even if it wasn't for the best reasons, they were good skills to have, I guess."

"Being old means I'm not that easy to kill."

Good and bad, he just kept going. Could see fencing in the distance now, and a few buildings that read 'farm' to him at the very least. Almost home for the cow. "Can't always help the side you're on, since both have ways of getting you to work for them," even he knew the worst had easy ways of getting people to join without knowing what they were a part of.

"Yeah... that's not wrong. Older people seem to be harder to defeat." He says it like... he's got experience with that. Which might be startling? But also might not.

"Well, for what it's worth, I'd rather fight for my own side. I'm not really cut out for being the hero; I just want to do what I can for my friends." He says it with a light shrug. But he looks up when he sees the farm. "Oh... you think that's where she's from?"

It wasn't, given what he already knew- and there was something unfortunate about that he supposed. Possibly for a variety of reasons, but it was best left untouched, even if he hummed vaguely in reply.

"Sides comin in to play is when things get complicated," and too many things pulling in multiple directions. Reason he was going about things as he was back home. A low grunt. "That, or they might know."

"Yeah. That's what I find, too. I'd rather fight for what I think's important, than what someone tells me is." At the end of the day, Roxas just wants to be there for and protect his friends.

"Hopefully." Roxas nods, then pats the cow once more. "I bet she'll be happy to go home. You think we could come visit her sometime?"

A low grunt, agreeing fully. He had already played that game, entrenched it as both a soldier and a man who had to walk the lines of the political game with egos. Some old fashioned vengeance was all he could manage these days.

"Probably." Happy as a cow could be to be back in familiar fields with others of their herd- "With the fact we're bringing her back? More than likely, yeah."

"I hope so. I'd like to come visit her while I'm here." Funny, how he could go from talking about fighting and missions one minute but then finding joy in visiting a fairy cow in the next. Just a sign that despite what he's gone through, he's still got that childish light within him.

"You said you grew up on a farm, right? Maybe you'll be able to be friends with the farmer who owns her."

Depending on how things went- "Likely have plenty of time to do that, or even help out more," other than just bringing a cow back to it's farm. Still, place looked a bit of a mess, but he could see where broken fences had been freshly mended, so it was leaning towards this being a possible place the blackberry cow had wandered from.

"Not looking to make friends," easier to keep unattached. "Still help out as it comes up."

Half My Life's In Books, Written Pages

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