It could have been the blond scholar; that would have been worse

[joinmyreunion]

Of course Ienzo had been inducted into the clan, and of course it was as a full member. It had got Kadaj's back up, but he'd done his best to keep it quiet, at least during the meeting. It had been easy enough to ignore how irritated he was about Ienzo when he was stuck in a room with Orochimaru at the same time

Comments

[jawmask]

Grimmjow was surprised at that. While, as a general rule, Clan Khamja didn't forge open enmity with other clans due half to their reputation and half to them not being that type of Clan, The Thirteenth Order was one of the few that they were very happy to broadcast their dislike of. He wasn't sure why, entirely, but he suspected it was something to do with the two Ryoka members that they had. He'd heard something had happened between them and the Order group back before they got to Spira, or something

[joinmyreunion]

"If he gets approved by the boss," Kadaj replied, with a nod. He didn't see Illua a whole lot; most of the clan probably didn't, but she was definitely the one in charge. "Which he will." Kadaj shuffled himself more comfortably into his seat, still sulking more than a little. "He's something special," he admitted, grudgingly, "even by our standards."

It wasn't just that he was Ryoka, obviously. That alone wouldn't be enough to be special in the clan, not with Marluxia around.

Kadaj got it, of course he got it; people who could perform advanced alchemy were rare, people who could do it without an array were rarer. But it was hard not to be a little bit bitter at how easy Ienzo was having it.

[jawmask]

"Special how?" Grimmjow asked, confused.

He knew there were a fair few Ryoka, but he hadn't met many of them. The only ones that really stuck out in his memory were the two they had the problem with, Hidan's bitch of a girlfriend and the old dude with the eye patch. He'd proved to be way more trouble than he was worth.

Even then, he knew there were more and he had no idea about the abilities of those ones. As it stood, they seemed to have typically Spiran Classes, which he hadn't expected of a Ryoka. Some classes were more 'special' than others, but there weren't really any that struck him as far-and-away amazing. Unless he could summon Sin, or something. How he was 'special', especially by Khamja standards, was a mystery to him. He couldn't even fathom how he was, especially considering the berserker had the ability to pull a weapon out of nowhere. That was pretty special. Maybe it was that.

1/2

[joinmyreunion]

Kadaj shrugged. Alchemy was a distant art he'd never had a chance to study, let alone any inclination to do so. He barely knew the basics. It was a complex science, and Kadaj hadn't been to school since he was twelve. Sometimes it showed. Like now.

"He's an alchemist," he said, "but he can do it without the stupid pictures." He knew that was significant, because no one was supposed to be able to do it, but the very specific significance was lost on him. He could tell, however, that it was a bigger deal than it sounded to him, because of the way everybody else had reacted.

Meanwhile...

[pagesofillusion]

As the brats were discussing his arrival with disdain, Ienzo was freed from his room. He was informed of which rooms/parts of the Palace were off-limits, but due to him being a full-member and not a minion, this pretty much amounted to personal offices, Illua's quarters and the laboratories, for the moment. Aizen didn't even disapprove of him going into the library, if he so wished.

Even so, Ienzo's first port of call was the kitchen. It paid to know where the essentials like food and the like could be gathered, so he had gone in search of it once having his one-room-confinement-rule lifted. If he was nervous when he pushed the door open, it didn't show.

[theclanmom]

Of course, Nel was already in the kitchen. She spent more time than most there, and was, at the particular point, folding laundry. There was more visible, pegged up on the line outside, and the washing machine was whirring away with another load. The table was taken up with a few neat piles of clean and folded clothes. Some of them did their own laundry, where others were baffled by the washing machine or weren't to be trusted to use it - Lilinette had overfilled it so catastrophically that it had leaked soap everywhere; Nel suspected it was done deliberately precisely so that she was never asked to help with the laundry again - and then others still would simply never wash their clothes if Nel didn't remove them from bedrooms, or bodies, and put them in a machine. One other still, at least. L was improving, but he still needed a lot of... encouragement, sometimes

[pagesofillusion]

Ienzo hadn't expected to see, of all things, a woman doing the laundry in the kitchen of the Clan Khamja stronghold. It seemed entirely incongruous with the shady, clandestine nature of the Clan -- entirely... normal. He wasn't sure why he thought they'd be above such things, but it was something he simply hadn't considered. It was odd and he rather doubted she was simply employed as a cleaner and maid, so that meant she was a subordinate. That, in turn, suggested that she wasn't to be messed with. Khamja weren't known for taking on pointless, useless underlings

[theclanmom]

"Nel," she answered, not seeming to mind overmuch about any rudeness. She was used to far worse. "I'm one of Aizen's," she added, guessing at what he was thinking in large part because all the actual clan members had been in that meeting earlier so Ienzo had probably met them already.

She finished folding the shirt and put it on top of one of the piles, and then looked at Ienzo again.

"Would you like a drink?" Then she asked the important question; "Do you drink tea, or would you prefer something else?"

[bitchyflautist]

After a while, Yylfordt had shown up, and took Kadaj away to check out the progress on his new toy. Tayuya disapproved of the idea, mostly because Kadaj was having Yylfordt build what basically amounted to a two wheeled death trap that was significantly larger than Kadaj, which Kadaj intended to ride, and all without the prior approval, or consent, of Kuja, who was about the only person who ever stood a real chance of talking sense into Kadaj.

Unfortunately, there wasn't very much that Tayuya could do about it. Kadaj had gone, and then come back some time later looking far too happy, while Yylfordt looked as though he'd gone swimming in an oil slick. With the goggles on his head, and the rather traditional Al Bhed clothes, along with his hair tied back out of the way, he looked far too stereotypically Al Bhed.

He also, much like Kadaj, looked very much in his element.

When Yylfordt then complained that he was hungry, Tayuya raised an eyebrow and told him, "You know where the kitchen is."

2/2

[palehornedprick]

Yylfordt looked at Tayuya with a distinct pout. "Come on," he moaned, "I've been slaving over a hot engine all morning." And then he looked very, very serious as he also pointed out, "And it's wash day, and Nel will murder me if she sees me like this."

Not that he expected Tayuya to make him anything anyway. Instead he looked at Kadaj with a very deliberate grin. "Be a pal, bro."

1/2

[jawmask]

Grimmjow snorted at Yylfordt, finding his whining funny and pathetic at the same time. He shook his head, looking entirely unsympathetic to his cause.

"Hey, get your own fuckin' food. We're heading down now anyway, so y'can just come with us." He paused. "If Nel yells at ya, y'can take it like a man and beg for your life like the rest of us."

He would have clapped him on the shoulder as an accompaniment to his predatory grin of amusement, but he didn't want to transfer any of the oil to himself.

2/2

[absolutetomboy]

If Apache approved of how Yylfordt looked wearing the clothes traditional of his race and covered in engine oil, her expression didn't show it. She'd spent some time with him as he'd fixed the bike together, but it was just observation. She'd pointed out that she was there to see if he was going to blow it up or make a mess of it.

"Stop being a pussy, Yylfordt." She said, resisting the desire to kick him in the back of the kneecap.