Kingdom Hearts - Blades of Three Realms

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

Shiro of course nodded, and then proceeded to sway a bit before stepping back to reorienting himself with a groan "ugh... okay, that was both a headache and vertigo inducing.. what in the world was that?" he'd ask, clearly having not had that happen before, and he -knows- he didn't use Time alter: Double Accel to pull that s**t off, so what in the world just happened? oh is Shiro iin for a rude awakening when he finds out what he actively just did by instinct.

Roveth meanwhile had hummed a bit, having been busy watching the Dojo with a frown, that last move... that went entirely too fluently to be Shiro's first time... maybe... "Reaction?" he muttered, thinking, Shiro -did- have uncanny reflexes, especially when he was using Structural Grasping... but that just took it to a whole new level. either way he'd shrug before glancing to another monitor, seeing Axel and Demyx having appeared out of the forest, he'd have the gate open and let the two in, since Isa seems to be nowhere, he must've woke up later and all without realizing it. either way Roveth was currently working on carrying a few things to his personal room when Axel and Demyx had shown up, causing him to peek over "oh, hey Axel, Demyx." Axel currently whistled "nice upgrade to the place. uh... how many rooms do you have?" Roveth pondered the question a moment, before looking upwards "about 40-50 rooms total at 10 per floor. most are empty right now but can be converted into rooms as need be." Demyx spoke up "like a recording room?" Roveth nodded a bit lightly "yeah, was plotting on doing that after hearing the story on Shiro's apparently amazing potential for singing, was gonna use him to make money around town as a local vocalist." Demyx looked at Roveth, then looked at Axel with a deadpan "i'm moving out." he said calmly enough, causing a large sweatdrop to form on Axel's head "uh.. okay...?"  

[[XIII] Roxas]

"Well, from the way you moved and how I couldn't keep up with it, I'd say it was probably a Reaction Command type of skill," Roxas explained to Shiro. "I don't really know how they work exactly, but sometimes when you get a good read on the opponent's attack pattern you can enter a weird trance-like state that allows you to reflexively counter attack much more powerfully than a regular attack. And, if that's the case, the fastest way to be sure would be to see if it can be triggered again."

So saying, Roxas once again went into his emulation of Seifer's aerial attack to lunge at Shiro to see whether or not the same reaction might take place again.  

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

of course, as soon as Shiro got set up and saw Roxas in the air, the nudge happened once more, and he followed through once again, leading to Roxas finding Shiro behind him eventually with the struggle bat on Roxas's shoulders, instead of getting beaten to a pulp by Shiro since he was saving the exploit of attacking on Seifer and Seifer alone. of course, after that Shiro would move back and flop on his rump a moment to get himself reoriented, clearly the whole 'Reaction Command' while instinctual, still needs training for him.

Roveth meanwhile chuckled while Demyx worked to shove Axel out the door again so they could get started on packing Demyx up to come move into the mansion, while he looked to Riku and Sora "thanks you two, i tried to do this as fast as possible while not letting up on good quality of workmanship, besides, if i need to i'll add in more floors later on." he said, while heading back towards the library to head down into the basement and all to keep an eye on Roxas and Shiro's training as well as Hayner's as well.  

[[XIII] Roxas]

Roxas kept working with Shiro on the reaction command until he stopped having to take a break to reorient himself after every time he used it. Since they weren't fighting too seriously and neither of them was taking much of a beating throughout the practice session it easily went on for several hours until they were both feeling pretty worn out just from the overall exertion of all that constant repetition.

"Okay, I think you're getting the hang of it," Roxas was panting from exhaustion and took to one knee. "What do you say we call it a day?"  

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

Shiro nodded, having been on his rump for longer than 10 minutes after the last reaction command, clearly tired out as he panted "agreed... it's been a productive day... and got me used to something you and probably Sora have been doing a lot longer than i have." he said, smiling a bit, while Roveth worked to open up the door to let the two out of the Dojo.

Roveth of course nodded to Hayner with a chuckle as he grinned "good to hear you're making some progress." he commented helpfully while typing in commands and all "as long as you always remember to step forward, and become a better fighter than say, one minute ago, there'll be no doubt in my mind you will constantly trounce your virtual self in no time, as for Setzer, he's tricky, so you have to watch out for that trickiness, and Seifer... you don't have to out power Seifer, you have to outsmart him." he said, smiling "basically think of fighting him like pranking him, he'll taunt you into attacking and so on, right? so throw it back in his face, embarrass him in public, make him angry, and that'll make him sloppy, and the more mistakes he makes, the more you can take advantage of that."

Demyx of course had finally managed to get Axel back home, and quickly started rushing around the apartment gathering his musically inclined gear, so on and started passing it to a couple of Roveth's humanoid monsters who followed at Demys's request, Gilford the Lightning and Gearfried the Iron Knight, and would work to moving out of the apartment. Axel of course looked puzzled, and downright pissed, in a way by all this and all.  

[[XIII] Roxas]

"It's probably not just me and Sora," Roxas pointed out as they were leaving the simulated dojo. "Crystal is probably doing the same thing intuitively considering pure reflex and prediction really doesn't explain some of those combos she's able to pull off."

Once they exited the simulated dojo and were back in the basement Roxas of course greeted Hayner, Pence, and Olette, along with Roveth. "Looks like you've all be keeping busy too."

"Heck yeah!" Hayner was still all kinds of enthusiastic. He then nodded to Roveth. "I'll definitely have to keep that in mind for when I go back in there to have another go at it."

"Hey Roxas!" Pence smiled in greeting. "So, I guess it's true that you've been hanging out with this group lately. Did you know the girl you've been spending time with is rumored to be a princess?"

Roxas sputtered, "Wait, what? Who... told you that?"

"Roveth mentioned it when he was helping us out with Hayner's training yesterday," Olette answered. "He called her a 'Princess in Denial'."

"There were already some strange rumors floating around about her possibly being a sorceress," Pence added. "If she turns out to actually be a princess that would be amazing!"

"Well, you'd have to ask her about that," Roxas looked understandably embarrassed as he looked to Roveth and Shiro for a little help here. "But I don't think she really wants to talk about it."

Really, he hadn't been thinking of Crystal in terms of being a princess at all. She clearly didn't like being reminded of that fact and she didn't exactly attempt to embody most of the qualities that one might typically expect from a princess either. In Roxas's mind Crystal had started out as a cute, but distant acquaintance. Of course, once they had gotten past that they had quickly and easily become friends, with Roxas also catching glimpses of the fact that Crystal could be quite beautiful without really meaning to be. That really should have been his first hint that as they had grown closer as friends he had also begun to find her more attractive, but he hadn't actually given it any thought until Roveth gave him that not-so-gentle verbal push back on the world of Treasure Planet. Even then, it wasn't until they were on the world of Bending Harmony and he was confronted with the very real possibility that Crystal might be in love with someone else that Roxas had become jealous when he realized he didn't want that. This whole 'love' thing was still a brand new feeling for him so he didn't immediately recognize what it was until he was confronted with the knowledge that he might have already missed his chance to pursue it. As it turned out he was very fortunate and that wasn't the case.

"I wonder if we can convince her to give us an interview," Pence was still in total gossip and rumor hunting mode.

"It's worth a shot," Olette naturally agreed.

"Well, she's probably here in the mansion somewhere, right?" Hayner reminded them. "I mean, Roveth prepared this place so he and his friends could all move in so that would make the most sense. Why don't we go look for her?"

Roxas gave a slight sweatdrop. Crystal really wasn't going to want all this attention, but it sounded like there wasn't going to be any getting out of it this time.  

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

Shiro would be out next, and upon hearing the questioning of Roxas, looked right to Roveth who seemed to be whistling all too innocently and typing mindlessly on the computer, continuing to work on building small little data worlds and deleting them to try and get a more thorough understanding of the controls in case he wanted to build something big like Twilight Town or something and all like Ansem the Wise did. Shiro of course just shook his head with a sigh and look of amusement before heading off upstairs to go change out of his training clothes and into a casual red shirt and black shorts with red racing stripes on them to head out to the pool, upon noticing the group he'd roll his eyes in amusement at Sora's antics with a cannonball and all, and just moved to go sit on a beach chair near the pool instead, deciding to sun-tan a bit.

Demyx meanwhile had finished packing up and moved out heading for the mansion with his gear, while axel just sat down at the table grumbling a bit about Demyx's sudden vitality in doing work "where the hell was that vigorous energy when we were helping you get moved in and situated? seriously, that just... ARGH, okay, Demyx has lost all credibility with me and is back to lazy slacker." he grumped a bit, clearly in little of a mood to at least go back to the mansion to check on Xion and Roxas at the moment, figuring he should cool off first before doing so.  

[[XIII] Roxas]

Roxas would have left Roveth to his tinkering with the computer system, being followed upstairs by Hayner, Pence, and Olette, with Hayner saying he'd be back later or tomorrow for more training, until they soon discovered that everyone else was either in or out by the pool at the moment. Roxas would have then gone to get changed into his own swim trunks so he could join the others in the pool. After that training session with Shiro he seriously needed to cool off. Naturally, once he made it out to the pool it was to find Crystal being hassled by Pence and Olette, mainly, although Hayner wasn't straying too far and also made his own occasional comments. Since not all of them were in the water Riku had taken it upon himself to rescue everyone from Sora's antics by grabbing him in a headlock so he couldn't get out of the pool again to splash everyone. Try as he might, no amount of wiggling seemed to be allowing Sora to free himself from his captor.

"So then it's really true what Roveth told us about you being a princess?" Pence was tackling the interview while snapping a few unsolicited photos with his ever present camera, a large part of the reason why Sora was being so firmly restrained at the moment.

"Eh..." Crystal grumbled mildly. Then she gave an exasperated sigh. "Look, it's like I keep telling everyone whose been asking me about it lately, it's not as glamorous as it sounds. Maybe I was a princess, but it was a long time ago in a place that doesn't even exist anymore. And even then it wasn't anything special."

"Ah, that explains so much!" Pence was practically gleaming as he started taking down notes. "All those rumors about you make so much sense if you came here from another world!"

"So then I guess that makes you a bit like Sora and his friends," added Hayner. "You're not really from here, just passing through."

"Not exactly," Crystal scratched behind her ear looking more than a little embarrassed. "You see, even though we're probably going to continue with our traveling to other worlds, I was actually planning on making my visits here a little more permanent and I think Roveth must have had the same idea when he purchased this mansion to give our group a place of residence."

Roxas made his way over to the pool, slipping over to the far end away from where everyone was standing or wading in the shallows so he could jump in without causing too much of a commotion before swimming over to join up with the others and listen in on the conversation.

"Oh wow! It sounds like there must be someone very important to you here if you're intending to stay! How romantic!" Olette was gushing entirely too much for Crystal's comfort. Case in point, Crystal was red in the face and had ducked down to the bottom of the pool while making embarrassed grumbling noses into the water.

Roxas heard that comment too, of course, and might have tried to laugh it off if not for the fact that his own blushing along with a rather comically embarrassed expression had inevitably betrayed the fact that he knew very well who that someone might be.

"I didn't know Roxas could blush like that!" Pence now had the camera on him which caused Roxas to flail a bit before diving under the water to hide for a minute himself.

Crystal had by that time already returned to the surface since she couldn't really stay down for very long.

"Well that explains it then. I guess those two really are a couple now," Olette was all smiles and giggling at that point.

Riku was snickering and accidentally lost his grip on Sora, but that wasn't really an issue because Sora was having his own laughing fit at the face Roxas had made before disappearing under the water.  

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

Axel just sighed, shrugging a bit as he looked up towards Isa with amusement "if he does i'd only go while bringing you along with me. like hell am i leaving you alone now that we've been brought back together again." he said, clearly not wanting to leave Isa unprotected in case Xehanort tried to get back at them by kidnapping Isa and all once more.

Shiro meanwhile had just chuckled a bit hearing the questioning, only watching with mild amusement and all seeing the antics, and at the same time moving to at least take his shirt off to start tanning his upper body, which did look pretty lean and yet wiry/full of muscle all the same, probably why he could easily be seen hefting the likes of that huge stone sword he traces for Nine Lives Blade Works. either way he'd be good eye-candy for everyone outside of Roxas who was in the pool. thankfully he was staying dry for now as he watched as things progressed.

Roveth meanwhile had eventually come out of the basement while yawning a bit as he moved to sit down at a different spot on the beach chairs looking in amusement at the group, even moreso than Shiro however as he grinned a bit seeing the blushing Roxas and Crystal, his mission completed in embarrassing Crystal once again.