Ship Them All Away

[plate_builder]

WHO: Reeve Tuesti, Open
WHERE: Agrii Ship
WHAT: New Tick Has Arrived
WHEN: January 10th and 11th
WARNINGS: None unless you consider Mini near a gun dangerous

1. Let's Get Accessorized

The gifts are, at their core, nothing new. Well, there were more than there had been previously, and Reeve wondered if the Agrii were going to keep escalating this celebration of theirs. How long until it became a truly untenable amount of things for them to take back? There was still that giant stone statue on the one ship since Link left. Not that he begrudged the thing, it was just so... large.

"Ya need ta stop worrying so much. Gonna go gray early," Mini chides from where he sits in Reeve's lap on one of the nice blankets. The cat had just finished hauling all three of Reeve's gifts over and was now making a show of 'resting' in the man's lap.

"A bit of gray in my hair would likely only serve to make me look more distinguished," Reeve counters as he reaches out for the first gift.

"Ya're vain enough ta dye it," Mini teased.

Reeve rolled his eyes, even as true as it was. Meanwhile his hands went through the process of opening a box. He wasn't even thinking much about it. Only he did freeze when he saw what was inside.

Golden sandals. With little straps and red stones on the outside edges.

"Oy, those are hideous!" Mini laughs. "Hey, come here, look at these."

Reeve meanwhile was left staring in shock as Mini beckoned to the next nearest He Row, still laughing up a storm.

2. Mini's Got A Gun

"Now this one," Mini says, when things calm down after the teasing about silly accessories from home. Reeve now wore his Protect ring on his finger to keep it easy to find until he can find Richie and put it on the man's finger. For now the cat was dragging over the largest box, one wrapped in orange.

"Clearly, as there are no others," Reeve said before gesturing for Mini to act.

The cat tears through the orange paper with all of the fervor of his form, shredding the paper as he went. Soon enough the feline was pulling the top off of a box and.

"Holy Mother Minerva!" Mini shouted in shock before falling back on his fluffy butt and scooting quickly away. "Is th-tha-that what I think it is!?"

"You're making a scene," Reeve sighed before reaching into the box with both hands and lifting the gift out. "Been a while since I saw one of these."

The man expertly checked to make sure that the safety on the semi-automatic rifle was on before he started field stripping the thing with casual efficiency.

"Seems to be in working order too. But of course they did not include a proper maintenance kit," he lamented as he checked the firing pin. "I shall have to ask Cayde or Soldier if they are equipped in such areas. It would be quite unfortunate to not keep such a fine piece of machinery in anything but pristine working conditions."

"Reeve, that's a gun!" Mini protested loudly. "We can't have one of those!"

"And yet," he said with a shrug before continuing his deconstruction and inspection, "would it not be nice to have a means to be protected in emergencies when my magic does not function?"

3. Tension In The Air

"Is it just me, or does this whole place feel like a ticking time bomb?"

The words are breathed just under Reeve's breath at breakfast the next morning. The lines for food in the Mess Hall are not lengthy, at least not this portion of it. Perhaps People are already tired of the faint peanut butter taste to many of the foods. Reeve... Well, he'd been driven enough in the process of repairs last time that he was pretty sure he had burnt his tastebuds out on the flavor and could no longer tell it was there anymore.

At last that's what he told himself as he stood in line for what looked like a slightly teal form of pancake that smelled of... honey and peanut butter of course. But hey, that combination of flavors might actually work.

Mostly, though, he was here to speak. With the way the Agrii felt like they watched him, the ones that wanted to thank him for repair help last time, and his quiet conversations with the AI the night before, well, he wanted to bounce some ideas off of any other 'He Row' he could.

And this one felt insanely pressing to him. The metaphor felt particularly fitting as well. He'd been in situations racing against ticking time bombs before after all. plus all of those executive level meetings that just as well could have been compared to one.

But there was always a chance this was all in his head. That the tension he read in the Agrii was just his own stress manifesting in a misreading between species. So the outside input was something he very much desired.