#*annoyed growling at arfur*

[blackjackkent]

There are two major questions regarding taking Rakha through Rivington. The first is what order to do things; based on my previous banter posts, the group's immediate top priority is seeing what's going on with the refugees.

The second, more important question is how I convince her to visit the circus, which I don't have an answer for yet. :P I think it will probably have something to do with Wyll saying he liked Dribbles when he was a kid. But we'll worry about that later.

For now, we'll start off with the refugees, because Wyll and Minthara have both, for different reasons, expressed concern about them not being let into the city. (And Lae'zel approved of them helping Yenna, and realistically Jaheira must have expressed approval for all of this too even though the game didn't have her do so.) All of which is good reason for Rakha to consider it a priority, given how often she follows their examples.

Upon walking into Rivington proper, she's presented with an immediate first chance to get involved in the refugee crisis, as represented by a merchant in fine clothes arguing with a man who looks like he hasn't slept or had a bath in a week.

"The place was empty!" the man yelps defensively as Rakha approaches. "Keep those thugs away from my family!"

"Zenovia!" the merchant wails petulantly. "Get these squatters out of my house - now."

The woman at his side - Zenovia - is dressed in fairly well-kept armor and has a sword on her back; Rakha's attention immediately homes in on her, disregarding the two men in favor of this woman as the only threat in the immediate vicinity.

"Arfur, sweetheart," the woman says, with a slow, nasty smile, "you paid me and my boys to be caravan guards, not cattle wranglers. If you want us to get our hands dirty, it'd be our pleasure - but that'll be extra."

She has a casual unpleasantness about her that strikes Rakha as familiar but takes her a moment to place, until she remembers Aradin, the mercenary at the Grove who abandoned Halsin to the goblin camp. The one who called Rakha half-breed.

This woman is like him, then. Another merc, then. Rakha, as a result, dislikes her immediately.

"What's going on?"(*) she asks curtly.

"I just want to remove these unlawful interlopers from my property!" the merchant - Arfur - says stridently. He seems mildly unnerved by the strange shadow-touched half-orc staring him down, but not enough to undermine his concern for his material goods.

(A/N: Literally none of the available responses here are particularly Rakha-ish, but the Dark Urge-specific one is funny, so we'll go with that.)

Rakha looks at him with an air of mild perplexity and cocks her head slowly to one side like a dog solving a puzzle. "None of this would have happened," she says, serious as a funeral, "if you had a butler manning the house."

No one seems to know what to say to this - except Wyll, who (as the only one who heard Rakha's full, chaotic explanation of Sceleritas the night she almost lost control) is able to clock this as the rare instance of Rakha (deeply unsure of what to do) making a joke. He chuckles low in his throat, and sees her mouth tug up almost imperceptibly in satisfaction.

Arfur, meanwhile, just has no idea what she's talking about. He stares at her for a long moment, then presses on as if she hadn't said anything.

"Look - I have some very valuable components in there," he whines. "I need to get that lot out before they damage something."

Rakha doesn't deeply care about this man or his house. She doesn't really care instinctively about the refugees either, but she knows Wyll does. And she doesn't like his merc companion. By all this logic, she already was sided against Arfur. But she isn't sure of the correct way out of this situation.

Certainly not what the beast in her head wants, which is to kill the lot of them and take the house for herself.

"Mind if I take a look?" she asks tightly. Perhaps she can retrieve the "components" Arfur mentions and get him to go away.

If she expected a good response, she doesn't get it. Arfur straightens up indignantly and wails, "Who do you think you are?! Zenovia - people are lining up to break into my property! Do something about it!"

The mercenary's lips curl again in that nasty grin. "You paid us to protect you and your high-quality merchandise on the road," she drawls. "And we've since arrived at our destination. As I said, anything else is extra."

Arfur scowls, patting his pockets and pulling out a handful of gold. "Ugh," he mutters. "This is the last time I hire someone from the Guild. Fine. Here's the extra. Finish. The. Job." He turns and stares at Rakha balefully. "Now please show this meddler some of that famous Rivington hospitality."

Rakha is still in the process of determining what this means when an arrow goes whistling past her ear and lodges in the wood wall behind her. Immediately her vision goes white and fire flares around her hands as the urge into violence, thus pushed, takes over everything else.

It never ends, she manages to think bitterly. As before, so now. Even when I try to follow a better path. The beast still ends up with what it wants in the end.

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(*) Full line in game: "Calm down and tell me what's going on." Adjusted to be more Rakha-ish.