No Rest for the Wicked [Pine]

Yurusu Kessho, Earthbending Master of the Order of The Elements, sat in the common room of the Citadel of the Six Elements, engaged in the taxing activity of reclining on his favorite couch. He had the fireplace lit, and some tea made, set neatly on a table in front of the couch. Ever since he had been given his immortality, mere tea had not been enough to satisfy his thirst. Thus, he had combined both of his drinking interests, and mixed in an unhealthy dose of alcohol, dubbing it “The Gentleman's Liquor”. And, after about 15 minutes of experimenting, he had finally added enough sugar to make it taste OK.

He had just returned from his daily training session, murdering the local trees. However, this time he had decided to allow the trees to fight back. He had asked the servants of the citadel to built him an obstacle course, outside of the citadel- something challenging. They did not disappoint, delivering a level of danger that nearly made Yurusu squeal with delight. Flaming rings, swinging logs, ranged targets, jumps, water hazards.... it was perfect.
In exchange, Yurusu had donated a small portion of his monthly wages to the servants of the citadel (a large sum of money), as well as sewing them all silk robes, for free.

He was now contentedly, happily drinking his not-exactly-healthy tea, still wearing his combat attire; Leather combat boots, stretchable blue silk pants, with a center layer of platypus-bear hide, a dark-blue sleeveless, collared vest, and leather suspenders (with complementary iron spaulders), which held up a small piece of iron armor, that protected only his stomach region, though it also showed off his family’s insignia. Along with this, he wore two leather belts, and leather gloves.

Only one thing was missing: a good book. He stood up, walking to his room to get something he had been happily awaiting for a very, very long time: The next edition of the “Cave Steel” mystery novels. Yurusu had a certain weakness for mysteries- something about putting one's mind to the test, and figuring things out as the main character did, just made reading those so very intriguing. Curled up with his novel, he let out a sigh- after days of travel and adventure, relaxation was a wonderful thing.

As per most evenings Marisa could be found lying belly up on the roof of her apartments in the Citadel, reading. The sun was just barely kissing the horizon well on its way to set, in just a few minutes night would fall, and she'd been awake for just a couple of hours. As per most days. She enjoyed the solitude of the rooftops, and the climb to access them was easy enough for her to provide no challenge, which was nice given this was a routine she undertook every day just a few minutes after waking up.

She'd been up there for a little over an hour, enjoying the sunset and a bad book. The flavour of the day was a mystery novel, a stupendously badly written one which she had basically ripped through in an hour, enjoying the poorly developed plot and the horrendous penmanship far more than she should. In her book if it wasn't ridiculously bad it was no fun at all. Sadly this particular piece of trash was over, it had been shorter than she'd expected and in a single hour she'd managed to plough right through the whole of it. Usually she'd have lazed around the roof for a bit longer, but today her body reminded her she hadn't fed it yet in several hours with a long and loud growl. Tucking the book into her belt she walked up to the edge and began her way down, whistling an upbeat tune underneath her breath as she moved from handhold to handhold with grace and fluidity. Soon enough she was back at some room's window. Of course there were stairs that led up to the roof, but where was the fun in that? Plus she enjoyed the exercise, it kept her climbing skills from dulling completely.

She opened the window with ease, opening the locking mechanism by sliding a knife through the crack, literally the oldest trick in the book for thieves. Sliding the window aside she swung into the room, mildly surprised to find herself in the common area of the Citadel. By following the climbing holds rather than any specific path she'd essentially drifted away. She'd originally intended to return to her room, but this would do just fine. She'd climbed back into stranger places than this in the past. She made sure to close the window behind her as she looked around at what she guessed was the common area's kitchen. Maybe? Marisa spent most of her time secluded in her apartments, and given that she mostly lived during the night what point was there in going anywhere else. When she was awake the others were usually sleeping.

Her body reminded her she was hungry, and in a kitchen at that point with another loud growl, and she started to look around for something to eat, which as it turns out, in a kitchen, is pretty easy. Lifting the sleeves of her tunic past her elbows she got ready to cook.

A few minutes later she came out of the kitchen, balancing a plate topped high with a copious amount of various breakfast foods in one hand, and a heavy mug of tea spiked with a copious amount of the whiskey she always kept in her hip flask in the other.

Finding herself in what looked like a living room she made her way over to a large, plush looking armchair, careful not to lose any of the contents of her plate along the way. Upon reaching her destination she let herself fall over into the seat the plate placed carefully on her stomach, her feet slung over one armrest, her neck rested against the other with her head tipped back. It was around then that she realised that she wasn't alone at all. From her lounging position she could see someone else, a man, with black hair and wearing clothes that seemed far too geared for combat to be casual.

"Oh, hi there! You're Yurusu right?" she called out cheerfully, lifting her mug at him in greeting. Even though she rarely left her apartments she'd made it a point to look up what she could on the other mentors of the Order as soon as she'd arrived at the Citadel, something she was quite thankful for right now "What'cha reading there?"

Another member of the order- Marisa, was it?- sat down, in an armchair across from Yurusu. Truthfully, he hadn't even noticed her, until she had spoken. Either Yurusu had become far too absorbed in his book, or this girl had some kind of specialty in walking quietly. It was probably the first. You're Yurusu, right?” She said, snapping him out of his inner monologue. “Er, yes. You're Marisa, the.... Darkbending master, right?” Yurusu said. Upon further inspection, he noticed the mug in her hand. Getting up the gumption to ask her about it, he got ready to open his mouth (he wasn't exactly good at talking to women, you see.), when she beat him to the punch, asking what he was reading.

“Oh, this? A cheesy mystery novel. 'Cave Steel, and the Case of the Missing Diamond'. About as creative as any other earth kingdom name, but regardless, I can't get enough of it. I love the feeling of figuring things out as the hero does, or realizing something that was right under my nose the entire time. And, that feeling you get, when you have the mystery figured out, long before the reveal starts? Priceless.” Yurusu said. “Apologies- I tend to rant, when it comes to books. Might I inquire as to what you're drinking? It looks like tea, at a glance, but I’m afraid I can't tell much more, from this distance.”

Yurusu almost hoped she shared his passion for alcohol- it'd be nice to have a drinking buddy in the order. Among all this talk of “Save the world” this, and “What's best for the kingdom” that, something on the something-stupid-done-in-a-drunken-stupor side would not be unwelcome. He briefly wondered exactly where a drunken stupor could take the order- surely it would be destructive, the order being the six strongest benders the world has seen. Perhaps they could all go out, in drunken merriment, and level a village or two. That'd be a nice change of pace...

“Er, yes. You're Marisa, the.... Darkbending master, right?”

'Dark bending master huh? Could have fooled me...' she'd never really thought of it that way, but he was right. She was the dark bending master. The only one in the Order.

"Yeah, I guess I am," she replied, a note of levity creeping into her tone, strongly implying just how unsure she was about the legitimacy of the title. Weren't masters supposed to be these staunch, stoic, heroic individuals who could solve everything and who never made any mistakes? Well no, of course they weren't, she knew that, thinking that way was as silly as a kid thinking that all adults had all the answers to all the problems in all the world. Then again kids did actually think that...

She shoved the thoughts out of her head, cramming her mouth full of food  as she listened to the tailor talking about his book. The way he had looked so unsure when he'd noticed her had been rather endearing, but now he was all fired up about the novel, which was equally endearing actually. Still, Cave Steel? Was that supposed to be the protagonist's name?

During his rambling she took the opportunity to reposition herself, swivelling the chair in order to turn it to face him, sitting cross-legged in the armchair with her plate placed securely in her lap, all the while continuously shovelling food into her mouth.

Yurusu's question caught her at the rather unfortunate time when her mouth was pretty much jam packed with eggs making it impossible to for her to speak. Not like that had ever stopped her from trying though, plus she had a gut feeling something a little ridiculous from her part might make this man a little more comfortable. And thus she made an attempt at speech that was doomed to fail from the get go. All her endeavour produced was enough air to blast out a few egg crumbs out of her mouth, which she hurriedly tried to catch, flailing her arms in a surprisingly effective effort.

After the wayward food crumbs were returned to their rightful place (her mouth), she proceeded to take a long swig from her mug, which helped her dispense of the food in a single gulp.

"Phew... Sorry about that," she chuckled sheepishly, clearing her throat a couple of times. "To address your question this little old number right here is what I like to call Tea 'a la Marisa'. It's basically two parts tea, two parts whiskey in the biggest mug you can find. Every now and then I'll mix it up by throwing in an extra measure of sake, but that's for when I want to get as drunk as possible as fast as possible, not for when I simply want to enjoy a nice soothing cup of non-boring tea.

"More importantly though, Cave Steel? Really? That's like a Water Tribe author naming their hero Ice Sea, or Night Moon..." and for a moment there she paused, remembering that the book she'd been reading just a few moments ago had featured two characters that had those exact names. "Damn... Modern authors are really bad at naming their characters. Sooner or later we'll get 'The Adventures of Moon Moon'," she muttered as she took another sip of her mug's content. Her lips curved in a devious smile. "We'll plumb new lows in literary quality. I cant wait."

((OOC: Sorry I took a while to post anything up. I got some bad news in the last few days and I've been feeling out of it for a while, still am))