Finally, I'm Here [ER/Exam/Intro]

“Your Majesty. Someone is approaching the castle.” A blond haired man had muttered as he approached the dinning hall table and leaned down to the ear of a white haired woman. She smiles ever so sweetly as she sets a teacup down and takes a deep breath. “Lets go greet them.” She grins as she stands up. Her heels clacked down the hall in a rhythm as she passed various trophies her guild had accumulated throughout the year. Clack… Clack… Clack… To say she wasn’t proud of each and every one of these trophies; ranging from dazzling jewels, to heads on a plaque, and even rings on a finger; would be a crime not even she could handle. Or so she felt that was the case. Once again, the white queen was loving that she created the guild of Errings Rising. It was a paradise. The home of everyone’s hopes and dreams, regardless if they realized it or not.

She passed by a window and glanced out it, noticing the flaming blue steps made by the person walking up. She raised an eyebrow and smirked a bit. “Let's make haste, Bertrand!” She started to pick up her pace and down to the main hall. Her heels clicked slightly louder and faster as she avoided the carpet in the middle of the hallway. Clack! Clack! Clack! Bertrand was just a couple steps behind her, keeping pace, but not overpowering her as she walked. The white haired woman threw open the front doors of the castle as she approached it, making the guards, that were next to it, surprised by their queen's sudden appearance.

She had entered the courtyard just as the front doors were opened and the smokey figure was within her walls. Her light grey, off the shoulder, long sleeved dress that had a deep plunge between her breasts and exposed her guild symbol, two cutouts on the sides to show her waist, and thigh high slit on her right thigh flowed against the change of wind. The dress had a gold trim along the neckline and a couple pink gems adorned on it. One was holding the plunge of the neckline slightly together and concealing part of her cleavage, while the second held part of the slit on her thigh together, not letting the dress move farther than the slit could go. “Normally people wait outside to be let in!” She calls out as she grins her own toothy grin filled with sharp teeth. “You don’t make your approach a secret at all, do you?” She giggles as she skipped down the short steps and approaches the man with barely any skin on his body.

She crossed her arms, putting one of her hands on her chin as she looked him over. Her pinkish purple eyes glaring over his appearance. Her lips were lightly tinted red, making them pop against her pale skin. “Who are you? And why are you here?” She asks, leaning forward a little bit. She seemed slightly unaware of how her chest was working on spilling out of the top of her dress, just barely staying in the confinements of the clothing and kept her as modest as it could. The blond was behind the woman, eyes casted down a bit as he quietly waited for her orders. “Bertrand! Do we have any better clothes we can put him into?” The woman questions as she stood straight again and turned around, letting the bottom of her dress flow around as she did so. The man looked up to her finally, glancing over towards the new man here, then raised an eyebrow. “We do, your highness, but should we wait for his answer to your questions first?” He questions her. A pout was on her lips as she slumped her shoulders. Of course her servant had to be reasonable with her. With a deep sigh, she turned back around, crossing her arms under her chest.

As she was addressed as the 'boss', a cheeky grin came across her face. Of course she was excited to be addressed as so. She looked him over and wondered for a moment about something. As she tapped her chin, she got in close to him again after he introduced himself. "Maybe we can find some clothes that are fireproof for you then, hmm, Juuya?" She let his name slip off her tongue in a slightly drawled out voice. His story got to her. She couldn't deny it. She then quickly snapped herself back up straight and held a hand out over her shoulder. "Bertrand!"

It barely took a second before a stamp was in her hands, given by her butler behind her. She holds it in front of her as she cheekily giggles. "I've heard that my stamp is able to keep people warm on this mountain. I wouldn't know as I'm used to Iceberg's cold." She shrugged her shoulders.

"Your highness, I have concerns…" Bertrand mutters while tapping her shoulder gingerly. "He only says he heard all about 'your guild', but who's to know he's not here to go against you and harm the guild to take it down?" He wasn't being quiet about his distrust. Saraphina taps her chin a bit, but leans forward. "If I give you this stamp, you have to prove your worth to me, alright?" Her own teeth exposed to show their sharpness as she held out the stamp to him. Her grin never left her lips. "There so happens to be a traitor or five among my guards that I need you to ever so dearly take care of for me. Care to help a queen out with a minor problem?" She batted her white eyelashes to him as she held her hands behind her back. She glanced towards the side of the courtyard and smirked at the noise that was slowly roaring.

The guards were exiting the castle to start some training outside. Nearly as soon as they made it to the training fields, they were smashing their weapons together in training combat. Some were rougher than others, and a few were watching the battles in passing as the remaining ones trained on their own with their weapons or in hand in hand combat. It was a mixture of humans and demons together in the field, and Saraphina simply thought it was marvelous to see all them together. "I should probably arrange to see Birch once again…" She mumbles as she thought of something else idly.

---

Betrand, was it? He was the cautious type, and rightfully so. With a guild like this, true followers were probably few and far between. It took a lot of weakness to give up your very will to someone for a cause instead of harnessing it on your own, and so betrayal was probably common or at least an issue to think about. 'Course, it would also be impossibly difficult to build any following if there were loyalty tests on the first meeting.

Juuya only smiled when Betrand mumbled about his suspicious character, a sort of 'oh my, I'd never!' sort of smile. The process continued before the woman had gestured over to the side of the courtyard, where a bunch of men and women armed with weapons were practicing on each other. Seriously, how depressing was this place? Something about the whole vibe of the place was just incredibly underwhelming. But Juuya couldn't blame them, it wasn't like they had made any real progress, so there probably wasn't much of a celebratory, "command and conquer" atmosphere.

"'Course," Juuya replied, walking over to the group with his thumb and index finger slowly rubbing together like a sort of money gesture. The closer he got to the group, the more the smell of smoke and cinder filled the air. One unfortunate unsuspecting man was slowly catching aflame, his body slowly swallowed into a blue flame that wouldn't stop burning. There wasn't any rhyme or reason for his selection, but he wanted to make a clear example out of him since it wasn't like he had any information about these traitors. Hell, the woman didn't say anything other than that five of them were, in fact, traitors. It'd be easier to just burn them all. He screamed and rolled around on the ground, trying to squash the flames, but failed. He'd squirm around until his agonizing wails were no more, and nothing but a charred corpse was sprawled across the courtyard ground. Everyone stared in a mixture of shock and horror. "Alllright everyone!" Juuya dusted off his hands, smiling stupidly, "Five of you are traitors, right? If you tell me who you are now, we can prevent another one of these," he rubbed his thumb and finger against each other again, and the woman who was sparring with the now dead guard caught aflame too, except this time she didn't die as quickly, instead, writhing on the courtyard floor with heart-wrenching screams.

No one said anything at first, just staring with a look of shock and terror. When Juuya did another, progress wasn't made then either. People just started to panic judging by the looks on their faces. Clicking his tongue, Juuya turned to look at Betrand and the 'Queen' of this place.

"This isn't goin' anywhere," he shrugged with a small smile, "you have more of them, right?"

It'd be easier to just burn them all, honestly.

---

Saraphina watched eagerly as her new friend walked off towards the group of soldiers. She tapped her fingers together slowly as she waited patiently. She wanted to see how he would deal with this situation. Her purplish pink eyes admired his handiwork as he burnt one of the people alive, snickering to herself as she put her hands together in front of her mouth and grinned devilishly behind them. As soon as the courtyard got quiet though, that’s when the queens excitement seemed to just get harder and harder for her to contain, especially with the charred body. She peered forward as this Juuya fellow turned back towards her and her servant.

A grin spread farther across her face. “Why, yes! I do have more soldiers! Have you come to a conclusion on who’s my traitor or traitors?” She giggles while she started skipping forward some. She stopped a short distance from Juuya and the group, holding her hands behind her back as she sways her hips from side to side and watched on. Her sharp teeth flashing at them. Some of the soldiers were starting to pale a bit at the site of her teeth as she eyed them over. “How do you plan to deal with my… traitor problem…?” She giggles ever so sweetly as she bit her bottom lip and continued to sway more. She quickly gasped and put a hand over her chest while looking at the platoon of people… or well less than what a platoon was now she suppose.

“How can there be a traitor?! You just put us all together just a few days ago from our original groups!” Someone got brave finally to speak up, and Sara simply shrugged her shoulders as she closed her eyes, it was hard for her to hide her smile as she was practically vibrating with excitement.

---

It was all very entertaining at the very least, putting the severely burned man to work as soon as he finished scaling the cold and hazardous mountain. Unless he sat down and interrogated every one of them, Juuya had no leads as far as who was a traitor and who wasn't, but even then it was hard to tell just what she meant by 'traitor'. Did they rat her out to the cops? Sabotage some sort of grand plan? Maybe they just weren't feeling the vision anymore and that in itself was traitorous? Juuya didn't know and didn't really care about loyalty to begin with, as long as he got to where he wanted to go. This felt more like taking care of someone's roach infestation rather than squashing out law and order. The whole hierarchy was sort of ironic too. For a guild all about anarchy, who really cared about traitors and this woman who had asked him to deal with them anyway? It was all just one big, selfish lie. Respect, leadership, being ordered around—how could you believe in someone who didn't live up to the purpose of the guild? Maybe he was being overly critical of something that didn't even matter at this point in time, but it was food for thought nonetheless.

"How? Aw, well, shoot. That's sort of a loaded question, ain't it?" Juuya bashfully ruffled the back of his messy black hair, grinning quizzically, "Betrayal doesn't have a grace period where it can't possibly show up, you know? Sometimes it shows up spontaneously and sometimes it builds up like a bomb about to explode. But who could blame you? If everyone had the same world view, it'd all be pretty boring, huh? I mean, half of the fun is seeing whose world view is right, yeah? But ya' know, that's fine and all, but once that bomb finally goes... KABOOM!" Juuya suddenly flashed his hands out from fists, and someone from the crowd abruptly burst into blue flames, his grin suddenly looking much more playfully sinister, "...it can get just a little irritating for the rest of us!"

Aw, man, when did he get like this? To a point where he could feel nothing at all to see a human life smothered under his flames? When did he start wanting nothing more than to see others suffer like he did? He had told everybody that it was just the Council who he had a bone to pick with, but taking it out on the oblivious ones felt good too. Why should the world move on and leave him with all that pain he had withstood? How fair was it that he had lost everything and yet there were people out there who didn't even know that lab existed? The lab had been raided and their research shut down prematurely, but it wasn't like those researchers lost their skin or had their tear ducts scorched so horribly that they couldn't even cry, so how was that fair? His sense of time was all wrong—years and years of life stolen from him for the sake of tests and research. But it was all over now, right? He was free, wasn't he? He wasn't allowed to be upset, and how dare he be angry at everyone for what they didn't do! Seriously, how fair was that?

"Well I asked 'cuz I wanted to make sure you had replacements after today," Juuya peered back at the woman with his hands pocketed casually and lazy eyes drooping with muse, the group of guards or whatever they were flinching at the mention of replacements, "I mean, if no one's gonna fess up, they must all be guilty, right? So..."

"It—It was him!" said one young man in a shakey voice, pointing at another, much burlier man just standing next to him. "I-I see him write these... l-letters every night! I don't know what he writes... but he always gets up late at night when no one is around! He has to be the traitor!"

"What?! That's nonsense! You don't honestly believe him, do you?!" the burly man suddenly spoke up, a hand over his chest as he tried to convince the burning man before them who was looking at them with disinterest. "I don't write letters at such hours!"

"That's not true! I know where you hide them! It's underneath your mattress, just on top of your bed frame! You can check for yourself, it's true!" the freckled boy looked upset now, "I'm-I'm not going to die because of you!"

It was starting to get interesting now, Juuya also wondering what could have been in those letters. Was it some sort of sabotage or intel that could make or break a future mission? Or was it something menial and irrelevant like a letter writing home? Neither were particularly eye-catching to Juuya, but he couldn't help but be a little curious of it all.

"That's just insane! What about you, then?! Every time we polish the equipment, you always take longer than anyone else! I always thought that maybe you were just not cut out for that sort of thing, but you probably were sabotaging them! It shouldn't take that long to put some weapons together, I mean, really!" the burly man pointed at the freckled one with a look of conviction in his furious eyes, "Come on! If anyone's the traitor, it's you!"

Juuya sighed now, smiling as he reeled his head back to stretch out the knots in his shoulders. Honestly, things were starting to get intense, weren't they? He wasn't not expecting this sort of outcry to break out, but it felt so much like one of the soap operas he heard about. Who to believe? Who to trust? So many questions he simply did not have the answers to!

"Oh geeez...."

---

The white queen was smiling softly to herself as she watched Juuya do his thing still. His response to her question had her pursing her lips as she tapped her fingers together in anticipation. She nodded to his own comments about betrayal and the like. She gasped and grinned rather wide as she saw another member in the platoon get burnt now. She looked up to Juuya, and nodded slowly. As he mentioned why he wanted to make sure she had replacements, she smiled rather devilishly, enough to show off her sharp teeth to the group.

“Oh my, you have no idea how irritating betrayal can be! I’ve been hearing rumors that there was a cute little vigilante group that thought they could infiltrate my guild to take us down and restore ‘peace to the lands’! That’s the source of my ‘traitor’ problem. I just feel ashamed even talking about it to a stranger~!” Her acting was obviously fake as she put a hand on her chest, and the other on her cheek and leaned into that hand while she did so. “If you absolutely must kill them all, then by all means, do as you must!” She peeked an eye at him as she was waiting to hear the reply.

She absolutely was not listening to the accusations of the others as she stood there. She begun leaning closer to Juuya as she closed her eyes. She had covered her mouth and was struggling to hide her laughter as the panicked accusations continued to fly around. “What if I told you all… that it was this whole platoon I made here?” She asks as her white eyelashes slowly opened to expose her purplish pink orbs once more to them. Her cheeky grin continued to stay on her face. Bertrand was sighing behind her as she gave it away so soon. She then looked at Juuya and giggled a bit. “If you truly think it was all of them, feel free to deal with them how you like, okay? And if you think it might have been a handful of them, let me know and you can deal with them.” She clapped her hands together and giggles as she sways from side to side. She couldn’t wait to see how he dealt with the traitors. His magic already made her feel giddy about him joining the guild. She looked behind her at Bertrand, and giggled as she looked back to Juuya. “Whichever you choose… why don’t you tell me where you want your guild stamp after, hm?” She waved the little stamp she had held at the side of her hand towards him.