Desert Samurai

Soujiro Seta is often heard and seen training. Training training training. Training and being social. He exudes that dog energy of 'I love the fact I exist' where ever he goes. So it is of excellent benefit to be so positively aligned when traveling around a place that is mostly heat, sand, and more sand. The second floor of Aincrad is a desert. An arid wind blows against the golden dunes and against the flowy Edo period samurai kimono that the blue haired warrior wears. "The Tower always has such unique challenges to it," he says as he pads through the hot sands. A couple field mob skeletons head towards at the slow and predictable undead pace. "Gil-san believes there is a ghost knight out here. He fought them before."

Goldenblade rode through the second floor desert on a horse with a name. It felt good to get out of the rain. In the desert, you can't remember ... well, at her age, there's so much she can't remember, desert or no, that she can't remember everything she's forgotten. It makes life complicated. But she will call out, "Hello!" as she rides closer. Seta might not have heard Goldenblade complaining about pekos before, but she's clearly put her money where her mouth is, so to speak, and is riding a horse despite it being all-around less efficient of a riding animal. It does have one huge advantage over a peko. You don't feel like an absolute dork riding one. "Hello!" she calls, now from closer.

Soujiro Seta raises a hand to wave and flag Goldenblade down. Souji is a friend to animals so all animals are welcome. "Goldenblade, good to see you here," he says with that bright smile that just radiates natural goodness. Even the horse seems at ease around the samurai, being charmed into the fanclub. Whats this? An introductory apple? Souji hand feeds with one hand and pets with the other. its normally NOT a good idea to be so familiar with a strange horse, but Souji's aura of 'Hello, I am a Samurai and I lurve you' Doug style wins out. He doesnt lose a hand in the process. "What brings you out here? Grinding for materials?" he asks, as he focuses on the hoss. Good hoss.

Goldenblade's horse is, necessarily, entirely tame and docile, because she has almost no riding skill of her own. Luckily, she manages not to fall off as the horse chooses Soujiro over her and will munch the apple happily while Goldenblade is just along for the ride. "It's good to see you, also," she says to Soujiro, and nods about looking for materials. "Indeed. What brings /you/ out here?" she wonders curiously.

Soujiro Seta gives the horse a pet along the snout as the affection meter soars. The smiling samurai turns his attention to Goldenblade and the dismount shortly after. It gives him ideas. Ideas to try new things. Like fighting on a horse or Peko and some sweet dismount attacks. "Training!" he says, if not a bit predictably. This kid is always training. Like his hero is Goku or something. "Gil-san is helping me regain the skill and levels I lost during the expansion that set us back to the start. I've been doing what I know, but there is So. Much. More. Now." This might upset some but there are practically stars in Souji's blue eyes when thinking about getting to New Game+ ETO. A dry wind blows against his long hair and gives his ponytail that mysterious samurai look. Only its Souji. Not mysterious. "There is a named mob around here, a kind of ghost knight. So I'm doing recon. Find out his spawn time and conditions. If there are triggers. Plus this brings back memories of climbing the tower with the Tea Party way back when." He isn't entirely sentimental to events of the past, but he does hold his fellow DBTs in such high regard its silly.

Goldenblade can at least hop -off- a horse without hurting herself. Jumping off is fine, and it holds still in case there are more apples. Well, you never know. Goldenblade rubs the small of her back, then nods about training. "Good," she says. "Constant training will build you up," she says, and is known, herself, as a full-time-training person. She, herself, had just started when all the older players got de-levelled, so it wasn't a shock to her, and she didn't really even understand what had happened until someone explained it to her in small words. But she's come pretty far, too. Mainly by hard work.

As far as named mobs, she listens and nods, "I see." She knows zilch about lore, or what was here before, but it's okay, she has no skill to find things, either. "Can I help?" she asks anyhow. Because searching for ore is boring as hell.

"Of course you are welcome," Soujiro says like it as normal as peanut butter being with jelly. The samurai has a natural stride across the dunes as the two go looking for hints of the rare named monster. "I like fighting," he says somewhat out of nowhere, "I always have. We are really fortunate to get to be able to do it in such a fun way. Like the heroes in the mangas that protect people." Its a lofty idea but his voice is rather calm. "I put in for the tournament this year, but they let me know I might not get admitted. So I was thinking I could help out at your academy sparring with the contestants. See if that helps warm them up." There is this warm wind that blows over as he shifts over the dunes, "So other people can enjoy fighting, too." He has a bit of an athlete's mindset with a mind to boot. Somehow. SOMEHOW his intuitions outpace most smurt thinkings though. Must have been born under a blessed star or something. "Are you going to compete?"

Goldenblade smiles to SOujiro and will help him search for clues. She has a very critical eye, when she's aiming for something, and looking for a specific thing like a footprint, she is ... well, she's focused like an arrow, which is unlike her. "There, is that like what you're looking for?" she asks, pointing.

As far as competing, she shakes her head. "I embarassed myself badly enough in the first tournament," she explains. "There's a different dynamic when you're fighting an individual face to face that you don't get when you have allies at your side and waves of enemies. And bricklaying doesn't work with that dyamic. So I'm pretty terrible at PVP. But I enjoy the game, exploring, fighting monsters, the making things and building. It's pretty interesting, it really does feel a bit like a new world sometimes."

Soujiro Seta tries to picture Goldenblade embarassing herself. "Did you forget to equip your weapon and armor?" though even that sparks Soujiro to think of how epic that would be. "Extreme training!" He isnt saying he IS going to try fighting without armor, but there is the point to be said about what Soujiro wears as armor normally. The red armor is Heavy class armor, like Plate. His current is Light class. "It is a great world," he says as he thinks about Elder Tales. It is a bit of a skewed opinion for a member of SEA, but thats the way he feels about it nonetheless.

Souji checks the footprint and shakes his head, "No, I think the ghost would leave something different. But I've never seen him so maybe! Lets mark it anyway." He pulls up his menu and marks it down. His strategic skills are the POLAR OPPOSITE of Shiroe. It looks more like Nathan Drake's adventure book instead of a thing of academia. "I find that sparring with someone helps you see who they are better. You did bricklaying, right? So your body has this story all of its own and it lets me appreciate them for their unique qualities." In that way, no two people are completely alike. "Miho has this really strong overhead strike I imagine she gets from smithing. But its not just that. There is this one hand jab she does as well and its in the footwork. She is strong and graceful both. I wouldn't be able to see that side of her if we didn't get to train together." There is this warm smile on his face, "So even if I don't join in, I'll be cheering for them in the stands. We don't even know how strong we can get now!"

Goldenblade smirks about forgetting to equip weapons, and says, "Not as bad as that. But my skill selection was much more limited. It was as a result of finding there's so few skills for regular people," non-magical, she means, "that drove me to start the Academy in the first place. I'm probably much better now in a fight than I was then, just due to my own growth and skill development."

As far as plate, she's wearing light armor, and it's the heaviest she can wear, though she's training for yhe heavy stuff. "Constant training is important. Continuous Process Improvement. Deming convinced the business execs, and they pushed it on all of us, and damned if it didn't transform our industry. It's a bit of a shock when a thing works as advertised." She chuckles.

As far as personal skills, she says, "I don't know if my body has a story, but this is definitely not my body." She looks down at herself, sighs, grumbles. "My son told me I'd look like myself in the game, so I didn't think about trying to look different. I just took a look at some of the other character models and clicked to continue. And it took the last one I was looking at, instead of looking like me. I don't know what story this body might have."

Soujiro Seta thinks about it for a moment. "Its like," he takes a moment to really look at Goldenblade for a moment. Not just the basics like how tall, build, hair color and other notables that might be important if interrogated. It is the /small/ things. How does one stand. Do the idle in a still position or do they figit. Crossing their arms over thier body. Where do their eyes go. Yet Soujiro takes it from a place of EQ over IQ. "It definately does. Its not quite who we are, but who we are now. Hah, I don't know how to explain it all that well. We are who we are and each one of us has something special to say if you go looking for it. The word that come to mine for you is how I see determination. You walk with a purpose, act with a purpose. There are things in your way and you work through them or past them. So if I struck you in a spar I might find that you approach things direct and honest with a steady path ahead of you." Its not winning or losing for Soujiro. Its a conversation. He had achieved some notoriety before the whole reset, but he barely noticed it happening because he was in love with the process and not the results.

"Continuous Process Improvement," the samurai echoes, "I recall my father talking about that a couple times. Great dad, really kept me going with my studies."

Goldenblade smirks about Soujiro's dad talking about process improvement. "Well, Deming happened to Japan just a few years before I got here, so it was all new and fresh, then, and very at-odds with the authoritarian way of thinking that's far more common here. You follow orders because a person has been put in charge, and they must be the right orders. To doubt that is to question the wisdom of whoever put that person over you. Americans do it all the time, but that's very alien to Japanese. I'm American, so I grew up polite, but if a supervisor told me to do something wrong or unsafe, I wouldn't. Not so, over here. Deming's process went entirely counter to that, but it eventually won out, and things started improving. Product quality, certainly. You still see it wth the Koreans, though, they've had several air accidents in recent years because the junior pilots won't question or correct the senior ones when they do it wrong."

She sighs. That's a bit of a peeve with her, and why she'll never fly KAL ever. Not that it'd come up here.

"But if you see determination in me, then I guess that's right enough. I'm no shirker like a lot of kids today. They had it too easy growing up. Never failed, never had to tough it out, or go the extra mile. I'm no stranger to working hard, though. That's how we did it when I ws growing up."