Nobody

"Uh... you... too? Ren, wasn't it?" Still baffled by the compliment, Nobody was personally ill-equipped to deal with the knights' genuine sincerity and found himself disarmed by it. No one bothered with Nobody. No helped Nobody. Few ever deigned to acknowledge his existence, let alone leave room for friendship. He hadn't bothered to even remember his own name, so accustomed had he become to fading into the background. Yet here was a stranger willing to lend him a hand, arm him and check to make sure that he was actually alright. Even Celeste didn't manage that much, and she was the clo

Two pounding fists crashed into the drift on either side of them. The ground turned to powder and infiltrated every joint and crevasse as it washed over them. Nobody skidded past the giant ice golem's feet while twirling in circles on this back, the waterproof lining in his coat apparently doubling as an excellent crazy carpet. He just waved casually at it as he sailed past. The thing roared so loudly in outrage that a separate nearby mountain peak collapsed. Avalanche causing an avalanche? Lewd. Sensing that this probably wasn't the best viable sleeping spot, Nobody searched for alt

No one left with Nobody. 'Perfect!' he thought, eager to just slink away and go back to devotedly doing nothing on his terms, likely in a hammock strung up in some unobtrusive corner of the universe. That was all he really ever wanted. People got too worked up about stuff and things that really didn't matter, at least so far as he considered. But consideration had never really been all that great a strong suit for him. Nobody was more about living in the moment, usually because someone else forced him to or fate did. No matter how hard he tried to keep out of the universe's way, it alway

"Ugh... I didn't sign up for this." Nobody looked like he was just about ready to wretch. Pulling out a stick of half-eaten jerky, he busied himself making pathetic snow angels in the sand, failing miserably in the attempt. Thinking he might bury himself instead and get left behind, he came bursting back out of his pocket a few moments later when holding his breath became too much of a thing. "Is he dead yet," he asked Quip, who seemed as much terrified as enraptured by whatever she was watching on the far side of the ridge. "I honestly don't know why Celeste likes that guy. He's wa

"Is this some sort of punishment from Celeste, because I swear: that comment about her backside was taken completely out of context." Excuses and denials had been falling from his lips since spoopy-dude had woken him from his third most-favourite dream. It was the one with the flying whales and rain made of money collected by his infinite harem of buxom, scantily clad waifus. Nobody has simple motivations and ambitions. Actually, he had neither of those, but if he had it seemed likely that they would lead him in that direction. "Wait... am I being Shanghai-ed?!" Freyd just smiled.

Leaping over the side, Nobody missed the chain and would have fallen all the way to the city below, had some random bit of debris not slammed into him and sent him flying laterally at just the right angle. Inept as he was, the man's luck was simply unparalleled. Fortune even smiled enough to have him land on a pile of discarded uniforms left out on the open deck for the next trash run to pick-up. Ifrit must have been in dock when all this chaos began, and no one had bothered to clear them out yet. Another lucky break. Rising from the pile, someone's frilly underpants clinging to each

"Get them ready to board. We take as many of these damn ships and turncoat them. Then, off with the king's head!" Wait. What? Wasn't that blue dude down below the King? The one who's had his face blown off by that Death Star laser blast. Players seemed to be rallying all around him, dragging the NPC back to his feet and applying some serious defibrillation in the process. Dangling from the side of his own ship, finally ceasing his pointless flailing, Nobody just waved at them as the Black Raven went by. Rough tugs pulled him back to the deck. Several barely recognizable crew me

Worst. Nap. EVER. IT was so thoughtful of whoever was piloting this rickety, rockety, tin-can ship-of-a-thing to sway back and forth the way they did. The...erm... 'gentle' motion must have been meant to help him fall asleep, right? Or so Nobody had assumed, until he swung and burned his ass on the super-heated... was it a boiler? Suddenly, knobs were popping and lights were flashing all around him. And, for goodness' sake, all the noise, noise, NOISE! Grumbling in growing annoyance, he'd tossed and turned for a whole five minutes, but couldn't find a comfortable spot with the

Nobody knew exactly what he was good for, and it sure as heck didn't include whatever the rest of these goons were up to. How did he get roped into this mess? AGAIN?! All he'd wanted was a quiet place to rest while Armageddon raged across Ladonia, and Aincrad, and the whole damned universe, for all he cared. Staring up at the crazed, red-haired woman as she sailed skyward - more skyward, as they were on an airship - he winked and gave her a solid two-fingered salute accentuated by a borrowed bicorn hat, matching flipped-up eye patches and a wide assortment of colourful parasols. The latte

It had actually required a fair bit of effort to wander through the pressing throngs of mutually angry mobs pounding their way through the castle in one direction or another. Some wore red, other blue. Blue tended to stab red, and then vice versa. Messy. Noisy. Tiring. He just wanted to sit down and catch his breath for a few minutes, and maybe have a drink or two, then a nap. A nap would be nice. Somewhere nice and quiet, preferably warm and void of homicidal maniacs asserting the dominance of a particular hue. He didn't have a map, and had no clue what this place even was. Watc

Eyes bulging at whatever notion had possessed him to do such a recklessly rebellious action, Nobody wondered at how he could possibly follow up. He had no experience with leadership, and actively avoided it, and responsibility of any kind, whenever and wherever he could. The romantic Bohemian lifestyle of old suited him best, wrapped in artistic frivolity and lost to his whims without care. Maybe that was what drove him to open the gates in the first place - swept up in the moment. Yeah. That made sense. "Here," he said, to some nameless NPC wheelwright, or cobbler, or baker, handing

*Hack* *Sputter* *Cough* "What the heck is wrong with you people?!" Nobody gasped and pulled his collar free from the woman who may just have saved his life after endangering it in the first place. Weary eyes surveyed their surroundings, seeing the mad monarch in red and the blonde proselytizer dangling on various bits of the giant idol of Razwell, both off their rockers in a way that could see them fly over a cuckoo's nest. Madness hadn't just gripped the state of Ladonia, but also the players within it. With rasp for voice, he cried out in anger and frustration, suddenly preferr

Nobody's eyes widened at the realization of their imminent collision with Ladonia's central tower, not to mention the complete lack of pre-martyrtdom in-flight snacks. Inconceivable! "Nuh-uh. Not going out like this. You kooks can keep arguing about which one of you makes the better Ahab, but Nobody's getting out of here!" Rushing about the deck, the Captain Crunch wannabe handed out his assortment of gathered umbrellas, keeping the brightest, yellowest one for himself. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your impending demise. Local time is irrelevant and the temperature is ab

"You reek." "Oh, uh... thanks?" Nobody took the insult as a compliment, somehow twisting it internally to mean that he had a super-winning personality. "And so do you!" he offered, cheerfully waving in response as she departed hastily. 'So many nice people had joined the crew,' he thought to himself. The remaining crystals in this arms fell with a clatter and shattered, spearing his poor moose-covered feet with shrapnel. "Awww... nuts." Shrugging off the injuries, as he did everything else, Nobody resumed his search, interrupted by the distant rumble of thunder, or poss

And, as cleverly as he thought he'd set things up, fate intervened along with a good dose of ego. The imperious scissor-hands just bushed past him. His ice missed its target and clattered to the deck, finding the underside of his foot, which promptly reached for the sky. Gravity shifted by about thirty degrees under his feet as someone righted the ship and Nobody went sliding ass-first into the fish-in-a-barrel, which promptly tipped over to dump briny fish guts all over him. "Blerch!" Leaning over, stuck between dry heaving and wondering how he was going to get the salt out of