Raine Sage

Raine Sage || Tales of Symphonia

-Raine is a teacher from a small village. She has a love for knowledge, ancient artifacts, history, and archaeology. She goes on tangents a lot because she gets excited about learning new things. Don’t you dare slack in your studies. She is a  strict professor, but with a heart of gold.

-She’s done a lot of travelling (and running) in her life and was on her own to survive and raise her little brother from the age of about 11-12 onwards. Because of this, she has a hard time trusting others. She also tends to hide her feelings for the sake of looking responsible and dependable.

-Raine is a half-elf, and finally being honest with those around her about her lineage. In the past, being a half-elf has filled her with self-hatred because of how her world treated her kind with disdain. Now she wants to change the world’s opinions of half-elves.

-She acted like a medic and bodyguard on her student Colette’s journey to regenerate the world.

-She tends to gain a following or fanclub for reasons beyond her comprehension.

-She is a healer, but (*readies staff for bludgeoning*)

💪 He refuses to sit down at first. Not that he wouldn’t want to, but he still feels too agitated to just sit down calmly. He’s upset about losing his temper, and he feels his resentment rise again as Raine reveals the truth at last. Still, he wrestles his hardship down, just as he always does when dealing with something that angers him under less stressful circumstances. “You said you were going to test me and I didn’t object to that” a little pressed, he finally states the fact he is well aware of, to cope with the situation. “I knew something would come eventually, I just didn’t expect it to be like– this.”  Being in the same package as his offering to help her, should she ever need his strength. So of course he wouldn’t turn her request down with any second-thoughts. 

“What is it they usually say in such situations? Well played? I’m still not sure wether I should be mad about this or not.” But he realizes that’s not exactly true and doesn’t sum up his current turmoil. He needs to be more open with what discomforts him to work this out.

“No, actually I AM mad. But–” he sighs once again and finally sits down next to her after all. Mad he is. But not in the way of just wanting to walk out of this. To talk about this is the very point of what happened, isn’t it? “I guess a little headsup would have defeated the purpose of this, wouldn’t it?” It’s a drily served attempt of a joke, but the hint of friendliness is there.  His tone, however, is quick to get more harsh again.  “You know, you’re damn lucky I wasn’t mad at you down there! That’s been like going through one of the Dark Queen’s trials all over again!”

She couldn’t apologize for the test at large--just for the fact that she had deceived him. It was a means to an end, and one she hoped would pay out in the long run. Not just for her studies, but rather for Pimple’s peace of mind as well. She does not take it personally when he stands in agitation, but instead patiently waits for him. She wouldn’t blame him if he was mad...but the question would be just how worked up into his anger he could get. She nodded. His “well-played” comment stung a bit, but it wasn’t unjustified.

“You have every right to be.” As long as it didn’t consume him.

“That’s correct. If you can’t remember what happens when you black out in anger, it is a lot more difficult to analyze the triggers.” Raine sighed, running a hand through her hair as the desert wind tore through the ruins. “That’s the problem, Pimple. What happens if one day you lose control and someone you actually love gets in the way? Can you parse the point of no return, where you might have a chance to calm yourself? Has lashing out like that really benefitted you, beyond self-protection?”

Raine gently places her hand on top of his.

“We may not have known each other for very long, but I’ve come to trust and cherish you as a friend. We share similar struggles. And my anger...while it had protected my heart...it certainly has never changed anything. The forces in the world that would have me hide and flee still remained, whether I was angry and scared or not.” Raine had a bitter smile on her face. “So...where...where does it come from? Those rats seemed to be the last straw.” 

the dark ⋆ fire ⋆ open water ⋆ deep water ⋆ being alone ⋆ crowded spaces ⋆ confined spaces ⋆ change ⋆ failure ⋆ war ⋆ loss of control ⋆ powerlessness ⋆ prison ⋆ blood ⋆ drowning  ⋆ suffocation ⋆ public speaking ⋆ natural animals ⋆ the supernatural ⋆  heights ⋆ death/dying ⋆ intimacy ⋆ rejection ⋆  abandonment ⋆ loss ⋆ the unknown ⋆ the future ⋆ not being good enough ⋆ scary stories ⋆ speaking to new people ⋆ poverty ⋆ loud noises ⋆ being touched ⋆ forgetting ⋆ remembering ⋆ loving

IS SHE PRAYING??? RAINE IS FULL ON PRAYING! Deunan can only stare at this process, this convening with the lord or whatever, before this shot she takes.

The blonde leans in with eager eyes, with fearful eyes.

“….Well? Are you okay?” She gets her phone, just in case.

💪 Naturally these rats didn’t put up as much of a fight like the Dark Queen’s servants. They were big, but in the end they were just normal rats. But in the heat of that moment, it didn’t matter. He didn’t notice that difference, nor did he care. He’s been all the way back in one of the Queen’s dungeons, brawling his way through enemies and unpleasant heat. It’s been kill or be killed all over again. All the anger and frustration that has piled up inside him since the day he woke up in the Chronolium, it’s still not entirely out of his system. The tension remains there, firmly, but he’s at least aware of it again, just like he’s growing aware of  Raine’s voice calling him in the distance. Several weeks ago, during his encounter with Niquo, he had been upset at Rash and Zitz too during his rampage, which almost made him turn against them when they encountered him. But he’s not really angry at Raine and there is no reason for him to rise his fists against her. It’s a small but important difference at this instance. He’s back at his normal but still enormous size and his fists have returned to being hands after they had the shape of two massive hammers before. He’s done a bad thing again. Even though he knew it could happen and he knew what did happen back then, he still couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t really do anything, nor does he even remember how it happened. All he knows is that it did happen. Again.

“I didn’t meant to– that– I’m sorry, but I gotta leave! I can’t handle this place. There’s just too many memories of similiar places I’ve been.” For different reasons and with actual enemies, but nonetheless, the resemblance is there. And it’s too much for him to actually keep in control of himself all the way down. He should have known, but  he really wanted to help her with this.

“I....don’t worry... I won’t force you to go any further. Let’s just go get some fresh air.”

Raine bites her lip, a deep pit of guilt settling in her stomach, and nods reassuringly. She hesitantly reaches over to place her hand atop of his once they turned back to normal. The professor doubles back and retraces their steps through the ruins, leading the way back to the surface. She looked back a few times to check on him, and once to peer into the darkness where the rats lay. A few peeps of distressed squeaking told her that more had made their way to the chamber to find the aftermath.

Next to the entrance is a fallen stone smoothed by the years it had endured sandstorms undisturbed. Raine sat down and took a deep breath, patting the spot beside her. In a funny kind of way it felt like their first meeting by the river. Always gathering to talk about some baggage they carry. 

Not the worst — but of course! Raine always was this particular with her food creations, Setsuna just barely got to witness it firsthand. And if she’d eaten monster meat before, who was to say it wasn’t poisonous, after all? The toxins could’ve been slow to react, causing only a small bit of damage with each meal, accumulating to greater harm in the long run. Perhaps they had, over the course of many meals, damaged all of Raine’s common sense about food.

No, that didn’t make sense. How could any toxins affect a person this selectively? It would’ve caused other damages to her as well, and Raine hadn’t shown any signs of that. But in that case, there was only one answer to this mystery. Raine was an incompetent cook.

It was only now that Setsuna realised she’d been staring at her roommate for a while, frowning with concern.

“Uhm. No, you don’t… My apologies. I just… wondered how you’ve developed such a… unique sense of taste. And… you mentioned there were fights among your companions around the campfire. That never happened to my guards and me, so… Maybe… Maybe the ingredients weren’t all as edible as you thought, after all…?” Or perhaps they shouldn’t have allowed Raine to cook.

There was a saying, right? If something didn’t kill you it only made you stronger. Well, maybe Raine had been making herself stronger by poisoning herself time and time again. 

“You have to be creative when your village’s specialty dish is a simple sandwich.” That wasn’t to mention that her version of a sandwich was simply shovelling bread into her mouth. A bread sandwich if you will. “With deteriorating crops and being so far from the major cities...well, foraging was one of the only options so you get used to an earthy taste, if that’s what you mean. Fishing was an option too, but you’d have to risk your life against ghosts and the undead. The only food I’ve grown to detest is mushrooms. I’ll still eat them when necessary, but...” She didn’t want to say it, but she’d clearly had some bad experiences with them.

“Hmm?” Raine’s vague answer distracted Colette from the movie, and she turned her smiling face to her former professor. She looked wistful, almost. 

But Raine turned the subject back around to Colette before she could ask. Colette’s sunny disposition shone back through.

“Yes! Do you remember Mariela? She was able to set up her shop again, so I can keep working with her! A while back, I helped her catch a goat…” 

Colette recounted the story animatedly, half paying attention to the movie in front of them. Even though it was what they had set out to do together, Colette couldn’t help but prioritize talking with Raine, instead. She listened to Colette tell a few other stories, all a bit passively as she sipped her wine. Colette only told the good stories, giving Raine nothing to worry about.

“But anyway,” Colette finished, after taking a sip of hot chocolate. “I hope that you’ve been happy, too, Raine… I know I said this already, but I’m really happy to spend time with you again like this. If you ever get lonely, you know you can call me, right?”

It was hard for her to shake the way Raine answered her earlier. The thought of Raine being lonely or unhappy somehow… it made Colette’s heart ache. Raine didn’t deserve to feel like that.

“Oh… um… I guess I’ve been totally missing the movie. Who is that guy?”

Of course she remembered her favorite cafe. Where else would she get her coffee fix? It was one of the few saving graces to being teleported across worlds. It filled her with pride to know that finally...bit by bit...Colette was able to feel a sense of normalcy. Colette had a spirit that could befriend just about anyone, but she was glad at least that she didn’t have to start over and could let those relationships grow.

“You helped her catch a goat?” She raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t shocked really (her students had always gotten into small-village hijinks), but that did beg a lot of questions. Raine snorted a laugh and asked if the goat had stolen something from the girl or if they had just felt like sharpening up animal handling skills. When she got the full story, all Raine could do was shake her head in an amused fashion. “So Sunlight’s Canopy has a new pet...” she sighed.

“Happy...” The professor repeats hesitantly. She was happy in this moment being with someone she considered family...but overall? Genis wasn’t here. Her relationship had been cut short. The people she once knew had recollections different from hers...and her mother. Would she ever see her mother again? She had been alone, missing...and while Raine saw her as she once remembered her in Heimdall...was that the end of it? The future of their world was uncertain once again.

Raine tried to move forward and avoid her concern, explaining that the guy in the movie was an upperclassman who had graduated and showed interest in the female protagonist, and that a timeskip had occurred to follow the characters to their last year of high school.

“Don’t worry too much about me. You’ve had enough to worry about as is.” Raine’s smile was filled with pain. She didn’t want to be a weight tied to Colette’s leg. She knew that was just how the girl was. She wouldn’t ever stop caring more for others than herself. And similarly Raine would resist being a burden on anyone else.

And I...well, I’ve always been alone. But the silence without Genis around is a different kind of loneliness. It happened once before, in the previous world...but that doesn’t make it any easier.

It’s a really, really bad idea…..and she’s shoving some more cheese at Raine, and wondering if she should have gotten a bucket…

Eh, they’ll be fine.

“You never know when you need a weapon during a party.” Deunan is speaking from a lot of experience. Too much. 

“Pineapple juice would have been nice…or apple?” 

A HORRIBLE IDEA.

Cheese was probably the best culinary process ever discovered by man, she decided in that moment. The way she desperately nibbled on the slices to rid her of the taste one would mistake her for a giant mouse.

“I have some canned pineapples in the cabinet and some apple juice in the fridge.” Raine tapped her chin as she slowly fumbled over to the fridge and started pouring the juice into her glass of alcohol. Then before taking a sip she closes her eyes and starts speaking in another language, placing a hand over her heart.

💪 Experience it is. Figures. He at least doesn’t question the thought that all ruins must be sort of similiar. Not that he is in the right headspace right now to rack his brains over that, anyway. At some point of hitting the upper stress levels, thinking and talking becomes tedious to him.  His headspace moves back to the old days. Where the thought of fighting doesn’t seem that bad anymore actually and he actually welcomes a brawl to go somewhere with his bottled-up rage. And he has bottled up a lot since he’s in Chronolium now. He listens too as Raine voices her feigned concern. He doesn’t notice that it’s all faked, and at this point he wouldn’t care anymore anyway. It’s always rats. Whenever he finds himself in this particular mood, he has to deal with giant stupid rats. He tenses, his hands now tightly closed into fists. And with his tension rising, it seems like he has grown a little in size. Push it down, Pimple. He tries to calm himself, but it is half-hearted at best.  Control. What control anyway? That’s laughable. Destroying any hindrances is why he has come down here. He yells, and any thoughts shut off now. No thinking, only destroying.

He rushes further into the chamber like a big loose boulder without sparing a glance back. It doesn’t take long after his disappearance that the low growling they heard before turns into painful squeaks. The sound of bodies being thrown against walls and the floor echoes along the screams of the rats and Pimple’s own growls.

Raine takes a step back and falls silent when she realizes what is happening. She blinks in both wonder and unease as he literally begins to grow, and stops her hand from reaching out to him before he starts running through the cavern to pummel the beats in question. No more teasing anymore for Raine--it was time to get serious. She was here to observe what became of him when this happened.

She had grown fond of Pimple. A part of her was concerned that he would lose all reason and turn on her in this fit of rage. This may as well change their relationship if things took a turn for the worst. But there was no time to think about that. Her friend was in distress, and she was the one who caused it. She raised her staff and channeled her light magic into it, illuminating the cavern that had gone completely dark with his absence. Then she chased after him. 

She was one level above him in the chamber looking at the carnage below. None of the giant rats look like they had an ounce of life left in them. Some look like he may have even taken the beating much too far. He was covered in blood.

Seeing such magic from the stranger causes a couple of the villagers to gasp, stepping back away from the barrier. Questions of if she was a witch like the child begin rising, however at this point there’s nothing they can do. The barrier would surely prevent them from pulling the stranger off the child. It definitely prevented them from setting this whole wooden stake on fire and these two monsters with it aflamed. 

“I-I want my father.” Jangmi says, voice cracking. She’s searching, but all she sees are the terrified villagers. She does not see her father and so a quiet sob escapes her lips. She knows. 

She’s now looking into the woman’s blue eyes. She doesn’t know what’s going on. Doesn’t remember anything but…She feels she can actually trust this lady. “I’m….I’m terrified.” She admits. “I just want my father. I want to go home.” Back to how things were. She can’t run away. She can’t run away without finding him. 

“Alright...alright, the first thing we’ll do is search for your father.” It was a white lie...the first thing she would do is try to assess her health and see if she needs to rest some place safe. She could tell that her energy had been depleted both mentally and physically. But what this child needed to hear was that she would find someone she loved again. Raine couldn’t promise her they would be united. When she went looking for her own parents...her father was already long gone.

“I’m cutting you down now!” The professor shouts,reaching her arm across Jangmi’s chest to hold her shoulder to block her from falling. Trying to stay steady with her arms carrying her staff and the rock was becoming too much, so she wrapped her legs around the stake for balance. With difficulty, Raine cut through the ropes and loosened them so that Jangmi could start to move.

🧡 He’s getting hopeful as she points out to not letting him starve. Then, she bursts that hope bubble singlehandedly again at the same turn with making sure to let him know she’s not going to let him go so easily. He let out another whimper. But what IF he tried to make a run for it anyway? His dad used tapes one time to keep him in his shell. Unable to get his legs out and walk away, he had to listen to his entire lecture about not sneaking outside the sewers during the day. That was bad. Does Raine know about him being able to fully retract into his shell and would she use that to her advantage too? Or is there some kind of magic that would hold him back? Can she keep up with his speed like his dad, anyway? 

As she suggests to get food together, he perks up again. That actually doesn’t sound so bad. Except for the ‘talk about problems that were incorrect’ part. He doesn’t really want to talk about mathematics while eating. But it beats starving. Or ay punishment, should his escape fail. He concludes, getting in trouble is ultimately worse than going once more through his homework.

He finally breaks his rather suspicious silence and gets up from his seat again.

“Okay! Can I pick the place where we gonna eat? But uh– I think I forgot my money in the apartment, actually…” His excitement about food turns quickly into a sheepish little smile upon realizing he might have left a little too hastily this morning. “But but, I’ll pay you back, I promise!”

It looked like Mikey really needed to think this one through. Of course most children didn’t want to be getting tutored or doing homework, and all she had to do was find an angle to break through. She could also tell when a kid was trying to worm their way out of hard work. She looked at her student warily and crossed her arms, hoping it would get across ‘Whatever you’re thinking about right now, don’t.’.

“Yes, you can pick where we’ll eat. Don’t worry about payment. It’s my treat.” A child shouldn’t have to pay for his own meal when out to eat with an elder! And sometimes, admittedly, they have to be bribed. Eating something unhealthy would be a reward for doing something good, right? What could go wrong?