Silver Haired Assassin

[Anonymous]

“Great…� Keir thought, “I get stuck babysitting a Shape-Shifter. I guess I was write on the many faces part of her souls.�
     He didn’t like the sound of her being an assassin though. Had she been trying to kill Adrian? Sometimes that man did not make any sense.
     â€œVery well,â€? Keir replied, “Just so long as she doesn’t start turning into a rodent and crawling through the air ventilation shafts.â€?â€?

Raichou was bored now; maybe she could turn into a mouse and explore the ventilation shafts. No… she couldn’t do that, chances were Adrian would have someone keeping an eye on her and they’d notice she had gone from her room. Oh well…
     She suspected it might be difficult to explore in human form though. The younger members of the crew would probably harass her or stare at her. And if she…persuaded them to stop it she’d get in trouble.
     Meh…she’d think of something.

[Anonymous]

"If you catch her shifted into something beyond the confines of her own room, she is to be dropped off at the next port. Her agreement for being here was not to antagonize the men, no shifting and she's supposed to help out. I thought she could help Cookie with cutting the fresh foods when we get them. You know how he complains about the men and their hack jobs." In Adrian's mind, he could quite possibly use an assassin-- if he could get her on his side that was.

[Anonymous]

At least Adrian had enough sense to make sure the girl wouldn’t change form, it would make watching her easier. It also put Keir’s mind at ease that she had to help out; if she was doing chores she was less likely to do mischief. Just so long as she didn’t complain. He also suspected that his boss might ant to utilise another of her talents and if he had guessed right that she was an assassin they’d she’d probably get roped in doing that as well. Keir had to admit he was curious as to how Adrian came across her so decided to ask.
     â€œIf you don’t mind me asking, sir. Where did you find her?â€?
     Though silver hair was more common these days than it had been when Keir was young, it was still unusual and shape-shifters were extremely rare, there probably only 2 or 3 per system.
     
To amuse herself, Raichou had taken to practicing her shape changing. Just because she was born a shape-shifter when many people weren’t didn’t mean it came naturally she had to practice a lot, particularly forms she hadn’t seen like large cats, dragons or anything from ‘the time before’ as her grandfather used to call it. Animals from old earth like lions, tigers, horses etc.
     Currently she was doing birds. Parrot, sparrow, robin, cockatoo, heron. When would she get to interesting things? She couldn’t even change into some of her favourite forms because they wouldn’t fit into the room.. She sighed…She supposed she would just have to get used to it.

[Anonymous]

"The house mother at redlit desires had chosen her to serve my tea" Adrian informed with a slight smirk. He was amused at the whopping mistake his normally competent aquaintance had shown. However, if it had worked out badly, he would have been furious and she quite possibly would have lost her job if he had managed to live through it. He suspected there would be mischief, but he also felt that it would not be beyond the scope of what they could handle. "Find her a list of chores. I don't want her to get too bored."

[Anonymous]

Keir wasn’t expecting that answer but guessed that Adrian was not telling him everything. Then again he was just Adrian’s employee he wasn’t obliged to reveal everything.
     As for find the new crew member some chores to do that wasn’t hard. There was always something to do and he could think of a few off the top of his head.
     When he reached her room her knocked on the door.

Raichou was officially bored now. Currently she was laid on her bunk with her legs against the wall and her head hanging over the side. She wondered if the sensation of blood rushing to her head would make her forget she was bored…It wasn’t
     Just as she was on the verge of turning into a bat and flying into the air duct there was a knock at the door. Who could that be? Adrian? Some of the hormone driven crew members? Or maybe it was someone coming to give her something to do.
     â€œIt’s open.â€?
     The door slid open with a hiss revealing a man who looked to be in his early thirties. He looked fairly normal, brown hair, average build but what was unusual about his were his eyes, one emerald the other crimson. And the way he looked at her was quite piercing too, like he was looking into her soul.
     â€œActually…â€? Raichou thought, “He’s quite cute.â€?
     â€œYes?â€? Raichou said.
     â€œAdrian asked me to find you something to do,â€? the man explained, “So I thought you could start by scrubbing the corridors.â€?
     Scrubbing, that didn’t sound too bad, it was something to do.
     â€œOkay,â€? Raichou said as rolled onto the floor then stood up properly, “What’s your name anyway?â€?
     He paused but then said, “Keir.â€?
     â€œAye, aye! Keir,â€? she laughed.â€?
     He rolled his eyes before motioning for her to follow him.

What did Adrian see in this girl, the eyes did not lie. She was a completely unstable, easily distracted shape-shifter who would quite likely betray her best friend if it had some benefit to her. Then again she didn’t seem the type of have friends.
     Keir led her to the janitor’s closet, “The things you’ll need are in here.â€?
     There did used to be a janitor but he had retired recently, as a result the cleaning had been passed to any spare crew members. But if they had a crew member standing idle then she might as well do the job.
      “I doubt you can clean in that attire though,â€? Keir pointed out.
      She glanced down at her attire and said “I suppose not.â€?
     A light surrounded her and the faded revealing that she was now in blue overalls and a bandana.
     Keir raised an eyebrow, “I was told that Adrian said you weren’t to transform outside of you room.â€?
   
“Oops,� Raichou replied, she was used to changing whenever and wherever she felt like.
     Having restriction would take some getting used to.
     Keir sighed exasperatedly, “I’ll turn a blind eye this time but if it happens again then I’ll have to report you.â€?
     Raichou then realised that she had been right, Adrian did have someone keeping an eye on her, it was Keir.
     Raichou smiled, “You’re the one stuck keeping an eye on me aren’t you?â€?
     Keir sighed again then said, “Once you’re done, come find me. I’ll give you something else to do before walking off.
     Raichou looked down the corridor and noted that it was quite long.
     â€œWell, better get started.â€?

[Anonymous]

Adrian had informed other key members of his crew about the new crew member and the stipulation of her staying, though they were all required to keep the information to themselves.

He walked down the hall, glancing at Rai through a doorway before finding Kier. "The captain wants a word with you, and I have a few questions as well." He informed. Normally, he didn't do messanger type tasks, but today, he had apparently made an exception.

[Anonymous]

No doubt they wanted to know if he had found anything out about the girl or wanted to borrow his abilities for something. He didn’t really know much about the girl though, he had only just met her, her didn’t even know what her name was.
     â€œVery well,â€? Keir replied, “If I can answer your questions I shall.â€?

[Anonymous]

Adrian lead the way back towards the cockpit, not speaking even after the door hissed shut behind them.

The Captain looked up. "Ah, Keir, we need a detour. There seems to be a disturbance in this quadrant" He pointed to the star map on the screne. "We need to go around, and either not gain a significant distance, or we need to drop in on a planet and refuel and continue on our detour. Work your magic and let me know." He slid the screen over to Keir.

Adrian sat back and waited. The detour took presidence, after all, it wasn't like he or Keir were going anywhere seeing as they were both confined to the ship.

[Anonymous]

So he was actually needed to do his job this time. That was good, a bit of normality. As he looked as the screen he determined they had two choices, go around and barely have enough fuel to get there and hope they didn’t encounter another disturbance or stop and refuel at Lanaes.
       Keir had only been there once many years ago, just after they started allowing visitors. However it was not the friendliest of places particularly if you weren’t a mage. Keir laughed internally at that thought. Edanith looked down on you if you were a mage and Lanaes looked down on you if you weren’t. The galaxy could be strange at times.
     â€œCaptain, I suggest we take a detour to Lanaes to refuel. The shortest rout round without stopping would leave us with too little fuel and might cause problems if we encounter another disturbance.
     Keir wondered if they stopped at Lanaes would Adrian let Raichou out for a bit. That might be a bad idea, who knows what she might do. But then again the creatures on Lanaes were different to anywhere else in the galaxy, it might be a good experience, she could add more forms to her arsenal.
     â€¦Then again perhaps it wasn’t a good idea.

Raichou hummed as she worked. Despite her rather mischievous attitude and short attention span she didn’t mind cleaning, she actually enjoyed it. When she was a child, if she was cleaning she was being shouted at or forced to practice her shape changing. She didn’t mind practicing but when she trained with her grandfather…he was pretty strict.
     Obviously she’d had a few looks from various crew members walking past but none were confident enough to talk to her yet. She wouldn’t know what to say if they did. She wasn’t allowed to flirt and obviously she couldn’t say , ‘Hi, I’m Raichou, I’m a shape-shifter and I was going to kill your boss.â€?
     Bad idea.

[Anonymous]

"Very well, set course for Lanaes." The captain wasn't particularly thrilled with the prospect, but it was far better than risking drifting through space on a powerless ship. "Announce that all crew not required for refueling must stay on the ship. I'll not have my crew picked apart for being non-mages. I don't like doing rescue missions when I don't have to." He commented as he looked the map over again. It seemed Lanaes was the best choice, even if he'd really rather it wasn't.

Adrian sat back, silently observing. He liked to watch people interact. It allowed him to learn things about them, and it wasn't often he got to watch Kier actually do his job. He smiled mentally. He did tend to favor the navigator when he needed his odd tasks done, but that was because the man was reliable and knew how to be descrete when need be.

[Anonymous]

Keir was relieved when the captain said that only crew members needed for refuelling could leave the ship. It meant Raichou couldn’t leave and though he doubted she’d need to be rescued, she did have magical abilities after all, it would likely be less trouble if she stayed put.
     Keir then turned to Adrian, “You had some questions for me?â€?
     
Raichou was intrigued when she heard the announcement that the ship was stopping at Lanaes. She had never been there before, but alas she was not allowed to leave the ship this time. Oh well, maybe she’d see the planet someday.
     Wait? Did she just shrug off not being allowed off the ship? This was an outrage! She had magical abilities, why couldn’t she explore?
     Raichou sighed, she wasn’t really that angry about it. What worried her was why? She did what she wanted and didn’t give a damn? Why did she care so much that she would behave for this Adrian guy? Strange…
     â€œMaybe it’s because I didn’t have a purpose before?â€? Raichou muttered, then realising some young crew man was staring at her.
     â€œGo away!â€? she shouted causing them to flee in terror.

[Anonymous]

"I did" Adrian said lightly. "I wanted to know what you read off our new crew member. You generally have impecable perception, and while people can hide things from me, they usually cannot hide things from you." He settled back in his chair, lacing his fingers across his stomach.

[Anonymous]

“Well, as I keep telling you I only see colours and I can interpret them but not in detail. All I know is she had dark blue, which mean darkness. Black is evil, dark blue is one step down. There is also white: loneliness and red, anger. The different colours are fragmented which means there is a many-faced aspect to her personality. This could be her abilities but it could mean something else. There is also movement, which means she is very fickle and changeable and has a very short attention span.�
    Keir thought he should remind Adrian that his soul reading ability wasn’t perfect; he had gotten things wrong on numerous occasions. Working out someone’s personality from just colours was very abstract after all.

[Anonymous]

"Well, then that would make sense." Adrian commented. "She is a shifter, an assasin, she does have a short attention span, but I knew that very quickly, I haven't seen the anger yet, but she could very well be multipersonalitied. That would be quite an interesting situation for a shifter." Adrian mused. Perhaps he was bored, and that's why he took the shifter aboard. With Adrian, there was really no telling why he did the things he did, but they generally worked out well, but like all men, once in a while, a risk failed to pay off as he hoped it would. Hopefully, his pet shifter would not be the risk that turned out to be a bad idea.

[Anonymous]

“One element of her personality might work to your advantage though, the white, loneliness. Being around people constantly might make her behave.�
     It was possible, if all she really wanted was people to interact with, it might calm her down and make sure the rage didn’t manifest. If it were to surface, no good would come of it.
     â€œAs for multi-personalitied, I doubt it. At first I thought that might be a possibility but when I was with her earlier I realised the gaps between the collections of colours aren’t large enough for them to be separate entities. She isn’t schizophrenic, merely unpredictable.â€?

[Anonymous]

"Perhaps she needs a friend" Adrian mused "I think we'll assign her to Cook." Adrian wanted a bit of space between her and himself. He suspected he had been one of her marks-- and the fact that she hadn't tried to kill him yet tended to confirm her unpredictability. "You know how Cook gets, I think he'd like a project. He doesn't get out much." Of course, that was because he was usually busy with making meals and grumbling about young ignorant crew members.

[Anonymous]

“Perhaps,� Keir replied, “We’ll just have to hope one just get irritated with the other.�
     Raichou might decide to use her powers around Cook if he pushed her far enough, then again he probably wouldn’t be impressed by it. If she bonded with him however some good might come out of it. Her abilities would be useful to Adrian and they needed someone to clean.

[Anonymous]

"Exactly. Cook has seen so much that nothing She might do or say would be likely to impress him all that much, but if they can get along and maybe even get on reasonably friendly terms with each other, he may be less crabby, and she may be less likely to do things simply for attention...or if she steps out of line, Cook might just smack her with the wooden spoon as he tends to do with his charges." Adrian looked up "Perhaps you'd like to brief him on the subject? Remind him that knives are not allowed out of the kitchen and that sort of thing?"

[Anonymous]

“Alright,� Keir replied.
     Cook was grumpy and as Adrian had said would smack his charges with a wooden spoon on occasion but he wouldn’t really try to seriously hurt someone.

Raichou hummed as she worked, she would never tell anyone this but after assassinations, ones where she didn’t have to rush off quickly, she liked nothing better than to clean up all the blood. Blood was nice but there was just a strange satisfaction in cleaning up the blood you had shed.

[Anonymous]

"Dismissed" Adrian said, letting his navigator know he was finished and releasing him to go about his task.

Cook was in the kitchen as usual. His quarters were directly behind it, so he had no reason to leave it unless he was summoned, and that was rare. Even Adrian usually came to the kitchen to talk to him rather than calling him across the ship. The cook was not exactly a man in the human sense, but generally speaking, he was huminoid enough-- even if he did have a knack for sprouting extra limbs from time to time and had a few biomechanical replacement parts, the most noticable being his eye. The rest of his parts were either concealed or looked natural enough to pass, but the eyes distinctly didn't match. The old fashioned glas eye passed for real more easily, but his mechanical one was fuctional and even surpased his natural eye as he could magnify and telescope in on things.

No one knew exactly what he was or what he was capable of other than perhaps Adrian, but few ever asked, and those who did rarely got an answer