Beth scowled at Wes. "Hey, I know that. I'm just saying that the need for me and Hannah to be her bodyguards should have passed. After all, the Marquis has all these guards around, so why should we need to be stuck here when Kystia is well guarded already?"
"You know, I think you've been gone away too much yourself," Amelia commented, a smirk on her face making Ralph wonder if she was mocking Beth or just amused at something that escaped him at that moment. "Whoever had gotten Kystia outside the walls for her to be kidnapped hasn't been identified, so we can't be sure that the danger is truly over. All we know is that there hasn't been another attempt since then."
Beth sighed. "Yeah, well I still think that we should rethink the matter, since I don't want to get stuck here and neither does Hannah. Not to mention how I need to meet with that woman who likes to hide in the shadows and approach people from behind when they're alone in a little less than three months."
"Hold on, why didn't you say you needed to meet with her again?" Tim asked before anyone else could say anything. "That kind of thing is pretty important, don't you think?"
"I was getting to it," Beth answered, sounding a little defensive to Ralph. "I just hadn't had time to get around to that point just yet. Besides, we have other issues to discuss, not just my appointment in three months."
"You still could have said something about it earlier," Tim said under his breath, making Ralph wonder if Beth heard him say that or not.
Though, regardless of if she did, she didn't react to it. Instead, she moved on. "So, as I was saying, we should talk with the Marquis to see if any changes could occur so Hannah and I aren't the only ones trapped here while we wait until the other returns and allows us to head out again."
"As long as I'm not caught into guarding her, I'm good with whatever changes will happen," Ralph remarked, a little worried that he'd get roped into the girl's security detail.
"I really don't think they'd consider you as a viable option, anyway," Hannah remarked dryly. "Mostly because they don't seem to think of guys being good for that sort of thing around here."
Ralph merely shrugged. As long as he didn't have to babysit the girl, he'd be fine. He didn't care about the reason.
"Let's get back on topic, okay?" Amelia said, sounding a little annoyed and almost resigned. To what, Ralph wasn't sure. "I'd still like to discuss about finding Charlie."
"Well, we can ask the Silverthorns if they'd pass along a message to their Blue Rose about how we're looking for Charlie. See if they'd keep an eye out for her," Tim suggested. "If Beth doesn't want to go back herself, I could go myself and talk to them."
"But what if Charlie turns out to be the Blue Rose?" Wes asked with a smirk. "We don't know what happened with Charlie since she left us and it might be unlikely, but it's still possible that she's their leader."
"Yeah, but do you see Charlie willingly taking on that kind of responsibility?" Ralph asked, wondering if he should have kept his mouth shut as everyone turned to look at him. "What?"
"Whose to say that Charlie didn't find herself helping them out to the point that she ended up the leader with no way out?" Tim suggested, making Ralph scowl.
"Yeah, but if that was the case, all she'd need to do was start looking for a way out. You know, like she was with us when she was determined to leave us because she felt that her presence was endangering Beth."
Ralph wasn't sure why Tim had challenged him like that, but he was starting to wonder if maybe he should start act like he's paying attention and instead let his mind wander. It might come back to bit him later if they decide on something while he wasn't paying attention, but it would at least make it less likely that he'd actually open his mouth when he knows it's a mistake each time he says something during these 'discussions.'
"Well, here's one thing to consider," Beth commented, looking more tired than Ralph could remember seeing her after she got up from even a nap. Which made him wonder how much that visit in the night really affected her. "If Charlie really didn't have anything to do with the people of the Blue Rose, what then? Where would we start looking for her after that? If we focus solely on finding Charlie, we might not get as much progress on what else we need to be working on as well. Like finding that griffin canyon where Charlie dropped that… uh, crystal? Or did she say what it was called?"
"I think she used it as a focus for a time," Wes offered, looking rather pensive. "Though with the search for the griffin canyon, I think we should hold off on those efforts until we get the airships going. Once we have a few of those engines moving ships through the skies, we should be able to cover a lot more ground then and finding the griffin canyon should be a lot easier then."
"Yeah, we might be able to cover more ground, but if we go over a griffin canyon in one of those things, what's to stop the griffins from attacking us?" Tim remarked as he rolled his eyes.
"You know, speaking of the airships, we could use one of those when we, uh, do that task that Beth mentioned we'd been asked to do. We could do a play or something from the ship and-" Ralph started to say before he could stop himself, wondering why he hadn't followed through on not paying attention to what was being said.
"We're not doing a Final Fantasy IX," Beth declared, looking half-amused and half-annoyed. "Yeah, we could get the airship to bring us there quickly, but we're not going to perform even the music that we used to get a bit of cash when we were thinking of trying to buy Charlie from being a slave."
"You know, combining the ideas might not be a bad alternative," Amelia mused. Then when everyone turned to look at her, she chuckled a little. "I mean Wes' idea and Beth's idea about the airships. We take the airship to the griffin canyon until we're about a day's walk away, then we hoof it over there and determine if it's the one we're looking for or not. If not, we return and go looking for the next one. Not only will it save us time for looking for them with travelling, but it should be easier to spot them from the air than from the ground."
Ralph nodded to himself. That certainly sounded like it had its potential and he certainly couldn't think of anything to argue the point himself. Though, he still felt a little put out with Beth shooting down his idea of a theatre ship. Not that he was really surprised. If anything, he was surprised at how much was actually getting accomplished with this discussion. Not that anything had really been decided on, other than a few items that they weren't going to do.
Like his theatre ship idea.
"Well, maybe we should see if we can go out on a picnic or something tomorrow so we can discuss… Beth's problem," Hannah commented. "I mean, we've pretty much discussed all there is to about what to do about Charlie, right?"
Amelia looked like she wasn't happy with Hannah's statement, but she didn't argue. She merely scowled at Hannah.
"If nothing else, I could go down there to see about trying to get the Silverthorns to send shipments of the magic stones up," Tim offered. "It would give me an excuse to ask around about Charlie. Plus, we'd be able to get a secure supply of the stones as well."
"Uh, as I think about it, that might not be a good thing to do just yet," Ralph said, a thought suddenly occurring to him. Even though he knew he was probably going to regret it, he continued. "It's just that we don't have many of the flying ships available just yet, so wouldn't it be a bit of a waste to start stockpiling the magic stones as fuel when we still don't know how long each one will last and we don't have many of those airship engines operating just yet."
"You know, Ralph actually has a point this time," Beth remarked, sounding more surprised than Ralph felt was necessary. He'd had some good points in discussions in the past. Usually he was just entertaining himself when he'd speak in the past, but he had come up with some good points even then.
"Maybe, but it would still give us an excuse to check to see if they know anything about Charlie," Tim protested weakly.
"Well, once we know how long the airships can last with the stones, we'll be in a better position to determine how much we'll need," Wes commented. "Otherwise we can't be sure that we'll have a large need of them until we get the skies cluttered with them."
Tim sighed, looking rather defeated, as if he'd just lost a round in a video game.
"If nothing else, we can always go down there later on once we know more about what we need with those stones," Hannah suggested. "If we need more then we can find out later on. Plus, it'll help us know what a good price for them will be. Otherwise we might be overpaying for them if they're not as good as we thought they were."
"Well, if we need to, I'd be willing to head down there to find out," Tim offered.
"Sounds like a plan," Hannah said yawning. "I'm good to end this discussion now if no one has any objections."
Amelia looked like she wanted to protest ending the meeting, but she didn't say anything. Instead she was a perfect picture of quiet suffering right then. At least Ralph thought so, even though he wasn't sure the others were paying attention to her expression.
Instead, everyone started to get up, even startling Flare who had been napping on Beth's feet. Ralph felt a little surprised that he hadn't seen the puppy, even though it was starting to get rather big, but he couldn't find it in himself to care that much. Not when he was more interested in getting out of there and back to what he'd been working on: trying to learn as much as he could about the airships as possible.
After all, while they had airplanes on earth, he suspected the same engine might be useable to make flying cars. It certainly would be useful to looking into, though he wasn't sure how much of the stone would be reusable or if it was a non-renewable resource. He hoped it was, but he couldn't say much about it given he didn't know that much about the magic stones.
_
The next day was overcast and normally Beth would have suggested to take a rain check on any picnic, especially with how dark some of the clouds looked, but she also wanted to talk with her friends about the task they'd been given, and are essentially being threatened to carry out, of killing the queen.
At first Beth hadn't thought much about it, but the more she thought about it, especially after the last visit from the woman in the shadows, the more the idea unsettled her. On one hand, they didn't know enough about the queen to know if she was as really bad as they'd been told by the woman in the shadows, and if the queen was that bad, then they'd likely be doing this country a service. Then on the other hand, if that same woman in the shadows felt the need to threaten them to kill the queen, then even if the queen was as bad as claimed, then it wasn't putting those who were supporting her removal in a very good light. Especially since it was making them out to be villains in their own right. Making it very possible that eliminating the queen wouldn't do much for the country. Yet, that was all dependent on if the queen was as bad as she was being made out to be.
Then there was the problem with how little information they had about the queen. Beth didn't expect that they'd be able to get any reliable information sitting here in the Marquis' castle and they certainly needed to find out more if they wanted to be sure which side to really choose.
Assuming that they were really being given a choice, as Beth had a feeling that they were probably going to need to make it look like they'd at least made an attempt, even if they weren't actually trying to kill the queen in that attempt.
While Beth didn't want to discuss the subject withing the Marquis' castle, she didn't see the need for them to travel very far before they had their discussion. The Marquis had been reluctant to let Hannah and Beth leave Kystia alone, but he acknowledged that they likely wouldn't experience a serious attempt in the time it took them to have a picnic and Kystia assured her father that she'd be good while they were gone, making Beth wonder if she was looking forward to having some breathing room from having either Beth or Hannah always nearby.
Though, Beth left Flare to look after her, since the puppy seemed to be friendly enough with Kystia and she enjoyed playing with the puppy. Not to mention Beth was confident that Flare would protect the girl if someone tried something. Though, she couldn't imagine any insider trying something without thinking they had a chance to get a clean getaway, which likely would take a lot more planning than they'd have been able to with such short notice of this picnic as they were given.
Regardless of anything on that subject, Beth couldn't help but feel like she was overlooking something. She wasn't sure what that was, just that she couldn't shake that feeling. Even though she was confident she'd done everything she possibly could have.
She also was a little surprised that Lily hadn't accompanied them, but she wasn't going to say anything. She suspected that Ralph would know if she'd wanted to join them or not. At any rate, it wasn't her business. After all, as far as she knew, Ralph didn't want the girl who followed him around most of the time here on this discussion.
While Beth walked with her friends to find a location for their picnic, she couldn't help but keep to herself as she ruminated on her reasons for requesting this picnic in order to discuss what she'd been wanting to talk with her friends about in relation to the task she'd been given by that woman in the shadows. A task she wanted to get their thoughts on, even though she was pretty sure that they'd be of a like mind with her.
"Is this far enough?" Ralph asked almost the moment that they castle was out of view, just beyond a small hill in the terrain.
"Probably," Amelia replied, looking around. "We probably don't need to go very far and it's not like our voices would carry around here."
Beth nodded, not caring to object. She probably would have suggested that they start their picnic sooner, but she hadn't realized that they'd travelled so far already. Even if they were starting their picnic just outside the walls of the castle, she would have been fine with it, but having the castle out of sight certainly helped her.
Although, she couldn't rule out the possibility of someone being around them trying to eavesdrop on their conversation, as she had to acknowledge that they Marquis likely would be curious as to why they wanted to have a picnic on a day that looked like it was going to rain any second. So, she set up her magical alarm around them, just in case someone tried getting close to them without them noticing.
After all, Beth was pretty sure it wouldn't be difficult for someone who was used to moving with stealth to get the drop on them.
"Such a perfect day for a picnic," Tim remarked sarcastically as the food was passed around and everyone started to eat. "So, what was the reason for us needing to come out here?"
Beth wished they had a blanket or something to put on the ground, but didn't care enough to have pushed for that when she'd made the request in the first place. After all, they'd had to ask the Marquis for the food they were eating now anyway, so Beth could have asked for a blanket as well. It just didn't feel right to have that with what she wanted to discuss with her friends.
"It's about how we'd been asked to kill the queen of this country," Beth answered, accepting a roll as everyone was given their portion of the lunch. She didn't start eating right away like her friends were, instead she turned the roll over in her hands as if it was a toy instead of her lunch for the day. "I'm starting to have doubts that we should."
"Then don't," Wes remarked after swallowing a bite of his roll. "We shouldn't get involved in the politics of this world anyway. I mean, what can they do once we return to our world?"
"Yeah, what's the problem anyway? It's not like it's our problem anyway," Hannah remarked.
"The problem is will we find the griffin canyon Charlie lost her focus in and Charlie before we're expected to make an attempt on the queen's life," Beth replied, feeling like her friends weren't taking this point as seriously as she felt that they should. Although, she suspected that since they hadn't seen the woman 'appear' behind them without warning, that they weren't going to feel just how dangerous that woman was. Though, she also couldn't help but think that the woman in the shadows was an excellent example of someone on this world moving with stealth, even though she knew she didn't have time for idle thoughts like that. "On my way back here from getting the magic stones, she appeared in the middle of the night. She told me that I needed to start meeting with her again every few months and I had the feeling she was ready to kill me if she thought I was trying to leave without having tried to kill the queen."
"So just use your magic to fight her off," Tim said, clearly not seeing what they problem was. "I'm sure she'd eventually get tired of failing and leave, so what's the big deal with this?"