The Mages of Night

The time: midday. The location: Neptune Guild, Neptune Island. Within the grand castle that makes up the guild's headquarters, the Mages could be seen and heard going about their daily lives. Some were chatting, others were arguing, and possibly even fighting. And still there were some who were keeping to themselves. One such Mage sighed out of boredom, not knowing what to make of his free time. He laid out on his back over one of the tables as if it were a bed and stared at the ceiling with dissapointment. "Damn it!," he said, with disdain in his voice, "you'd think there'd be something for me to do right now!" The young man sighed out in protest yet again, looking rather fed up with all this sitting around. Now feeling bored with his own boredom, if it were even possible to begin with, the Mage sat up and continued to stare vacantly out into space as his brain tried to think of something to do.

One possible, and very enticing thought came across his mind. "OH! Maybe one of the ladies here would like my company?! Hehehe..." Shade chuckled with delight at the thought of even being in the presence of one of his fellow, female Mages. He grinned as his lustful feelings grew. "After all, there's nothing like being around a beautiful woman to cheer any man up!! Nooow..." Shade held his right hand over his eyes as his head darted to and fro in search of any women for him to spend time with. "I wonder if Liliana's around here somewhere! She's always such a delight to be with!" After a second or two of looking, Shade came upon the crushing realization. "Huh? ... WHERE ARE THE BEAUTIFUL LADIES?!!" Having put his hand down from its position and leaving his mouth open to gape in dissapointment, Shade soon knew that either most of the female Mages were away on jobs, or were elsewhere on Neptune Island. Shade's body collapsed, facing forward, onto the table he was sitting upon.

"You've gotta be kidding... The girls are gone too? Now what...?" Shade returned to thinking of a solution to his boredom, and a solution to his newfound dissapointment. Having rested his left cheek upon the table, and raising his rear end in the air in a rather strange position, Shade came upon a decision. "...I guess i'll just take a job. Better than nothing, I suppose..." Getting up from his slump and having marched down to the jobs board, Shade scanned the posters for any decent work to do. While his eyes darted from poster to poster, Shade continued to think out loud to himself, not aware that he was even doing so in the first place. "Well, I haven't seen Draco all day, so I guess I can't exactly do something that requires a full team of Mages... Oh well, a simple job should be enough to kill my boredom."

That's when Shade found it, a job that he could do. He began to read the job's description. "A D-Class assignment... I wish it would be something tougher and more exciting, but I guess this'll have to do. At least it doesn't have any requirements and the pay is decent. And besides, a missing son sounds pretty damn sad to me, so i'd love to help anyway." After glancing over the poster, Shade ripped it off from the board and began to head down towards the guild's exit, with the poster gripped in his left hand. Unbeknownst to Shade however, another Mage had taken notice of him.