When the Raven Queen's call reaches her, Viss quickly makes her way to the conference room. She has spent the entire time up to this point meditating and trying to come up with ideas how to improve the atmosphere in the team. Even though her ideas had been sparse at best, just trying to come up with anything had been a good exercise and combined with Ciel's arrow training it had helped to calm her down enough, so that she didn't run out the room when she spotted Scraw standing behind Sybil. Her resolve is further tested when he smiles at her upon leaving and Viss hopes that none of the others have seen her blush.
She sits back for a while as the Raven Queen gives them their new assignment and sighs inwardly as the expected quarreling among her "comrades" breaks out. This is ridiculous, what a bunch of... She gets struck by an idea.
"You know Sybil has a point that it would be good to have some sort of cover story that lets us move about the country a bit more freely so we can get a closer look at what is really going on there.
"I know that our goal should be this Cecil character but he clearly has some support of his people and it would be wise to get a feel for what the general atmosphere is. The problem is that we as a group will doubtlessly be met with a certain degree of suspicion. We are after all outsiders and strange ones at that. People don't like talking to strange outsiders unless..."
She pauses for a moment.
"Unless it makes perfect sense for us to be strange and foreign looking." She shrugs. " I say we disguise as a traveling carnival."
Before any of the others can voice their protest she quickly continues. Look, way back in the beginning of my career I used to travel with a carnival for a few months. They needed someone to look after the animals and I needed the money. What I learned in those few month is that people are basically willing to tell you everything if you entertain them.
She starts imitating the voice of a young girl. Wow, those horses are beautiful, can I pet them? I wish I had a horse on my own. You know, that boy that I like, he has a horse. I hope he asks for my hand soon. I used to worry that my beauty will fade before I get married, but now King Cecil feeds us baby livers every full moon, so I don't have to worry anymore.
She looks at each of her team mates only ignoring Fleshbane. And truth be told, between the seven of us I think we can put on quite the show. Mako can sing and dance. I can summon up every damn animal you can imagine and have it do some tricks for me. Ciel... well I guess Ciel, could do a knife throwing number, some slight of hand tricks, or even juggle. She smiles at the assassin. Just stay away from the rabbit number, we don't want any children scared for life.
She continues, Even this thing won't be a problem. She points at Fleshbane without sparing him a glance. We just put it in a cage and label it 'The Terror from Below' or something like this and people will actually pay us money to look at and be threatened by it.
As for the rest I think that we will find something fitting for everyone. I think Menek will actually be best in the role of the manager. His look with the owl on the shoulder is certainly iconic enough and it gives him ample time to run around freely and gather information. I'm sure that we can sell Ozz with his sea life analogies as some kind of oracle and Sybil... Are you any good on a high wire? And we might also need someone that Ciel can throw knives at...
The thing is that if we do a good job, we might see ourselves be invited to perform for more important people, which means more important information. To hope that we might get an invitation to perform at court might be somewhat of a long-shot, but still. I think it beats most alternatives, we have.
She finally breaks of, waiting for the others to dismiss her plan.
((Feel free to dismiss Viss' idea. I just thought it might be fun to put our characters in a less serious environment for a while. Maybe it would help to smooth things over, if everyone travels together and build camaraderie and such.))
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