Joachim and Nos watched as Lua scribbled feverishly into her notebook.

They sat around the table in the quaint cafe near their dormitories. A cool bricked walled building dug into a mount with long windows tunnelling out of the earth to the world outside. The establishment served a mean cup of cocoanut juice, the three teens each having a cup of the coming winter cooled drink. The room was lit by oil lamps that hung from the ceiling like stars from décor of vines that were allowed to grow above, misting the place with the scent of dew and glow of green. Piercing early morning light streamed through the windows, catching the fireflies of dust floating in space.

“Okay,” Lua said. “Here's some simple signs we can use in a fight. Stop. Attack. Defend. Target.” She followed each command with a unique sign. “What do you guys think?”

Nos raised a brow at her. “Who died and made you queen?”

“I did,” she snapped back. “When none of you were willing to get the ball rolling!”

Joachim glared at her, trying to get the message across that as a mute, he was not well suited to the task of speaking on behalf of a team. She saw his stare and held up an apologetic hand, wearing a grimace of self-frustration.

“Not like that,” she told him.

Nos ignored them and continued, “Why don't we just use simple signs.” He pointed; crossed his arms; and waved forward, explaining target, defend, and attack. “What's with these fancy moves of yours?”

“That's so our opponents won't be able to read us. It'll take some getting used to, but with them, there's no way our commands will be read.”

“You're overthinking this.” Nos crossed his arm in annoyance. “What about we use actual sign languages? Like Joachim's?”

Joachim looked to her pleadingly. He was feeling far too lazy to learn new things at the moment. In fact, he felt far too lazy most days to do anything. That morning, if Ishumi had come to his room and dragged him out of bed, he would have slept in on their day off.

“What if they know sign language too?”

“You're definitely overthinking this.”

For the first time, Joachim agreed with Nos, nodding his head to share the sentiment.

Lua disagreed. “Look, if you think you can do better, why don't you try it!”

Nos shrugged. “I don't really want to.”

“That's your problem! You think you're so smart and strong and above it all but not willing to do anything to help out! Why don't you go fight the tourney yourself?” Her voice began raising.

“Maybe I will!” he yelled back. “Why don't you two just sit back and let me handle it? Maybe get your brother to fight your fight like you normally do? I'd probably work better with him than you.”

“Why in Titans are you even bringing my brother into this?” She jumped to her feet in anger.

Nos followed her up. “Isn't that what you do? Have him take care of everything? Like with the Dolf incident? Big brother comes and clean up your mistakes so you can have a nice life?”

Lua raised her hand to throw a punch but stopped when the waiter next to them cleared his throat loudly.

“I'm sorry sir, madam, but you are disturbing our patrons.”

The two rivalling teens glared at each other before turning away in huffs.

Lua exclaimed, “I'm going out to get some air.” She then stomped out the door.

Nos's teeth were still grinding, He huffed when the door closed behind her and picked up his bag. “This is a waste of time. I'm going back.” Unlike Lua, he took the side door, likely to avoid running into her. “Bye.”

In the end, Joachim just sat there, waving an apology to the waiter who nodded sympathetically before going back to his work. Joachim sighed heavily and looked at the three cups of drinks left on the table. He took Nos's beverage and poured the remainder into his cup then drank from it, letting the cold liquid rush down into his body which was heating up with frustration. They were not a team. Even with Lua, who tries, Joachim felt little chemistry with her. They got along well enough on a day-to-day, but they usually worked separately as rivals, challenging each other to betterment rather than working in a team. Even less was to be said about Nos, who Joachim found insufferable sometimes. He wondered what people like Kingston and Shichi saw in the teen, those two even willing to make the effort to talk to the new kid.

A little leather backed corner poked out from behind Lua's cup. Realizing the girl had left her notebook behind, he picked it up and after a short weighing of conscious, flipped through the pages.

The book was mostly filled with study notes and doodles. A couple of them were written in her brother Quinton's meticulously neat handwriting, mostly reminders on homework or chores. He turned to the more recent pages and found the ones where she had written the signs they were to use for the tourney. He nonchalantly decided to turn back the pages, one-by-one from there.

As the pages folded back, he found more doodles and notes on signs, littering the papers. Lua had not shown those to them earlier and he deduced she must have took more time than their meeting to come up with them.

These are very detailed, he thought.

The other signs had notes on their designs and ease of use in combat. It seemed she had given thoughts on how well they function even if they were using their weapons, along with a guessed likelihood of others deciphering what the signs meant. As he continued to peruse the page, he landed on one with an instruction underlined and circled.

Ask Ishumi about sign languages

“Bad day?”

Joachim looked up as a man took the seat opposite him, setting a steaming cup of tea between them. He was a human with messy dark mud hair and the chiselled face of an adult, but the grin of a child. He wore a long dark grey coat over a black vest and white shirt. He took out a pocket watch from his coat and opened it to look at the time before storing it back.

“Spat with your friends? They seem like a nice bunch, if not a little uptight,” the man carried on the one-sided conversation.

Joachim cut his hand across his throat, trying to tell the stranger of his disability.

“You speak fine, kid,” the man said. “People just need to listen, honestly. Ears to the wind and all that. Or eyes to the wind, whatever.”

Joachim eyed him, wondering who the man was.

“Oh, where are my manners.” He patted his hand on his coat and reached it across the table for a handshake. “I'm The Watcher. You must be wondering why I'm here, right? Well, I was aiming for this exact location. Well, not this exact, exact location, but this city. Though I'm off by a couple of days, so we're stuck here until the thing that happens happen, as it happened before. And actually, I lied. I didn't miss by a couple of days. It was more like a few dozens, which really says something about my steering and attention span, more than anything, now that I think about. Get it?”

Joachim shook his head vigorously at the strange man who rambled on.

“Well,” The Watcher took a sip of his tea and let out a frosted breath. “That's fine. It takes a while to get used to my mouthing. Still, I like your friends. They remind of these elves I know. Complete hard heads, both of them. Love working alone too. But we did well together. You know why?”

Again, the teen replied negatively.

The man grinned childishly. “Because we all wanted the same thing in the end. At least, that's what I like to think. And when you have the same goal you're all working feverishly towards, there's no way you won't work together. I mean, you have to. You put your ego aside, you put your pride aside, you put your ideology aside, and all just aim for the same goal. And even if that relationship only lasts for as long as the battle you're fighting, maybe that's enough.”

Joachim listened intently. It was difficult catching up to the fluent yet kinetic speech of The Watcher, but he managed to catch most of the gist.

With a chuckle, The Watcher leaned back in his seat. From his seemingly endless coat pockets, he pulled out a black book, almost like a tome. He flipped to a bookmarked page and began reading, occasionally sipping from his tea.

Joachim watched him for a moment before snapping out of the trance. He got The Watcher's attention before pointing from the man's seat to the cafe door.

“It's fine. I'll be gone before your friend gets back here. My gut's telling me my companions will be coming to fetch me soon and I would really like to finish my tea.”

As if on cue, the door to the cafe swung opened. Under the archway, a girl just slightly younger than Joachim stood. She had brown braided hair underneath the hood of a green trimmed, tree brown winter coat.

“Watcher!” the girl exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm meddling!” The Watcher said.

The girl looked at Joachim and back to The Watcher. “You told us not to meddle!”

“Yes. I told you not to meddle. I'm perfectly fine, thank you very much.” He attempted to wave her off. In a pouting voice, he answered, “Now, I would like to finish my tea.”

She crossed the room in three long strides and fluidly reached for The Watcher. But instead of pulling at the man's shirt or arm, she pinched his ears and yanked. Joachim winced on the man's behalf.

“Ow ow ow ow ow...!” The Watcher whined as the girl pulled, angling him so as to force him onto his feet.

She turned to the cafe body and gave a slight bow. “I'm so sorry for the intrusion. We'll visit your establishment again in the future as better paying customers for recompensation,” she stated with an eloquent tone. “As for you...” She returned her attention to The Watcher. “We're going back to the inn and you're going to stay there!”

Though she was just a child, she dragged The Watcher off with the sternness of a mother. The man fretted in pain as he was dragged out the door, back bent at an angle to match the girl's height. He awkwardly waved goodbye to Joachim.

He stared at the spectacle, then into empty space as the two left, with the establishment slowly meandering back into its routine. Even though Joachim was still stunned – mostly confused – by what had happened, the odd man's words resonated within him. Or at least, the words that made sense. With those ideas in mind, he began brewing a plan.