[ToxicShadow]

With Cynder's attempt at a return attack on his ear, Karkaine leaned back, away from the Lucain's snout. He made no comment on the dirt and bits of wood that resided there, only too used to him getting down and dirty whenever the chance arose. He had teased him for it on occasion, but he was currently too busy using his human hands to the advantage by grabbing both of Cynder's ears and rubbing circles into them with his thumbs. He didn't say anything, he only smirked again. With any luck, this tactic would incapacitate the gray Lucain, if only for a short time.

"Ah-hem Are you interrupting something?" A feminine voice called out, sounding as though it was coming from a few yards away.

Kezarec's daughter, Tantic, who appeared to be in her teenage years, was standing next to Croquet, the young man that was originally supposed to join them. In the female's hands she carried several more baskets, but, to Cynder's luck, Croquet had disagreed with her insisting 'baskets only!' and grabbed a few bags as well, which he carried on his own.

"Croquet was in the neighborhood because Mother asked him to pick me up," she said, her words coming off happy and cheerful. "And I convinced him to let me tag along! I hope that's okay...?" When it dawned on her that Karkaine and Cynder may not have been happy with her coming along, her ears drooped.

Croquet, however, didn't say anything and had little in his expression to suggest what he was thinking. He wasn't enjoying having to play babysitter for Kez's daughter just because the woman insisted on hiding the truth of the mafia from her own kid. Why anyone, especially Karkaine, agreed to leave Tantic innocent minded in a world of monsters, he would never know. She would have been better off knowing the truth, in his opinion. But, instead, Karkaine had sworn to rip the head off of anyone that disobeyed her mother's request and told her about their mafia. Everyone was to remain as actors and businessmen, leaving her to believe that their cover was all that they were.

[[I hope you don't mind that I dragged Tantic is as well. Since she's so innocent minded, I figured that she would actually enjoy hunting for the eggs, unlike everyone else. If it's a problem, they can always send her home.]]

[Moofius]

(( No, it's fine. And the heads up that she cannot know about the mafia bit is good too. Since I'm sure Cynder would have eventually mentioned it. xD; Especially since he hates the troupe half, for the most part. xD; Cynder: -not an actor, just a behind-the-scenes guy- >:C ))

It was hard to look angry when in a state of, more or less, bliss.
"Hey!" He snapped, tails thumping the ground as his front paws twitched in restrained pleasure, "Unfair advantage! You are so-!" whatever Karkaine would be was lost as Cynder was interrupted by a younger, sweeter voice.

"Oh, hey." Cynder said, trying his best not to sound to disappointed as he tried to back out of the "torture" being administered to his ears. It wasn't likely that Cynder would admit that the distraction caused by the new arrivals would keep him and Karkaine from doing non-Easter related activities but it probably would keep them on track.
He really wished he could go off track with Karkaine now, though.

"I guess you're not..." The lucain said grudgingly as he tried to fish his mind out of the gutter. He wasn't even hearing most of what Tantic was saying, probably because he didn't care. She was such a pain, he couldn't even talk to her because of the stupid secret. His attention turned from Tantic to Croquet and.
"YES! Bags! These baskets are all kinds of stupid!"

Well at least this whole thing would go by much easier. Honestly, the woven, pastel coloured baskets couldn't hold anything and they were ugly to boot. Why would you ever use a basket if you had a bag handy?
"Maybe we'll find all of the eggs before the time limit, and get home faster..." Cynder said, mind easily turning back to the gutter. Stupid Karkaine, teasing him like that. Now he'd have to try to make Karkaine as miserable as he was. They could suffer in sexual frustration together, as it should be.

(( ... Does this count as mature content? :U? xD;;; ))

[ToxicShadow]

Karkaine released Cynder's ears as the other pair arrived, not fighting the Lucain as he backed out of his grasp. He stood, as well, leaving any awkwardness behind. Even though he'd gone and gotten Cynder started, he didn't appear to mind the interruption like the gray Lucain did. They would have plenty of time for other activities sometime later, he was sure. Maybe he wouldn't allow that to happen even then, though, just to get him even more frustrated.

"As you can see, he's more into convention rather than the festivities. My apologies, Tantic, don't mind him. But, thank you, you two. It's not a problem that you join us." It was clear that Karkaine acted differently with Tantic than the mafia members. He treated her more delicately in order to keep up their facade. He wasn't a murderous leader and order keeper to her, but merely her mother's close friend that just so happened to also be her boss.

"Yay~ I heard that you two were doing it for your kids. That's so sweet of you," Tantic said as she moved forward to hand off another basket to Karkaine. "I guess I'll just hold the rest of these and fill them up on my own. In the tree, yes?" She was off before anyone could respond, now taking over Karkaine's job of oak tree branch and nook hunting.

Meanwhile, Croquet offered Cynder a bag, wordlessly. He only spoke a moment later when he asked, "I should join you?" He was grudging the idea, but he couldn't go back if either Karkaine or Cynder told him otherwise. He knew well enough that Karkaine usually backed Cynder, thus, never dared to disagree with him.

[Moofius]

Cynder was eager enough to ignore Tantic and her Titanic amount of ignorance (haha, did you catch that? Tantic? Titanic? Haaa...? Oh whatever. ) and turned to Croquet who was at his mercy. Cynder was not entirely aware of the fact that he was blanketted by Karkaine's leadership and power of the group. He didn't quite graps the fullness of Karkaine's power over the group and how much of Karkaine's power was what kept others chained to his will, to some extent.

"I don't believe in suffering alone. Also if you help we'll finish faster." Cynder shrugged, taking the bag with one paw as he did so, "Maybe."
"They better appreciate all of this," Cynder said, more to himself as he sniffed at the air. Where could he go to look for eggs? The tree would be crawling with egg seekers now. He'd have to move away from the tree. Maybe near the edges of the clearing? There was plenty of bushes and plants that could hide all sorts of eggs.

[ToxicShadow]

"Oooh, shiny~" Tantic could be heard as she discovered a very glittery egg, and then another, storing them in her small army of Easter baskets. Every few moments, an "Ooh," an "aaah," an "eep," or such similar noises could be heard from her direction as she found a new egg. It was almost funny to think that her mother had actually trained her in the art of hand-to-hand combat for 'self defense,' considering how childish she often acted.

Croquet wanted to sigh, but he held it in. He would much rather stand around, guarding the theater, as was his usual job when not tending to mafia matters, than to hunt for eggs. "Right," was all he said to show that he understood. He'd be suffering right along with them.

"Your sight will give advantage," Karkaine commented, his eyes on Croquet. The other Lucain nodded, touching his fingers to the spade shaped eye patch that covered his right eye without his realizing it. His unusual eyesight was strange, indeed, he able to see great distances as if they were very close, much like a built in telescope. His eyesight was so strong that he had to dull it by constantly covering one eye.  "Understood. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can leave." With that, he decided to head in a different direction, one that seemed like they hadn't covered, given the number of eggs he could spot from where he had stood.

As everyone else spread out, Karkaine did the same, choosing the only direction away from the other three that had gathered for their hunt. He would leave Tantic to the treeline, since she appeared to enjoy it so much.

[Moofius]

Cynder was left on his own, everyone spreading out to continue the hunt. As he travelled to his desired search location he continued to pick up whatever eggs he saw, his trek towards the edge of the clearing a zig zagging mess. Apparently an organized search was out the window as he retrieved eggs from old wombear burrows and the like.

Did they have enough eggs yet? How many did the kids really need? "As many as you can find" and "All of them" were the first two answers to come to mind, but that wasn't practical. But then, when was Cynder ever described as practical? He wanted the best for his kids (not something he would admit out loud) and even if this was a small thing, he still wanted them to have the best.
"We should have just sent Tantic out here," Cynder joked from across the clearing, "She seems to be enjoying it the most!"
Realistically he could have just got off the sentence at "enjoying it" since everyone else was unhappy. Even Cynder. No, really!

[ToxicShadow]

With the big oak tree out of the way in considerable time, Karkaine's assumption was proven correct. The girl zoomed to another nearby tree after she was positive that no more eggs could be hiding at the one, high, low, or anywhere in between. Automatically, her silly little noises continued with each egg that she uncovered.

Croquet's search lead him to an area of the clearing where several fallen logs lied. He gathered any egg that he came across and bagged them, having to even get on his hands and knees in order to retrieve some eggs that had been hidden inside the logs rather than on the ground or next to them. He was quite tempted to start shooting the eggs with his concealed gun to ease his boredom and annoyance at such a belittling task, but he was sure that doing such a thing would only land him with an angry boss.

"You could always ask to trade places," Karkaine replied to Cynder from across the way. "I'm sure she would be happy to." His trail, too, lead him all over the place. The placing of all the eggs certainly wasn't convenient for him or anyone. He ended up walking in circles half of the time because he missed one here or there while his eyes were busy with another. It was the green ones that were similar in shade to the grass that he was beginning to very much dislike, while he found that those with glitter gave themselves away in the light of the sun.

When Cynder had mentioned her name, Tantic's ears both twitched, but she didn't pay their conversation any attention. She had just found a silver egg with golden sparkles. It was definitely worth her attention.

[Moofius]

"Not trade places," Cynder said, putting some emphasis on it, "Just have her out here by her lonesome hunting for eggs. We could go out and get drinks or do... something... That's not this." Cynder had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing, not to mention keeping his mind out of the gutter as he searched through a pile of leaves, bits of broken leaf getting trapped in his fur.

There was a few more moments of silence (only interrupted by chirping birds and squeals from Tantic) before Cynder decided to break it once more, "What do eggs have to do with this holiday anyway? I mean I know this is a Spring event and eggs are babies but... I dunno', seems like a weird combination. And what's up with the Easter cuniflare? Have any of you celebrated Easter before?"
This was, in fact, his first time celebrating Easter. It all seemed entirely stupid. A pure waste of time. What were they going to DO with these eggs anyway? Eat 'em?

[ToxicShadow]

"That would be rude," Karkaine replied, stopping breifly to eye Cynder from across the clearing. He was actually glad that Tantic was probably too busy to completely pay attention to their conversation, given that she was so light hearted that she would probably feel saddened to hear that Cynder wanted to leave her by herself. "And if you did leave her alone, I wouldn't stop Kezarec when she came to get her revenge on you." The thought of an angry, wrathful Kezarec blowing up on Cynder actually amused him.

Before she knew it, Tantic already had one of her baskets full with eggs gathered from some of the trees and was already working into the next.

"I never celebrated it, and we have never celebrated it, as far as I know," Croquet finally broke his silence.

"We never celebrated it until now, but Mother told me about it before because she did it as a little kid and I always wanted to try it. She even told me once that some people used to hide plastic golden eggs with money in them!" Tantic replied, still more excited than anyone else without even trying to be.

"The eggs are typically hard boiled," Karkaine explained. "People often make egg salad with them afterward." He hadn't ever celebrated the holiday himself, clearly, but he knew a bit about it. "There are several stories of origin, legends, and folklore that coincide with egg hunting. It mostly is the symbolism of the egg and the time of spring."

"...Is egg salad even good?" Croquet asked, a moment later. It didn't sound that great and, by the looks of things, if these were hard boiled eggs, they were going to have a lot of it.

[Moofius]

The idea of any of the members of Karkaine's crew filled him with a mix of dread and excitement. Dread mostly because he didn't always know what sort of skills they had. All Cynder had going for himself was he was scruffy and didn't like to lose. He would to to extreme measures to win but that was all. He wasn't exceptionally fast or strong or much of anything when compared with the rest of the theater, at least so far as he could tell.
"Or we could let her look and we could, I dunno, supervise." Cynder said, shrugging as he rolled another egg into the bag he had.

When Tantic mentioned eggs with money inside Cynder seemed to brighten a bit, "Okay now that would be worth looking for. I'm pretty sure these are just hardboiled, though." Maybe they were just stuffed full of keystones? Nah, they would be heavier than this. He could break one open and see though. Then Karkaine mentionned salad and Cynder didn't even try to hide his obvious dislike, nose wrinkling.
"Doesn't sound good. Salads are gross and eggs aren't exactly great. Put them together, well, it doesn't sound very pleasant. I say we toss the eggs afterwards."
Cynder would do whatever he could to wiggle out of eating salads, he was worse than the kids a lot of the time.

[ToxicShadow]

"I think that I heard that everyone got rewarded with different eggs for gathering up all of these ones," Tantic replied, mostly to Cynder. "Maybe that means we will get some money in the end?" She was excited just to hunt for the eggs, since she had never gotten the chance to do so in the past, but what ever prizes awaited them were sure worth having their own excitement for. "At least, that is what people at the store were saying."


By this time, Croquet had managed to scrounge up all the eggs around the fallen logs. He wasn't sure where else to look, either, even with his eye sight. "We may be running out of places to look."


"Whatever we bring back, I hope they're eggs," Karkaine added, thinking about his children. They might be disappointed if they sent them egg hunting but they came back with someone other than eggs. "Even if they are hard boiled eggs, you wont have to eat them, Cynder." He wouldn't be so cruel as to make the very carnivorous male suffer that much. Karkaine had no problems bringing in fine steaks for the other male.

[[Fail post, but I'm using my mother's laptop in a hurry while I'm babysitting again. Apparently, I have terrible luck. My laptop got infected with several viruses and prevented my anti-virus from working this morning, stupid DailyCute site. I may borrow my boyfriend's laptop tonight, since he's going to try to fix mine again. xD;]]

[Moofius]

Different rewards, eh? Well that could be interesting. Mysterious prizes were usually okay. Sometimes they weren't great, like keychains and crap. He did not want to go home with a bunch of crummy keychains.
"Well if the prizes are good and egg-like I wouldn't mind that, cause yeah, not too keen on boiled eggs."
And yes, yes he did need to reiterate that.

"I think you're right, Croquet," Cynder called from his side of the clearing, "Should we keep looking anyway? Maybe there's some we missed...?"
Even if there were, they had found so many now. They had more than enough to make the kids happy.
"You and I both know you can't make me eat anything. But I'm glad it's not something we might have to argue about later." For a moment Cynder wondered if his family would grow up completely dysfunctional because of the fighting and arguing, then figured if it wasn't his fault it would be Karkaine and the groups fault. Yey for not taking blame, huh?

[ToxicShadow]

"I mind not, either way." Surely, Tantic's response came as no surprise to anyone. Whatever she got out of egg hunting, even if she didn't get to keep it herself, didn't matter much to her. She was merely happy that she was allowed to take part in the event. "Maybe your kids will like boiled eggs?" Now there was a thought.


Croquet shrugged. They probably missed some of the eggs, somewhere. There was an awful lot of places to look and not even he could see past solid objects. Some could still be hidden. "I suppose we may find more..."

"We don't have to stop until the time limit is up, so they may have hidden eggs in order to buy time," Karkaine added after a moment, just having found a stray one hidden in the grass by almost smashing it with his foot. He wanted to get his money's worth, if nothing else.

[Moofius]

Cynder thought it over for a moment. They might like boiled eggs, but they still had way too many to eat them all. They could toos out whatever wasn't eaten before they started to stink.

"Yeah we don't have to stop, but I think we're running out of eggs to find." Cynder sighed, having spent the last few minutes searching only to find a small, lonely green egg. The only one in the last little while. This was getting less fun and more tedious... Not that it was ever fun. Egg hunting was lame.

(( I don't know what you mean by what Karkaine said. xD; Confused. xPx; Sorry. ))

[ToxicShadow]

Croquet, for the time being, decided to give up. If they were going to attempt to find those last elusive eggs, they may have needed to construct a plan. Everything was better with a plan of attack, right? It seemed that it would be, anyway, with as many of them were hunting for eggs in one area. "We need a plan of attack if we're going to continue," he called out, making sure that everyone could hear.

Tantic's ears twitched, she having managed to find a few more eggs hidden well among the leaves on tree branches. "How many do you think are left, Uncle Karkaine?" Okay, so Karkaine wasn't her uncle, and she knew that, but she had eventually came to call him that, since he was such good friends with the family. He never seemed to mind it, as far as she aware. Or maybe she did notice, but completely ignored it. Nobody really quite knew how her mind worked.

"I agree," Karkaine went on to say. "I suppose we don't have to continue; we have collected a lot of eggs already, but I'm sure we could find places we haven't looked if we all map out where we have already looked. That is," he turned toward Cynder, "if you wish to continue?"

[[Sorry. He basically said that since the hunt has a time limit, they may have hidden some eggs better than the others to try to take up all the time. So, basically, there could be more eggs left, but well hidden.]]