[whoops did forget Ali was absent, but alas the challenge was more for IC effect than anything. At this rate I don't think we need to go through with it unless Ali would like to knock rico's teeth out lol. Even so though as absent ranks can't be challenged anyway, the challenge would just start when she gets back ^^]

A small voice tugs at the back of his burning mind. Any other voice wouldn't have made it past the flames, but being a daughter of smoke after all, she wriggled through the inferno and touched the heart of the Incendiary. He turned, as if snapped from a daze, to glance down at her small body. "Kimber..." he nearly complained, pleaded. She didn't understand.

Maybe I don't understand.

Guns whined uncertainly beside him, sensing the shift in mood. Anger remained gripped around the dunskin, and at Kimber's last murmur he could only shake his head, teeth snapping with newfound drive. "Only because of her stomach, she would otherwise," he snarled, eyes flashing back towards the black stallion with discontent.

"We have different views on the truth behind such names then, I fear," Ricochet retorted when Paladin expressed the wish for an apology. If nothing else, Ricochet wanted to fight the bitch just to prove her weakness and for her to face her crimes from long ago once and for all. Regardless of the hows or the whys, he felt, he knew Smoke was more qualified than she to run the herd. Only Paladin's heart and his dick blinded him from that truth, and for that Ricochet could not easily forgive. To add on that the way Soleil had left the Oasis, for a unicorn no less, was only insult to injury. That and the fact she was a mare period made her less worthy in Ricochet's eyes. Why even Smoke was currently incapacitated by the work of a mare. Neither truly had business leading anyone - who could they protect if the time came and their legs had been spread months prior?

He snorted rashly, but said no more on the matter. Angrily his tail lashed behind him, the dirt still occasionally flickering and popping around him. Another voice soon enough cut him down however, and this time his fire remained doused. Rather than joy, gratitude, acceptance, Smoke threw disappointment at him. A face so like his father's in that regard the colt in him immediately shrunk down. He crouched, half expecting a beating - Gunslinger surely would have were he here. The poor stallion, so ready to leave life had taught his son all the physical aspects of a warrior, but none of the heart; he'd deluded himself in thinking Ricochet was being a child and would grow out of it. Maybe he would, as he was young yet.

"But Smoke!" He protested at first, quickly falling silent and down-casting his eyes. He knew it was futile. He had sense enough to at least back down when the one he stood up for asked it of him. His body relaxed like some great shuddering cave falling in on itself. A frown remained smeared on his facade, and gone was the happy expression on his dog, but the two retreated more or less with tails tucked beside the grulla. Half to comfort himself, and half to shelter her, Ricochet took Kimber in under his neck, tucking her against his breast like a teddy bear. The voice that came into his mind, startling and abrasive, needn't have been spoke. He glanced at Smoke and Zaffre, hesitant to connect to a duo that caused him so much grief, especially the blue - his face still ached at times, but he put that beside him for the sake of Kimber. He nodded smally, understanding.

They left, but he could not watch them go.

"I thought..." he trailed off in a whisper to her, miserable. He might have ruined all his plans for her, all for naught.