The Red Lands ::Private RP::

[KatDrama]

Roi impassionately waited out the storm, her knees pulled up to her chin as she leant back against the rock behind her. These storms could last for mere minutes, hours, or sometimes even days. She hated hearing the howling of the wind through the ruins, it made the world seem all the more lonely. Roi rocked back and forth for a bit out of boredom, but leaning back against the rock she was surprised when the rock budged and fell backwards. Roi froze for a moment, wondering if her tunnel was going to collapse.

When her hiding place didn't disappear Roi turned around and looked curiously down the expanse of space that had opened up. She didn't know what a parking garage was, but it was a large piece of open space that no on inhabited. "Hello..." Roi crawled through the tunnel to the parking garage. There were spaces on the side that opened up to the outside world, but still the sand storm seemed far away. With an an almost magical sense of wonder Roi entered this space and explored it carefully. There wasn't much here, a few old 'cars'. She knew that they used to be the main mode of transportation. Perhaps she could scavenge some parts from them. At the very least, she had hit the scrap metal jack pot! Roi could afford to eat for weeks!

She couldn't hide her giddiness, it almost made her day all right and her hurts disappear. With much effort she managed to get her bike down into the parking garage. In the shadows of the garage Roi began to examine the cars.

[FrauleinD]

The storm howled and turned the rocks outside, but Dylan couldn't hear anything other than her own hushed sobs. The ground beneath her shifted, grumbled, and collapsed, sending her tumbling through bits of dirt and rocks in a small avalanche of debris. She landed face down in a pile of dirty red sand, now completely coated with the reddish brown dust. The goggles had been collecting her tears, and she shakingly removed them, not bothering to even try to wipe off the dirt, knowing anything else she was wearing would be just as dirty if not worse. She looked in wander around her, surrounded by bits of cracked concrete with old, faded painted stripes and metal monsters she wasn't quite sure how to identify.

Dylan could still hear the wind howling outside, and she was quite glad to be out of it, even if she was now trapped in a cave she might or might not be able to escape. She crawled over to one of the metal beasts, it was half crushed under a stone pillar, with the front driver's side door opened. Blinking through some tears, she pressed all of the buttons, one of them causing some sort of liquid to squirt onto the broken glass fragments before her, and another one causing a radio to blare static, which she was quick to shut off.

She wiped her face on her shoulder and jerked sideways as the next button caused the back of the vehicle to pop open. Her heart raced as she waited for some sort of monster to pop out and eat her face, but it seemed she'd have to wait a little longer to get eaten. She approached the open back of the car and found inside an old, musty, but dirt-free fleece blanket. Her mouth fell open as she reached to touch the soft-looking fabric, but much to her dismay she found she was still wearing the gloves, twitching a bit as she remembered why she had put them on.

Poking out from the corner of the blanket was an almost empty bottle of water. Was it water? There was no label, and the liquid was mysteriously clear, though bubbly. She shook it, half expecting it to explode, but it did not. She twisted off the cap, wondering what the strange liquid was. It smelled bitter, and she dared not taste it, instead opting to toss it aside carelessly into a dark corner of the cave. She crawled into the trunk, rummaging around the many bottles, boxes, and packages that cluttered it, wondering if she might find anything useful, not paying any attention as tears kept rolling down her cheeks, every once in a while accompanied by her sniffles.

[KatDrama]

Roi stood as she heard a sound above the screaming of the wind. Had something fallen in from the ceiling. Curious she stood, wrench in hand. She winced once again when she walked, she should probably take a look at what was wrong with her knee. But not now. She heard sounds coming from one of the cars. The trunk was open and it sounded like there was an animal in it. Silently Roi came around, she was a little startled and dismayed, but she lowered her wrench. It was the hunter...crying like a child looking for scraps of food.

"You're a persistent one." She said in a solid voice, not meaning to alarm the hunter, but rather to announce her presence. "...and pathetic." Roi's mouth curled into a mean smile. She had no patience for cry babies. Just what kind of man was this?

[FrauleinD]

Dylan stopped where she was, recognizing that voice right away as if it were the only thing that could wake her up. Slowly she straightened up, tears still sailing down her cheeks, and caught Roi's gaze dead-on, the bits of gold and red in her eyes glimmering somehow in that darkness, almost as if they were pieces of glitter in a snowglobe. She scowled, not caring one bit for Roi's demeanor. After all, Dylan had come all that way just to make sure the woman was all right, but of course there was no way for that platinum-haired wench to know that.

"Huh." Dylan said in a raspy, hoarse voice. "Desperate's the word yer lookin' fer." She choked as her the pain in her hand stung and shot up through her banged up arm. She was already crying, it couldn't get any worse than that, and she couldn't imagine what it looked to Roi what she was doing in that car's trunk. She grasped her forearm, hoping somehow that squeezing it hard enough might stop the circulation, and hence the pain. What was she doing in that trunk anyway, what was she even looking for?

"Ah s'ppose yer gunna finish me off now, huh?" she said, not trying to sound friendly as a big ugly spider fell from the ceiling and onto the side of the car where she'd set her hand. Before she'd realized it, her fist had crushed the creature, its inner ooze making a small spatter where it sat. Her eyes widened, surprised at her own reaction, and she recoiled a bit, wondering where that anger had come from.

She shivered, though it was far from cold, even in the darkness of that cave. The skin under her gloves twinged and tingled as she clutched her hurt hand and flopped down flat on her rear end in the trunk and glared up at Roi.

"So what makes you so special huh? What makes you so't Pegasus wants to pamper you an' 'e leaves me in a closet?"

[KatDrama]

Roi couldn't help but smirk. "The fact that Pegasus can't have me." She smiled cheekily. So this was just a normal tortured underling after all. "Honestly though." She sighed and kicked the flat tire of the car, turning her back to the hunter. It seemed that the hunter had enough inner demons to keep herself occupied. "I don't care whether you live or die, but this place, this junk heap is my find." She turned and looked back over her hunched shoulders at the hunter. Her golden eye was just gleaming, like a hawk staring mercilessly at its prey.

And then as though she didn't care about the presence of the hunter she returned to her back and began working on it again.

[FrauleinD]

"Heh." Dylan almost started to laugh but broke out into another series of choked coughs. She looked over the opposite side of the trunk from where Roi had been and spit the dirt that had become mud in her mouth onto the concrete below. She really was tired of swallowing that stuff, it had become a bad habit of hers. "Can't have ya, hah?" She watched as the woman turned around, having no intent to attack her, at least not at the moment, and at least not while she was turned away.

She watched silently, watching as Roi worked on her... Scavenging... Whatever she was doing from her comfortable position in the trunk. Dylan hopped from her seat and folded up the fleece throw and put it under her arm. Roi could have all the scrap metal in that place, but that blanket was Dylan's treasure. She walked around Roi, paying no attention to her work, and leaned against one of the nearby slanted pillars, wondering if the woman was just going to ignore her, no longer how long she stood there watching her, wondering if Roi was really doing anything or if she was just trying to busy herself to give her a reason to ignore Dylan.

Somewhere along the way, the tears had stopped falling from Dylan's eyes. They were probably just dry for now, they ached as though they were about to crack like her skin. At the thought of her skin she cringed again, feeling her arm as though the crinkled bits of skin were just crawling off of the bone. She reached into her pocket and threw a plasic-wrapped cake looking thing on the ground in front of Roi.

"Y'said this scrap heap's yers. That came outta there, you eat it, then." She coughed a bit again, beating her fist on her chest, wondering if she was going to start spitting dust. "But hey."

"Was you born with that eye like 'at, er did it grow on ya?"

[KatDrama]

Roi stared silently at the cake treat for a moment. She was trying to figure out if the person was trying to taunt her. Roi smiled sadistically as she reached out and drew the wrapped food substance towards herself. Roi glanced curiously at the hunter. "Your loss. You've spent too much time in the pseudo domes. These are called twinkies. They were designed to survive the apocalypse." Roi tried hard to hide her laughter at the strange hunter as she opened up the package and began to savor the stale cake goodness.

Roi stretched out her stiff legs and leaned back on one hand as she looked up at the hunter. She had grease and dirt all over herself. Aside from her white hair she looked like she was entirely the color of dirt. "As for the eyes? Who knows." Roi shrugged. "It's been with me since I can remember, and time before that isn't exactly relevant."

[FrauleinD]

Dylan looked uneasy for a moment as Roi so readily ate the weird cake thing. What the heck was a Twinkie? She felt the rumbling in her stomach again, but still didn't feel as though she could really eat anything, especially not after watching that woman eat the treat from God-knows-when.

"Maybe 't should be rel'vant," Dylan mumbled, trying to scratch her arm with her gloved hand, rubbing mercilessly through her jacket sleeve, wondering if any of her skin was coming off under that worn canvas, though it didn't appear to be bleeding at least. For a second, she forgot Roi was there, and rubbed harder and harder at her arm until it felt like someone had torn the flesh from her bone, a seering sensation heading up through her arm.

"Agh! Fff-" she caught herself as she clutched her arm, letting her blanket fall to the concrete. "Ugh..." she grumbled, squeezing her arm so hard that her hand was starting to go numb. "Heh, well," she said, still hoarse, "Just wonderin'. 'Cause..." in a far corner of the dungeon-like lot, a bit of rubble crumbled and fell, interupting her. "Well, guess the storm's still goin'. Not 'zactly the best company, huh?" She fell to her bum next to her blanket, crossing her legs, staring off a bit at an old oil stain near Roi's hand, finding herself habitually examining Roi's chest.

Bad, bad habit. She looked away quickly, wondering if Roi had noticed, wondering if she were the type to throw a knife before asking questions.

[KatDrama]

Roi laughed a bit. "You're a twitchy one, aren't you? What on earth would make you turn into a hunter for Pegasus? You don't seem like you have it in you...besides the deep psychotic itching, that is." Roi seemed to be poking fun at the hunter, testing 'him' for weakness or any other quirks.

Roi folded up the wrapper with half of the twinkie still in it and shoved it in her cargo pant's pocket. She adjusted the makeshift cloak around her shoulders and stood up. "Sometimes these storms can last for days, I guess we're both unprepared." She laughed grimly. She pushed her bike up into its rightful sitting position and using the wrench took off part of the exterior paneling, revealing the wiring within. "Damn...that fall really messed up the gyro..." She cursed to herself and engrossed herself in the bike again, as though assuming that the hunter was no longer a threat. Her guard was almost totally down.

[FrauleinD]

"Ehehheh heh..." Dylan laughed nervously. "Twitchy... Yeah..." She longed to roll up her sleeve and look at her crackled skin, but sure as heck didn't want Roi to see it. As soon as Roi had turned her back, Dylan rolled her sleeve back just enough to see that the weird scaly cracking had spread, and her scratching it was probably making it worse. She quickly returned her sleeve to its original position and looked back to Roi as the woman kept talking.

"Hunter?" She rolled her eyes and settled them back on the oil spot from before. "Izzat some kinda 'fficial name fer it? I ain't never, uh-" she stopped mid-sentence, quickly changing her mind as to what she was going to say. "I mean, he ain't called me no hunter. Jes' his l'il errand boy." She said 'boy' with a bit of a chuckle, wondering if Roi were even listening. She was so engrossed in that bike and all the wire innards it had, after all, maybe she hadn't heard a word of it.

Dylan's unhurt hand travelled to her pocket, where she kept her rusty old pocket knife. A light flickered in her eye as she felt at the metal of the blade with her gloved finger. She stood slowly, her arm still itching and twitching, though for the moment at least, it seemed to be subsiding a bit. She looked over Roi's shoulder at the spaghetti bits of the bike, wondering what it all meant and what all those little wire bits did, her hand still in her pocket.

In a last spurt of desperation, Dylan's eyes travelled up and down the back of Roi's cloak. It seemed awfully bulky for such a normal-sized girl. Maybe her secret that Pegasus wanted was hidden in that odd bundle. With her grip as tight as she could manage on the knife, she thrust the knife toward the shoulder of the arm Roi was using to hold the wrench, with all she had, clenching her eyes shut and expecting more than anything to have a nice makeout session with that wrench in Roi's hand.

Dammit I don' wanna hurt you... But I dun wanna die either...

[KatDrama]

Roi snorted. "You're in the organization and you don't know the name of your job? If he sent you after me that means you're a hunter." Roi laugh nonchalant, though her ears perked up as she heard the person stand up. Roi didn't think much of it, for she thought her enemy had lost its fighting spirit. Roi was certainly surprised when she caught the sudden lunging motion. She barely had time to move. The knife blade caught her canvas shield and tore a long gash in it, catching her arm in the way.

Roi winced at the stream of blood as she twirled out of the way. As soon as the knife was done ripping all the way through her cloak Roi managed to scurry a few feet away to stock of the situation. On the floor where she had just been lay a pool of blood and feathers. The slash must have clipped her wings a bit too. Roi stared at the person who had moments earlier seemed so emotionally unstable, shock and confusion in her mismatched eyes. She clasped a hand over her arm, alarmed at how fast the wound was bleeding.

"What's with you? Did you not just hear me say we could be here for a couple days?! Now is hardly the time to fight me. Do you want to try survive in the outlands by yourself?" Roi seemed to be growing more angry by the second. She thought that this hunter had understood the situation. This person didn't seem to have a good grasp of survival instincts, and then out of the blue attacking Roi? That was just plain uncouth.

[FrauleinD]

"You think I care about all that?!" Dylan roared, eyeing the feather and blood trail uneasily for a moment. She swallowed, keeping a solid hold on her knife. "If I stay here, I die. If I go back to Pegasus, I'll eventually die. What difference does it make if this storm kills me as long as I get the satisfaction that I coulda gotten what I wanted if'n I only a gotten back to mah boss? Heh." She snickered a bit, not noticing her horrible logic. This woman wasn't so special after all. The hawk, was she? Well, what good was a bird while it was in a cage?

Dylan twitched a bit, holding in a nauseating giggle as the veins in her gimp arm felt as though they were filled with fire. The red flecks in her eyes seemed to glimmer for a second as she inched toward the bleeding woman on the floor. "I feel like I'm dyin' more'n more each day. How awesome could it be for a nobody like me... To take you out like you's nothin'. They ain't gotta know you's already hurt'n I hadda be dirty to even have a chance. Ain't none of that gonna matter to Pegasus."

Pegasus. It was his fault Dylan was there in the first place. But she didn't care anymore. If it weren't for Pegasus, sure, she wouldn't have had that shack of a home and she wouldn't have lived as long as she had thus far... But what good was her life if she was never the owner of it? Roi was too cocky. She'd been able to live freely, as those who were alive should have been able to, as far as Dylan saw it. "Whadda I care if I die? Whadda you care if you die? Ain't no one out there gunna care one lick now is they?" She readied her knife again, ready to jump on Roi and dig that blade in her neck as soon as Roi made the wrong move.

Her mind wandered for a moment, wondered to itself if Roi's blood felt the same as the fire Dylan felt inside of herself in that moment. Without another thought, she dove on Roi, ignoring the twitching that was welling up in her bad arm.

[KatDrama]

Roi didn't utter protest, nor did she move in her defense. In that moment Roi absolutely understood the thoughts going through her attacker's mind. She understood the thoughts of desperation, of nothingness. But Roi did not reject those sad feelings, she reached out to embrace them. As Dylan fell into her Roi stretched out her arms and held her attacker close, never mind that Dylan's knife was plunged into her shoulder, just by her collarbone, but above her heart. Never mind that it hurt like hell. Never mind that in that moment her cloak fell away. There was a serene, understanding smile on Roi's young face as she stretched out her wings and embraced her enemy, tears streaming from her eyes.

For a few moments all that could be heard was the distant roaring of the wind, the drip, drip, drip of Roi's blood, and the pounding heart beats of two lonely girls.

Finally Roi spoke, her voice soft and cracking. "If everyone stopped caring about living because of the world we live in...then who would there be left?" Slowly Roi opened her moist, tear streaked eyes and gazed straight into Dylan's. "This world is terrible." Roi reached up with trembling hand and tugged on Dylan's hand which was holding the knife plunged in her chest. "But that doesn't mean I have to give up. I choose to live free, and someday...I will fly out here." Roi smiled bitterly, still gazing at Dylan, her hand resting on her enemy's.

[FrauleinD]

Dylan felt her eye twitch as Roi spoke. Her mouth fell open and she cringed, cringed at the warm blood her mind told her she could feel through her gloves. The knife fell from her fingers as Roi's hand held hers. But Dylan couldn't cry now. She'd failed. She couldn't even bring herself to kill one lone girl she'd convinced herself no one would even miss. Her eyes and mouth were dry, and she had nothing left to say. Dylan's stomach and heart were empty, and her mind was blank except the abstract mental image of everything she'd hoped for from this job falling apart.

Her brows curled, but even through the stinging in her eyes Dylan couldn't cry. She thought she might have lost all feeling and even her scaling, crackling arm was numb now. She felt as though the sparkling flecks in her eyes had dulled, settled somehow, at least for the moment. The burning passion she'd felt just seconds before was gone, as was her will both to fight and to live. She let her head fall to Roi's chest, just below her shoulder, she'd never even thought she was lonely until just then. Her dim eyes looked up to a trickle of crimson just above her face.

"... I hurt your wing..." she said regretfully, wondering what in hell was wrong with this woman that she'd pull a crazy person so close to her. And even moreso, why it had worked. She wrapped her arms around Roi's waist, pulling her as close and as tightly as her malnourished and tired body could manage, paying no heed as her consciousness slipped away and one of the horns hidden under her hat brushed against Roi's cheek.

[KatDrama]

Roi winced as the sharp hidden horn graced her cheek, leaving a long scratch. But that was the least of her problems. Dylan sank into her and entirely lost consciousness. Roi quickly fell to her knees to support the weight. "Even still, I can fly." Roi murmured her response, though she knew her enemy couldn't hear it. Roi was beginning to feel dizzy, perhaps it was the loss of blood. She gazed down at her shoulder and arm. Crimson was washing away the red dirt on her body.

Slowly Roi moved Dylan from her lap to lay down on the concrete. The strangest...hunter ever. She laughed a bit as she picked up the pieces of her cloak. It couldn't serve its purpose now, so she quickly began tearing it into pieces. She tried to wrap her arm and shoulder to the best of her abilities with only one hand, but she was just bleeding too much. Perhaps this really is the end. She thought with a mixture of sadness and sarcasm. The hunter was right. They would die alone and uncared for in this hell hole. At least I will have flown at all. Roi was beginning to feel sleepy, despite trying her best not to fall asleep. But her strength was fading fast, and now she was laying on the concrete, staring just feet away at the peaceful sleeping face of her enemy.

What a girlish man... Roi thought as she reached out with a pale hand and gently patted the tear streaked face of her enemy. And though she fought it, though she was terrified of it, the darkness crept up on her and began to drag her down. Tears flowed from Roi's half opened eyes as the thought occurred to her. "I don't want to die." She whispered quietly into the emptiness as her mind slowly crossed over into the oblivion of sleep, and the young bleeding hawk passed out.