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 Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:34 am
"Not fair!" Alek cried as the soft, rubber ball flew past him and into the street. "Franny should throw to you, Granchie. I'm sick of getting the ball," he said as he... got the ball. The boy did manage to look both ways before crossing the road, and when he was back on Archie's side he approached his grandfather, dropping the ball to the grass and propping a foot on it to keep it still.
Francine giggled from her current spot under the protection of Archie's arm. "Sorry!" she chirped, all smiles.
"Yeah, whatever." Alek smiled too. Of the two orange-haired girls that had ruined his opportunity to be an only child and therefore spoiled, Alek certainly liked Francine the best.
"All right. You stand facing the yard, Franny," Archie said, "and I'll throw to Alek and you throw to me, okay?" He grabbed the ball out from under the former satyr's foot and hurried away, barely missing the boy's tail-pulling retaliation.
The three went back to their game of catch, which seemed to go much better now that Francine wasn't pitching the ball into the street with every turn.
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Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:04 am
The game had been decently progressing for a time, until a miss by Alek caused the ball to roll into the street once more. Luckily for anyone who’d not want to fetch it, said ball just happened to end up rolling right into the hands of a small silver boy with a black ponytail, and a gigantic red clawed section up his arm. This child stood at the feet of a strange woman in a rather extravagant black coat.
This lady was short and had a rather unimpressive figure, and her long silver hair was nothing much to look at, but the coat she wore made enough of a statement to make up for it. A long silken black trenchcoat with a ginormous collar and a train adorned her slim figure and gave a powerful look to an otherwise unnoticeable woman, in such a way that only things like a gigantic collared jacket or a world bearing pompadour could do. One green eye shot from the ball in her ward’s hands to where it had come from. The children were unfamiliar but the felty man was at least semi-recognizable. Though he seemed to have gotten a bit patchwork and tailey since she’d last seen him. Motioning to a small redheaded child behind her, and putting a hand upon the shoulder of the other boy, she proceeded to cross the street with them.
Bailey, a cheerful grin upon his face, rushed over to return the ball once they’d crossed the street. These people seemed interesting! Kahlua didn’t seem as interested in these weird children, but Bailey had taken a liking to playing with others. While he did that, his guardian stood at the edge and smirked.
“Hello Archie. Would we be interupting one of those…family fun type things?”
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Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:38 am
Archie's eyes followed the ball as it launched out of Alek's hands and past Franny's outstretched ones. He inhaled a breath to sigh, then let it out normally when he saw who was carrying the ball now. The shiny child was recognizable, made more so by the woman accompanying him, even with her odd coat and hair.
"Oh, hi!" Archie said. "Yeah, catch. You can play if you'd like," he said to the boys, moving closer to the edge of the yard to catch errant balls and talk to Dartsmoore, if she was so inclined.
Franny immediately rushed over to the smaller, grinning criminal, dropping to her bare knees in the grass and smiling back. "You're like us, aren't you? Isn't it wonderful! And you got such a nice skin! Aleksandr, come see! He's shiny! What's your name?"
"Don't goo all over him, Franny!" Alek scolded from across the yard. "I can barely understand you, and I speak english!" Plus, if the kid was just a normal one, who knew how he would react to a face full of strange girl? Alek might have found a lot of uses for crying when he had been younger, but he didn't like kids who cried now. It was... undignified. Plus, it took attention away from him. He jogged over to the two and held out his hands for the ball, ignoring Kahlua for the time being until he knew whether or not the other child was going to play.
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Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:48 am
“Like…you?” Bailey asked, quirking his head to the side in confusion. “Keemnal?” he asked, attempting to work around these odd words. He should be used to talking at least but this body was odd and it’s language a bit odder. He’d half clawed the skin off of his one arm the other day after finding strangely colored scales under it, so he wasn’t sure why she thought his skin was nice. Now the word “shiny” that he knew well. Ajii had used that to refer to him before and she’d been like him!
Kahlua gave an annoyed pout and wandered over to poke at Alek. He didn’t like that Bailey got attention for other kids and he didn’t. He was the more important one, the youngest one, he should get the attention not that silver weirdo brother he had!
“Interesting. Do children on this world enjoy such games?” Dartsmoore asked, watching the exchange between Franny and Bailey. The boy seemed to get along rather well with girls, for some reason.
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Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 11:13 am
"Yes, yes! Criminal!" Francine said excitedly. "Only I didn't really do anything, I was just attached to a... bad person." She whispered that last, as if she was afraid that Danon was going to hear somehow and come home from school just to punish her. "I'm so glad I was right! Mostly everyone who comes through here came from space, but you can never be too sure! Alek's not a criminal at all, right Alek? You were just born that way!" She grinned.
Alek turned his wall of ignoring to his sort-of-sister and looked down at Kahlua. "What are you?" he asked. He didn't mean to offend, it just seemed everyone was someone else on Gaia, so why not ask outright? He crouched too, dropping to a seated position on the grass. "I'm Alek."
Archie looked at the kids too, in an attempt to hide his expression from Dartie. He liked catch, but he wasn't going to admit it now. "I think they like throwing the ball past each other on purpose so someone has to go get it more than playing for real." He turned to look at the strange woman. "How is he? Not crazy?" The toddler looked all right, but who knew what he was like at home.
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Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 11:30 am
Bailey looked down, slightly shamed, when she mentioned that she’d not done anything wrong. This girl seemed nice, it was sad that she’d been stuck with someone who’d done bad things. He’d done bad things, very bad things, things he’d had no control over in a sense but had had every ounce of control over in another. “…I was bad…” he said softly, not wanting to elaborate more on the subject. Looking up slightly, he handed her back the ball
“’Lua,” he said, shortly, looking over at Alek. The question wasn’t one he’d encountered before so just giving his name worked.
Dartsmoore nodded at the statement in regards to Catch. “Maybe I will get a ball for them then.” She said, an offhand statement. She hadn’t the slightest idea what children liked. The question returned her attention more fully to Archie. “Crazy? Not in the slightest. He behaves better then Kahlua does. That’s the oddest part. Not that I’m complaining.”
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Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:08 pm
"Oh," Francine said. She hadn't meant to make him upset! "Well, that's enough of that! You're here now and... catch!" With the ball now in her hands, she seemed to remember what they were here to play. She bounced to her feet, brushing off the back of her skirt.
"You want to play?" Alek asked. He wasn't sure how adept the little people would be at catch, but they could at least roll the ball to each other if throwing it didn't work.
"I could have given you one back when we had a bunch. We had to sell all that stuff. Dixie did all the selling really. Alek's mother." Archie pointed to the blond boy, his tail following in unconscious emphasis. "It's good he's not... weird. I met a scaly girl the other day who... well, she seemed... not calm." He smirked. "So, were you just in the neighborhood or can I help you with something?"
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Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:20 pm
Kahlua nodded a bit and wandered over to a spot where he’d be able to…catch he guessed. Bailey also decided he might as well just join in. After all, the nice girl seemed to be playing so he might as well try!
Dartsmoore glanced up at Archie. “If the scaley girl you’re refering to is Ajii, we’ve met her as well. I took them to the beach the other day and she seemed to get along rather well with Bailey. I had to explain to her guardian what a bounty hunter was though.” When Archie’d pointed to Alek in his previous statement, her eyes had darted to it. The fact that he had a tail now made her slightly miss hers, but only slightly. “I was just trying to familiarate the boys with the town and see if we could find something for them to do. It seems everytime I take them out somewhere we end up running into other children for them to play with.”
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Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:31 pm
Alek stayed seated as the others prepared to play. "We could make the circle smaller and roll it?" he said to Franny, vocalizing his previous concern.
"That'll work." Franny sat more carefully this time, but still on her knees so her skirt wouldn't do anything unfortunate. "We're going to throw it from closer together," she told Bailey and 'Lua, indicating how far apart she was sitting from Alek as a good distance.
Archie nodded. "This place sure does seem to be filled with kids," he agreed. "And no one to really look out for them." He silently wondered how the babies he hadn't found homes for were doing. If the encounter he'd had the other day was any indication, he wouldn't have to wonder about any that landed in the future. Things that had been normal were now all too weird. "Ajiiel. That's her. She got along with Bailey? That's good, I guess. She tried to bite Alek," he said with a grin. Archie noticed where Dartsmoore's attention was and grabbed his wandering appendage, putting his hands behind his back before he continued speaking. "I still don't know my way around very well and I've been here for years," he said. "I just get on a bus and get off when something looks interesting." Dixie had rescued him after quite a few frantic 'I don't know where I am' phone calls lately.
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Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:59 pm
The boys nodded and followed suit, interested in trying to play this game. Kahlua just wanted something to do, but Bailey was eager to learn a new game.
Dartsmoore nodded. “I think she would have tried to bite Bailey but he was shiny and called her pretty. I think that counts a lot for her, but I wouldn’t know. And I like to always know where I’m going. Otherwise something stupid always happens. I lost my tail by not knowing where the hell I was going.”
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Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 3:29 pm
Francine started by bouncing the ball shallowly toward Bailey, the actual height attained much lower than she had anticipated due to the fact that it was bouncing on grass. If there was one thing Franny failed at, and in truth there were many, it was sports.
Archie gripped his tail so hard it became a bit uncomfortable, all thoughts of the biting criminal pushed from his mind momentarily. Unlike Dartsmoore, who seemed to be okay with tail loss, Archie had missed his very much when it hadn't been around. "You had a tail?" he asked. "Maybe I should stay in more often."
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Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 7:36 pm
Bailey grinned as he reached out and actually managed to catch the ball. He wasn’t much good at catching things-such as the stuffed animals and blocks that Kahlua tried to throw at him-but strangely he’d managed to catch this. It was quite an exhilarating feeling to have done something right. A bad catcher and a bad pitcher seemed to equal a perfect catch, which is good because otherwise the game’d get boring. Looking around, he tried to figure out who he was throwing to.
“Don’t grip it so tight or you’ll start to cut off circulation.” The woman commented, glancing momentarily at the white knuckled grip he had upon the appendage. “Yes, a quite nice one. Gem scaled, dragon variety. It’s hanging on Jujike’s wall at the moment. I shall have to make a point of getting it back when the others go after him. The idiot who was trying to kill me when I lost it used a magic sword that had a really stupid spell on it, so the tail should be reattachable. 30 years it’s been there, must be rather interesting to look at now.” Her statement half to Archie, half to herself.
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Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 8:05 pm
Alek held out his hands, crinkling his fingers so Bailey would know who was next. "Me next... kid," he said, having previously been too preoccupied with Kahlua's introduction to catch the other child's name.
"Bailey. He's Bailey!" Francine corrected.
"Sorry. Bailey, then. I didn't mean anything bad by it, jeez."
Oh. Archie relaxed, dropping his tail, which promptly wrapped tightly around his leg as if to get back at him for his earlier boa constrictor simulation. Someone had taken hers, it hadn't gotten caught under a bus or had acid dripped on it by a homeless man or something similar. "My old one just sort of... melted." He didn't remember much about that time himself, but Dixie had been the one who had been forced to clean the bathroom floor, and she had vowed to never let him forget what he didn't remember. "I don't know that it would have lasted 30 years on a wall anyway." Archie wondered, as he had soon after trusting her with Bailey, just what sort of person Dartsmoore was.
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Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 8:15 pm
Bailey pushed the ball, attempting to at least bounce it some in Alek’s direction. He was at least a better bouncer then he was a catcher, but still his AIM was a little off. The other boy had to move a little to get it.
Kahlua, the better at this sort of thing of the two, held out his hands for the ball next. He at least had some sort of clue what to do. Watching was a good thing to do, and he’d been watching how things were going. He was the last one to throw to anyway.
“If it was cut with the same blade as mine, it would have. Well, provided you didn’t cut off the remainder of it with another blade, cause the remainder to fall off, or die.” She commented. “My old ponytail I could care less about, but I want my fricken tail back from that trophy room.”
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Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 8:59 pm
Alek scooted over, still sitting, and managed to retrieve the ball by stretching out his upper body as far as it would go. "Here you go, 'Lua," he said, bouncing the ball toward the red-haired child. Alek's aim was all right, but he miscalculated the height of his bounce due to the fact that he was nearly lying in the grass. "Sorry."
"True," Archie said, desperately wishing he could change the subject. He was grateful he hadn't been left with a stump when his tail had fallen off before. The thought made him a little sick. "At least hair grows back. Will it be dangerous? Going back to get your tail, I mean." So much for changing the subject.
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