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 Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 5:54 pm
((Note: More people are welcome to join, but please ask first! Want to write this as smoothly/uncontrivedly as possible.))
Barely past dusk, on the road home from the Fa'e HQ, and Dusty was walking alone. It wasn't as though it wasn't a walk he'd done a hundred times before - though today, at least, he was rather wishing that he'd have taken his bike or brought King along. He was worn out after sparring with Devmani, not to mention being harassed by Drac. All the child wanted now was to get home, crawl into bed, and get a good night's rest before waking up to his same frustrating problems as usual.
Then, out of nothing came a harsh voice:
"Dustin, did I not tell you, refrain from speaking of your affairs of duty?" Nil's presence was there, unseen and untouchable, but radiating an anger so powerful that Dusty instincitively shied back from the source of the sound. "Did I not tell you that words spoken outside of our confidence would be listened upon by those that sought them? Lack-witted child!; for all the energy I must spend to speak with you, do you think that I would waste my power to speak words that were not of vital importance?"
It was with exhausted certainty that Dusty knew exactly what Nil was scolding him about. When he had been pressured by Devmani and Drac, angry and without recourse, he'd identified himself as Excalibur. It had been months since he'd spoken to Nil! How was he supposed to live his life in silence, when Nil hadn't even spoken to him again after that?
Ears slicked back, placed instantly on the defensive, Dusty began to snap back, "Well-!"
"No, child, do not waste time with petty arguments, because I have not come here to scold you for your loose lips - righteous though I would be! You've been overheard, little fool. Regas sends one of his infernal creatures to seek you out even now." That, as it turned out, was a very good way of getting Dusty to shut up. "If you had listened to me, this would have been avoided - but there is no option now. You must take your ground and fight."
"... Y'think I can beat it?" Dusty asked, nearly unbelieving. The last time he had met with Regas's creatures, it had been with his Guardian and two other Fa'e by his side - and still, they had been forced to flee. They'd been outnumbered as well, of course, but Dusty hadn't even gotten near enough to take one of the enemies down then. Could he win a battle now?
"I do not know if you can," Nil informed him gravely, "but you have no other choice. If you flee, it will run you down, and my powers are too far diminished to afford you any protection. Young Dustin, you cannot remain standing there and asking questions! You must find your ground and fight!"
"W, wait--" damn it, how many times in his life had Dusty sat around, just wishing for a real fight? Why did one have to come now, when he was tired and unprepared and in the middle of nowhere? "Nil! I don't know where to go!"
There was a moment of silence, then a spray of hair-raising energy in the air. Nil's voice was faded when it arrived again, and tight with exertion - "A long path, a flat ground, a narrow place. There is an ally who may aid you. Follow the street to your left, and keep going - quickly, Dustin, quickly! If you are slain, Regas takes all! Move, child, n--" Nil's power was spent. Still struggling to urge the young Fa'e on, the voice vanished.
Which was pretty much all right - Dustin had broke into a dead sprint at the if you are slain part. If Nil thought that this could kill him, there was no way that Dustin was hard-headed enough to take a chance fighting alone!
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 7:52 pm
Mikhail had kind of been hoping that the whole snail-hunting, building-snail-a-house thing would buy him a few days of peace, but that was not the case. Actually, he'd been hoping that his guardian didn't mean to push him to go to Fa'e HQ every day, but so far that seemed to be his intention. Though the youth was stubborn, he was not rebellious, so he did as he was told. It hardly even occurred to him that he could just go somewhere else and pretend to have gone to HQ, but he was a bad liar, anyway. He'd just get himself in trouble.
Still, Stefan hadn't told him to hurry or anything like that. And so he was walking very slowly, hands shoved in his pockets, when something came barrelling towards him. Was that...Dusty? Must be late getting home or something.
Knowing full well that the deerkitten wasn't someone he wanted to run into (or be run into by), he stepped aside.
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 8:33 pm
It was Mik? Nil had sent him to Mik? Granted, beggars couldn't be choosers, but sometimes Dusty had to wonder if Nil was right in the head. Mik wasn't a bad guy, and he had some nice moves - for barehanded fighting, at least - but he didn't really strike the deerkitten as the kind of Fa'e you went running to when you were in over your head with something serious.
He didn't need a nagging voice to tell him he didn't have any choice, though. And Mik might not want to run in to Dusty, but Dusty had every intention of running into him. Maybe a bit literally, even - hooves did not have especially great brakes, after all, and Dusty had no problem with latching onto Mik in order to shed the rest of his momentum. "HeyMik, longtimenosee, Ineedhelpwithsomethin'," the child blurted out, panting slightly through the jumble of words. It took him a moment to process that the Fa'e was just a bit larger than he remembered, and with a couple extra wings to boot. Dusty's eyes lit up - Mik had grown? Good, then he might be a bit tougher than he remembered!
Pulling himself together a bit more, the Arthurian child laughed nervously and asked, "You've got a weapon or something on you, right?" Off in the direction where Dusty had come from was a faint noise - sort of an odd, tortured bugle. Dusty's head whipped around, ears pricking, then slicked back. "Right?" he asked again, his voice pitched more earnestly this time.
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 8:46 pm
Whoa! The last thing Mik was expecting was for Dustin to latch onto him. For one, he didn't seem the clingy type to begin with, and for another...Mik didn't expect anyone to latch onto him. He pulled back a little at the contact and stared down at the hooved child as he babbled. It was suddenly very very clear that this was somethind more than Dustin being late getting home.
"...Yes," he answered dubiously, looking in the direction of the strange sound. "Uh...what's going on?" As in, what the hell was about to happen to them?
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:17 pm
Dusty couldn't quite work up any sort of relief just for the sake of Mik having a weapon, but he could force something like grim approval. "Good. It'd be a bit much to explain just now, but you'll help me out, right?" It wasn't like an angel would just go huffing off and abandon someone in need, of course - or so Dusty dearly hoped, because that bugling was getting louder, and it was sounding nastier and nastier the closer it got.
Something crashed, and there was a tremendous crumbling noise; something had taken out a wall, just a crossing further down the small street they were on, and skittering pebbles into the road. In the dimming twilight, an eerie, steady glow took residence on the walls of the same corner, and dull crunches announced the approach of a hefty something not so far away.
Dusty's throat tried sticking closed. He swallowed hard against it, tugging free his sword from its scabbard. His hearing could pick up grotesque details in that disgusting noise long before they became ordinarily - it was tinny, timbred like a brass instrument, but with all the gut-wrenching richness of an agonized screech. Even flattening his ears did nothing to dull the noise. He glanced over at Mik, trying to seem calm and confident even as he was worrying over whether the pair of them even stood a chance. "Can't outrun it," Dustin told the angel, his voice unquavering only through miracle chance. "If we can't fight it here...."
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:31 pm
"Yeah," he answered, this time without hesitation. Dustin might not be his favorite person, but he was still a kid, and Mik wasn't going to just leave him to fend for himself when he obviously needed help. He just wished that whatever was actually going on was more obvious. All he knew was that something was coming, and it did not sound good. What it sounded was big, and the noise that accompanied it sent chills down his spine.
Setting his feet, the angel pulled out his bowie knife and glanced at Dusty. "I can fly." Okay, so that was a little obvious, but... "I could probably carry you."
Nevermind that he'd never tried carrying anything the least bit heavy while he flew, but he didn't feel the need to mention that.
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:51 pm
That night, Caoimhe was doing what she usually did -- walking around town and finding weird things to make into jewelry. Sometimes it paid off, like when she found some fossilized wood and quickly made it into a pendant, and other times, like when she found an owl pellet and made a bracelet out of the bones of the mouse inside, the boutique owner simply raised and eyebrow and told the girl not to bring such interesting pieces next time. Whatever. As long as the woman continued to pay her, she really didn't care. The mouse-bone necklace dangled on her wrist tonight as she made her way from the Fa'e HQ back toward Gambino Island and her home. Anytime she was in the neighborhood, the teen Fa'e always went out of her way to raid the Fa'e HQ refrigerator. Full and happy, the girl sucked on a Creamsicle, weaving her way through the streets that had become so familiar.
That was when she heard it -- a weird rumbling, and was that a glow? Weird. Though her time on Aranorn was far behind her, the girl had lived enough years in complete terror for her life to know when danger was lurking. And this danger was near, just a few streets over, it seemed. She paused, glancing behind her. Another noise, louder this time, and was it... voices? A familiar voice. Curiosity and overconfidence were at the top of the list of Things That Will Be Your Downfall for Caoimhe, and so, with little regard or thought of her safety, she picked her way through the streets until she was standing just a few feet behind the angel and deerkitten.
"Is that... Dustin?" Well, this was unexpected. The red-headed boy behind him seemed familiar too; Caoimhe was fairly sure she had met him, though the name escaped her. What the hell? Taking another lick of her popsicle, she seemed oblivious to the tension in the street. "Are you the ones making all the noise?" Caoimhe had much faith in Dustin's ability to cause a scene -- but why would he want to make all the creepy rumbling? Did it have something to do with this winged kid?
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:09 pm
To that, Dusty was less than enthusiastic. It wasn't that he didn't want to just run the hell away, but... he wasn't a lightweight, despite appearances, and the thing seemed to be practically here already. If Mik couldn't get a quick liftoff and that thing caught up in the meantime, when neither of them were able to defend....
"N--" Damn, there went his throat again, clogging up at the worst moment! Dusty swallowed, and said more forcefully, definitively, "No. The last time I ran from one of these, it turned out worse. Can't let that happen again." Never mind that he'd had two, count them, two Fa'e fighting with him then, who were much older and doubtlessly more powerful than just Dustin and Mik....
Or Dustin, Mik, and Caoimhe, as it appeared to be. Hearing the voice, Dusty's head swiveled around, and his ears even picked up a bit in anticipation. Three Fa'e, and only one of whatever was coming - that had to be more equal odds!
He didn't have time to greet the Selkie girl before a tremendous, metallic screech ripped through the air. His head was still turned to Caoimhe when the creature nosed into sight around the corner at last, starting with a pair of gleaming brass prongs that must have been at least as far above the ground as Mik's shoulders, emerging behind it the head of a bull.
The entire form lumbered into sight, its tiny red eyes picking out the Fa'e in the street almost instantly. At its shoulders, it was probably nine feet high, and was built with burly muscle - each step of its hooves made a crash and a clunk. Its entire body seemed to be made from brass, gleaming and smooth, and its belly burned a dull orange with heat, the source of the glow that now bathed the entire street. A sound came from deep within it, tormented and terrible, warped through the brass mouth of the bull.
Coming around the corner, it hardly seemed to be able to make the turn - its movements were stiff, and it flexed poorly at its torso. This posed little problem for it, however. Its hindquarters simply smashed into the building behind it, brushing off brick like loose dirt, and then the bull was situated at the end of the street as though there had been no obstacle in the first place.
Dusty's head turned back around toward it. His ears went flat again. Okay... three of us versus one of that. We can do this... maybe....
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:22 pm
Oh, great, there was someone else here now? Not that he didn't mind backup, but it was a girl and she was kind of small. Wait, it was that...that girl Conrad had said was kind of a savage. That implied someone who could probably take care of themselves, at least. He didn't have much more time to think about it, as the creature finally came into sight.
What the hell was that?! More importantly, how was he supposed to fight it? It was made of metal, for Christ's sake! All he had was a knife! A damn good knife, sure, but...
Oh, what had he gotten himself into now? He flared his wings out, in some unconscious attempt to look more threatening - like that would help! "Please tell me you know how to hurt this thing."
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:38 pm
It's a good thing that Caoimhe cannot read minds. If she could, she would have probably tackled Mik for thinking that was not the most SUPREME back-up that anyone could ever be lucky enough to gain. And if she had known that Conrad was talking smack, she would have been happy to share her thoughts of the disappearing t**t of a douche. Even better -- if she read minds, she might actually understand that the trio was about to be thrown into a serious fight and that she should probably get her s**t together and find a weapon.
However, since the teenage Fa'e could not read minds, she simply continued to chow down on her Creamsicle, making confused faces at all the noises down the alley. "This seems ominous," she said, utilizing her vocabulary word of the day. The little calendar had been a gift from her guardian, a way to improve her words beyond the more vulgar terminology that she tended to prefer. Of course, when the giant golden bull crashed into view, the girl threw all her manners out the window. "HOLY ******** s**t!" she screamed, tossing the popsicle to the ground.
Every sense in her body leapt to attention, and she was reminded of her nights on Aranorn -- of fearing for her life, of the constant adrenaline rush. She had learned to live without that fear for years now, and yet here it was, surging back through her. The tiny Fa'e flashed her hands to her hip, feeling instinctively for the whip that she usually kept there. Her hands found nothing. After two years of leaving the house every day equipped with weapons, Caoimhe had finally managed to shake the paranoia -- and now, weaponless and threatened, she vowed to never make that mistake again.
Dropping to an aggressive stance, she sprinted to the gutter. There was a piece of rebar pipe lying there, probably left over from construction. She gripped it until her knuckles turned white. If only she had stolen a knife from the Fa'e HQ... or had her goddamn whip and daggers and whatever else weapon she loved to have. No, she was holding a piece of pipe. Her mind flickered fast, trying to bring herself to the mentality of all those nights spent in Aranorn. She ran just past Dustin and Mik, forming an aggressive stance, pipe held high, and eyes searching the alleyway for places that she could leap to quickly. The girl was small -- but she was incredibly agile. She would have to use that skill.
Her eyes darted to Mik for a moment. "I don't know what the <********> it is," she said, gritting her teeth and vaguely remembering the tale of a golden calf idol from that religious book her neighbor loved so much. She paused, flexing the tight knot of muscles on her arms. As if to convince herself, she added, voice gravely with resolution, "I can hurt it. Everything can die." A tiny girl. A pipe. A massive ******** golden bull.
This, uh, this was not looking so great.
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:56 pm
If there was ever a way to rally the troops, Caoi had found it. I can hurt it - Everything can die; well, if Caoimhe wasn't scared, holding a piece of pipe and standing up front, how could Dusty be scared with a sword?
... Very easily, actually. But he wouldn't let anyone else know that.
Breathing mechanically, in and out and in and out as though he were worried he might forget and stop breathing altogether, Dusty took an inching step or two forward. That bull was big. And it was noisy, and God, it even stank - of smoke and meaty burning something or another that Dusty couldn't identify, didn't want to identify, decided not to try to identify. But, he told himself, this was just what Regas could throw at him in a matter of hours. If he couldn't handle this, then whatever was waiting for him in the kingdom....
The bull threw back its head with a blast of terrifying fury, lowered its head, and charged.
Suddenly, Dusty wasn't thinking about how to rationalize not running for his life anymore - he was far too busy throwing himself to the side so that he wouldn't be trampled by the creature's charge!
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 11:06 pm
At another time, Mik might have pointed out that his question had been to Dusty, but now was most definitely not the time. The bull was here and there wouldn't be any running away - or flying. Not only had Dustin proclaimed that to be a bad idea, he wouldn't have had a chance of carrying two people, even if they were both pretty small.
And...what the hell was the girl doing, running out front like that?! Even if she did know how to fight, she shouldn't be the one out front! But it was too late to do anything about it; the bull was charging, and if it actually ran one of them over...
Praying that Caoimhe would have the sense and the speed to get out of the way in time, Mikhail leapt into the air with a beat of his wings to do the only thing he could think to do: try to land on it and grab hold somehow.
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 11:15 pm
As the bull reared back, Caoimhe did what her instincts told her. She catapulted herself into the air, pipe still held high. It was something she had done thousands of times. Her size forced her to fight unconventionally. If it worked with the massive wolf-like creatures from Aranorn, then she figured it would work here as well. Lifting in an unreal arc, it was probably the first time since she arrived in Gaia that Caoimhe might actually look a little special. The height and angle of her body seemed unnatural, even impossible, but the movements felt good in her bones, like the practiced moves of a dancer.
Caoimhe wasn't trying to leap out of the way. She was trying to land on the thing's back -- and aimed as such, shooting for the back of its neck. The eyes, the eyes, the eyes, she coached internally, fighting to keep the glowing red beams in sight as she made her leap.
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 11:25 pm
On one hand, it was a good thing. The bull didn't seem to really care what either Mik or Caoi were up to, and just blundered forward without paying much heed to either Fa'e. Sure, it flicked its horns at Caoimhe as she drew near, and it might have tried bucking at Mik on its way - but really, it was content in the knowledge that they would likely be crushed like bugs against a wall, simply through the construct's clumsy and powerful maneuvering down the street.
On the other hand, it didn't care because it was fixated wholly on Dustin at this point. Which made it very hard for the deerkitten to feel a great amount of concern for his allies when he came to realize he was the only one on the street and the bull was shifting around to orient on where he'd dodged to.
Realizing that the brass terror had shifted its aim and was bearing down on him, Dusty let out a frantic yell and threw himself to the side again. Those hooves were so close, though - and he could feel the heat radiating from the construct's belly, wasn't sure that he could get away in time--
The deerkitten seemed to have disappeared under the bull. There was a faint crunch, barely audible over the mayhem of the bull's bellows - but then out rolled Dusty, fast and away from the dangerously sharp hooves.
It would probably be a few minutes yet before he realized that he'd left something behind. Like, say, about a third of his tail.
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 11:35 pm
Mik had been expecting Caoimhe to get out of the way, not try to do the same thing he was! He noticed her just in time to avoid disaster and adjust his own movement, but it threw off his landing. He didn't miss completely, but his lost his footing and had to grab for the bull's horn with his free hand. Reflex would have had him grab with both hands and drop his knife in the process, but he had enough presence of mind to stifle it. While he didn't know if it would be any use, it definitely wouldn't be if it ended up on the ground.
The result, however, was precarious, and he'd be easy to dislodge as he scrambled to try and get himself up onto the head of the bull. He barely even realized that Dusty had almost been trampled.
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