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 Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 9:41 am
Five centimeters. That was all that it took, five centimeters. Such a small amount of growth and yet it changed everything for Yǐn Cáng. Oh, it was not the height so much that bothered him, but the range of his attacks had changed. Yesterday had been his first day back in his homosapien-esque form, and after a visit to the cafeteria for some much needed food he had made his way to the gym to begin feeling out his slightly larger body.
It was difficult to deal with. His attacks hit on a different part of his body than he had intended, which varied in result from pain to hitting the practice dummy harder than he had meant them to. Or he would try to adjust, sometimes meeting with success, and sometimes missing his target altogether. The experience was not pleasant. By the end of his workout it had boiled down to a mass of frustration, and he had somewhat lost control of his emotions, attacking recklessly.
Now he was back, calmer than the day before, but still working to regain the finesse needed to fight. He was used to this, used to the sudden, literally overnight growth spurts, but it did not make them easier. Still, the physical exertion helped him to not dwell on the fact that he had basically avoided contact with other students since the invasion. He knew that he needed to face them again, and he knew what he would do when he did. He had even contemplated going to Miss Danny’s dorm, or trying to seek Alexander in the library, but in the end he had talked himself out of it. Training was what he needed to do. Pushing his physical limits was something that he could count on, something that would stay with him. Something that would help him protect his friends (if they still were) the next time something or someone came to Amityville.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 9:00 pm
Life had gone on as usual for the zomboil after the crazy events of a few days past. He read, he ate, he attended classes...and every single morning somehow for some reason he always checked in the gym. He did it even though it was completely out of his way and made him atrociously late for the class he had midmorning.
He never was very good at managing his time.
The first couple of mornings he did this, he shuffled away in disappointment, his face downcast. He'll be there tomorrow. He couldn't have left..he told me he was going to give me more training.... He told himself each morning that he peeked in and didn't find what he was looking for. But maybe he had left... Maybe he had left the school completely and this all was just a complete waste of Alex's time.
Waste of time or not, however, Alex was nothing if not a bit on the stubborn side from time to time. So, he continued to look, and eventually, he was rewarded with a glimpse of the boil that he had been waiting to see. What he wasn't expecting was the tightness in his chest when he saw the Mantodae, and the crushing anxiety. He watched from the entrance for a time, on the verge of stepping across that threshold but never quite taking the plunge.
Does he look angry? Ya, he definitely looks angry...I should probably just..uhhhhh..leave.
And with that Alex backed up slowly, and with one last lingering glance, left without saying a word.
However, that didn't stop him from going yet again the day after that. He'd had the entire day and night before to build himself up to this moment. He was not going to chicken out! He made his way to the entrance of the gym, a quick glance showing him that yes, the weremantis was again in the gym doing his training. He looked down to the floor, hands closing into fists at his sides, then reopening as he looked back up with a determined glare. He could do this. He was going to do this! Steeling himself mentally, he took those painfully slow shuffling steps into the gym. He was sporting an almost clean shirt, black pants, a jet black tie, and a few sparkling remnants of glitter that had yet to wear off of his skin or come out of his thick mop of hair. Eventually, his steady pace brought him to where Yin was going about his usual routine.
He had actually intended to say something at this point, but somehow his brain went completely blank and he just stood there looking incredibly awkward instead.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 10:03 pm
Yin's arm swung in, the hook-like movement rapidly striking the dummy and then came back to the position he had started in for a split second before attacking with a straight punch from his left hand. That completed he pivoted to lash out with a potentially devastating kick but froze before he could finish the motion. Alexander. There the zomboil was, staring at him. Realizing that he was staring himself the weremantis hastily busied himself by finishing the kick, taking the moment to settle himself mentally.
He turned toward the other boil when he was finished, feeling more than a bit out of place. Nervously he reached up to rub the back of his neck, knowing that he needed to break the silence before it stretched any farther but finding himself at a loss for words.
"That is a nice tie," he blurted out, and then snapped his mouth shut, somewhat horrified. Of all the things to say that was probably the least important. His eyes had simply been drawn to the black in the center of his chest and he had spoken without truly thinking. Mentally berating himself he tried to remember what he had planned to say when he first saw the zomboil again. Something about offering up information for his clan, or inquiring after his health. Certainly not complementing a tie.
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 7:26 am
Alex continued to stand, and watch, and say nothing. Why couldn't his brain come up with those things used for communication? What were they again? Oh right, words. Why couldn't he think of the words he should be saying right now, instead of standing around all tall, lanky and awkward?
When Yin stopped his actions and stared back, it quickly started to get more and more uncomfortable. Until he spoke, that was. Then Alex's entire body seemed to deflate as the tension didn't just seep away, but explode out of him. He likes my tie! That's good, right? That means he doesn't hate me, doesn't it? Oh wait....am I supposed to compliment him back? Is this another mantodae thing? Oh Jack..ohjackohjackohjack...
"You..uh...got taller? It suits you."
Really, that was the best he could come up with.
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 7:55 am
While Yin was trying to anticipate any number of scenarios of what Alexander might say, telling him that he was taller was not one of them. He blinked a couple of times in confusion, brow furrowing slightly. "You noticed?" he asked, slightly confused, slightly in awe.
Wait a minute. This is not what we were supposed to be talking about. Still, if they were talking like this and no one was yelling maybe he still had a chance to make things right. He needed to say something else, and fast. "Do zombies grow?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth he mentally kicked himself. He was supposed to be offering up information, not quizzing Alexander down. He began trying to regulate his breathing to regain control, he needed to think before he said something the next time.
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 11:59 am
Well, it wasn't like, a terribly noticable thing, but ya, Yin had definitely gotten taller. Either that or he was wearing two inch heels. Alex had a glance down just to be sure and then nodded "Of course I noticed, you were up to here on me," he pointed to an area on his chest "And now you're up to here" he pointed to an area about two inches higher up. Oh Jack, it was weird that he had noticed, wasn't it? Why did he have to be so observant all the time? Either way, he was quite curious as to how Yin had come across his sudden growth spurt. There were so many things Alex wanted to know about him and the other mantodae!
Do zombies grow? Alex was a little taken aback by the question. "Well, uh, yes! As a matter of fact, we do! It's a bit different for us though..we have to choose to grow, and we can choose to stop whenever we want. I'm about as tall as I'd like to be, now." He grinned, though it was almost a shy and embarrassed look. "But I was born in Halloween, other zombies that weren't born here, that died and then came back to an unlife in our world...for the most part they choose to not get any bigger." He decided to leave out the part about the patchworks who generally used surgery or added on parts to make themselves grow. They weren't zombies, after all, and Yin had specified.
And now the silence struck again, and Alex shifted his feet uncomforably. "Look, Yin. I..just wanted to apolgize. If I did anything to offend you, if I said something wrong I---I'm sorry." He was very pointedly looking down at the ground, unable to raise his gaze to the weremantis.
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 12:23 pm
Choosing to grow sounded rather peculiar, but he could see its usefulness. Some fighters fought so that their strategy was to be untouchable, and a smaller body would make them a smaller target. Others seemed to find size and bulk as the best so as to deal out more punishing blows or enable them to take more hits. Yes, the idea of choosing one’s own size was interesting indeed.
He was still musing on this idea when the zomboil spoke again, and his words horrified Yin. Alexander was apologizing? To him? There was no call for that. Distressed he almost reached out to force the boil’s head up; there was no reason for him to look at the ground. But Alexander would probably not look kindly on the gesture, so he simply forced his hands behind his back to resist the temptation, his right hand loosely holding his left wrist. “Please do not say such a thing. What has transpired was my own fault. I was selfish and lost control. I fear that it is I who may have offended you.”
Feeling more than a little awkward he shifted slightly, hating to be so still but trying not to be too distracting. “I owe you an apology, and more than that. If you think that it would help I could tell you about my people’s customs, which may provide some answers?” Now that he was saying it out loud the offer sounded extremely pathetic, especially now that he knew the zomboil had possibly experienced guilt because of him. Now I shall need to make that up to him as well.
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 6:15 pm
Wait, what? So now what had happened was Yins fault? Alex looked up sharply, clearly more then a little upset. He had just spent days dwelling on everything that had happened, trying to pinpoint exactly where he might have gone wrong. It didn't help that after everything, at the end of big battle out in the fog, Alex had been consumed with insanity and had been convinced that everything was absolutely his own fault. Not just what had happened with Yin, but everything that had ever gone wrong in his unlife. He shook his head, slowly at first and then more rapidly.
"No, no..NO!" He almost shouted. "How could it be your fault? I'm the ignorant one. I don't know half as much as I'd like to think I do...If I'd just taken the time to know more about you and your customs, then none of this would have even happened." At least, that's what he'd been telling himself for the last four days. But now Yin was apologizing to Alex, and something that should have brought him relief only served to make him feel worse.
"Let's just...try and forget about it, ok?" he mumbled, bringing a shaky hand up to push his mop of hair out of his eyes. "We're both sorry, right? So lets just move on..." Dear Jack why was this still so awkward? Surely this conversation was supposed to get easier as it went, not harder.
When Yin mentioned telling Alex about his people's customs, he gave a nervous laugh "You want to tell you about your people's customs here? Now?" he questioned, and then plowing on "Ok then, tell me. Tell me why you seem to be so nervous around ghouls. Tell me why it was so terrible to accidentally hit Danny but absolutely fine to hit me? Tell me what happened after you took off in the dorm that night." Ok, so Alex obviously couldn't follow his own advice and just move on, but he felt like he needed these questions answered, for his own sanity and for closure.
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 8:19 pm
Yin's hand tightened on his wrist until it was almost painful, but he held his tongue about Alexander's outburst. The zomboil was wrong. It was his fault, and the white-haired boil was not to blame. A muscle in his jaw twitched as he tried his best not to talk. It was frustrating, but sooner or later Alexander would see the light and realize what he had done.
The boil's question startled him somewhat, but before he had a chance to think on it he was bombarded with several more. It was a lot to process, so he did it the only way that he could, one question at a time. "You are right, perhaps this is not the best place for this." The words had scarcely left his mouth when he recalled the zomboil's pace. Moving was not really an option. He scanned the area and then motioned to the wall behind the training dummy, off of the mats and far less likely that strangers would randomly walk up to them. "Lets move over there and sit down, this may take a while."
He led the way over to the wall and sat down with his legs crossed, pausing momentarily to allow Alexander to join him and to order his thoughts. After a moment he began speaking, staring down at his hands which he moved restlessly. "I am aware that you know what the Mantodae are, a clan of weremantises. But we do not share much of our culture with outsiders." He looked up, a hard look in his eye. "Therefore while I cannot swear you into silence I would appreciate that what I am about to tell you does not become common knowledge."
"You may also know that the leader of the Mantodae is Jing, the High Priestess of the Great Mantis. Our culture is intertwined with our religion. Priestess is the highest class that a mantodae could hope to achieve. After that are the shrine maidens, and then the females that are the masters of their particular fields. After them are the other adult females that practice a trade or art form, the teenaged females, the smaller ghouls, and then the females that have done little with their lives. The next step down are the highest ranking males, the master of their fields, who are on par with the disgraced females, those who have broken the faith or the law. After those are the other adult males, the teenaged males, and then the smaller boils. The very bottom of the ranks are disgraced males or those that have committed crimes such as going against a female or disobeying one of the Great Mantis' edicts." Here he paused to take a breath, about to launch into why, precisely, he had an issue being around ghouls.
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 9:10 pm
Alex nodded a little, and followed Yin over to where he indicated, lowering himself to the floor clumsily and sitting with his knees up and his arms resting on them. He was ready to learn.
This was a little bit exciting for the zomboil. He was getting to hear first hand information about something that few others knew anything about. It wan't exactly how he expected this meeting to go, but it was a rather positive turn of events. He was somewhat surprised that the weremantis still wanted to even do this, given Alex's earlier outburst.
He listened with rapt attention, nodding once in a while to urge Yin on. It seemed he had a lot to say, but Alex had as much time as was needed to listen to it all. His expression stayed grim, however, his usual easy smile not making an appearance just now during this serious situation.
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 10:20 pm
Alexander had not indicated that he wished him to stop so hesitantly Yin kept talking. It was actually rather hard to voice his feelings like this. He was also completely unaccustomed to talking about himself so much, but he was here to answer questions. "Because of how our society is structured, every boil answers to every ghoul. There is no going against them. No speaking against them. Their word is law. If I was the most successful boil that had ever been born to the Mantodae I would barely be on par with the worst of the females."
He stared straight ahead at a fixed point on the far wall, his tone taking on a peculiar flatness. "As it is, boils do not have options. When they are born they are taken away to be raised with the other boils, no one records their births, and when a larvae begins to take on distinguishing characteristics a caretaker will name them. They are raised together, receiving a basic education when they are young and then are divided into where they are most suited. As I had some natural talent with martial arts I was sent to the training facilities, where I would be trained to become a guard.
"Females control the entire Clan. They give orders, their safety is the top priority, and their comfort is second. At any point in their life a boil may be claimed by a female, though this normally does not happen until the teenage years. Unless he receives two offers at the same time he has no choice in the matter, and the claim cannot be broken. I did not wish to be claimed, and I tried to receive as little recognition as possible growing up. I meant to throw a match during a martial arts competition, but in the heat of the moment I did not hold back and I won the match. That night, like the coward that I am, I fled." His tone was bitter as he confessed the last part, but Alexander deserved to know what he was dealing with. A frightened coward who had ran away from home.
"So to answer your question, one does not harm ghouls. Their safety must go before your own. It would be a disgrace to allow a ghoul to come to harm in front of you if you could prevent it, but to attack one yourself? That is a crime worthy of the most severe punishments. They say that if you dissipate too many times bad things begin to happen. A shudder passed through Yin as he closed his eyes, a memory flitting through his mind. "I have seen the results. It is true. When I hit Miss Danny it went against everything that I know. Everything that I am. If they found out..." He shook his head, refusing to continue on that train of thought.
"I did not wish to harm you. You have only my word to take for that and I know it is all but meaningless. But I have trained with you, and I knew that you could take it. I had to risk attacking while it was not in the form of a ghoul, but what I did was inexcusable. I am aware that apologies are not enough for this, but I know not what I can do to make it up to you. I was not fine hitting you."
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 11:48 pm
As Yin's explanations went on, Alex's hands began to clench and unclench in front of him. For a time he would look at Yin, and then for a time at his own hands, back and forth, his face blank and unreadable. Everything that he was saying made sense. It all fit in so well with how the weremantis had behaved, around Mitzi and around Danny. Suddenly, a thought came to him.
"So....when Mitzi first approached us, and you were acting all, uh, weird. That wasn't just because you were sick?" Suspicion began to make it's way into his voice "Wait, were you talking me up to her so she would choose me???" His eyes widened in sudden realization, and he gave his friend an incredulous look. "Yin..that's just. Wow. Look, I totally understand now that it's the way you were raised and all that, but things just don't work that way around here! In fact, most traditionally if a boil and ghoul are to...become a couple, as it were, it would be because both parties consent to it." He was trying to put it in words that Yin might understand, not because he thought the mantodae was stupid, but because he realized that Yin had lived a very sheltered life and he couldn't use slang or terms that they might not have used where he'd come from. "Ok ok, I seriously have so many more questions now it's just making my head hurt. So this..claiming you were speaking of, it's for life? The boil would have to be with the ghoul that claimed him forever? Does a female ever claim another female? Are boils ever allowed to be with boils?"
So many questions. So many, and he could see how hard it was for Yin to even talk about what he had already.
"You are not a coward, Yin. What you did was completely the opposite of cowardice. You realized that you wanted to take your own life into your own hands, and not be controlled. What if you had been caught trying to run away? Personally, I think what you did was incredibly brave." He gave the mantodae a hard stare, daring him to disagree.
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Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 12:30 am
Yin had actually managed to put the memory of their meeting with Mitzi out of his mind. And now Alexander was dragging that memory up to the surface. His face flushed with shame Yin discovered that his toes actually were that fascinating. It was true, he had tried to manipulate the two of them closer together to save himself. Selfish. Utterly selfish.
The zomboil began bombarding him with questions again, to the point that he almost stopped him. And then he stopped himself and began going off about how he was not a coward. "Running away is not brave," he said shortly. Bravery was not shown by running from an opponent. Before Alexander could launch into more of...whatever he was doing, complimenting? Reassuring? He began to tackle the newest information and questions, though he skipped past the part about him basically offering Alexander as a sacrifice.
"The female shows her consent by staking the claim, and the male consents." His brow furrowed slightly, "Though it is not optional. Claiming is for life. If the female decides she no longer wants him she may send him away but they still share a bond, and she cannot forge another with a male, nor he with another female. Females and males do not claim one another, they mutually agree and can create their own bond. Because female claims on male creates an unequal bond, he is still subject to her demands and whims, it is natural to seek companionship with an equal. Bonds with equals are also for life."
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Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 12:48 am
Alex finally shut his mouth, and continued to listen, though he wanted to go off on the weremantis again about how running away did not always equal cowardice. Yin was trying his best to answer Alex's questions, however, so the least he could do was shut the Jack up and pay attention. He put the coward vs. bravery thing on the backburner. For now.
Alex did notice that Yin completely avoided the subject of what had happened when they had first met Mitzi, but the red flush that crept up the mantodaes face was all the answer Alex needed. He pursed his lips shut a little bit tighter, but he wasn't angry. He decided to just store it in his memories for later exploitation.
He nodded slowly as his last bombardment of questions was answered, waiting a moment to make sure Yin was finished. "Ok then. For future reference, life is not like that here and no ghoul in this school is going to 'claim' me, or you. At least, not in the same way they would where you came from." He didn't think now would be the best time to explain the fine art of dating to Yin, however, so he just left it at that. "Now, can you tell me what exactly happened the last time we saw each other? I seem to recall a lot of..uh..dead skin falling off of you at the time."
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Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 1:48 am
As much as he longed with all of his heart to believe what Alexander had told him the weremantis was still skeptical. Things did seem different away from the clan, but surely how he had grown up was not so different from the rest of the world. The the moment he allowed himself to become complacent...
Perhaps the zomboil was safe, but Yin did not feel the same way. He would probably never feel completely at ease around most ghouls. In comparison to dwelling on those thoughts the questions about his molt were almost a relief. He stretched his legs out in front of him, settling into a more comfortable position before answering.
As he did so it appeared as though the faintest hint of a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. "What you saw we mantodae would call," he paused for just a moment for added effect, "stupidity. If you know much about mantises or some other insect species you may be familiar with the term molting. My molts are typically regular events, but this one occurred early, possibly due to physical stress. By forcing myself to stay in my humanoid form instead of reverting to my natural form my skin was attempting to go through the process instead. As the molt came 15 weeks early and was so unusual, and some of the symptoms seemed to go along with biting the giant rat, that I did not recognize it for what it was. It took a few days to recover, but it also explains why I am taller than when you last saw me.
He cast a regretful look over to the white-haired zombie. "As for the rest of what happened, I can only say that the process was painful and I was irritable. Still, there was no call for me to behave as rudely as I did. Did the mantodae think that he could get away with a slightly round-about apology slipped in with all of his answers? Yes, yes he did.
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