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 Posted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 7:05 pm
Zia had habit of getting into terrible situations. Stuck in high places she couldn't get down from, cornered by monsters she couldn't take. It was hard to tell if it was typical feline overestimation or just plain arrogance, but it happened more often than she'd like to admit.
Tonight was a night that mostly involved running away from things while looking for other things and she had a habit of just looking at the city like a platformer with various means of travel versus actual things, which meant when she took shelter over a wall and in some structure, was spooked by her shadow and ended up powering up to cat form to shimmy up a pole, fall down in a tangle of rope, and back to a human girl to try to get it off... only then, after all that, did she stop and realize she was in a place she probably shouldn't be.
"Oh s**t."
It looked like some kind of show or attraction happened here. But it was definitely closed and she was pretty sure 'oh sorry, I accidentally wandered in when I was a cat a second ago' was not going to fly with a security guard.
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Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 4:52 pm
Chester Michael Riley worked hard and did not have much time for playing. His attraction, his roaming wonder of fun and entertainment, was his pride and joy. Part circus, part carnival, it was all wonder and excitement and he had poured his life's worth of love, care, money, blood and tears into it. Everything he was had become tied inextricably into this career he had taken on for himself, and though he was successful and well off, he was never satisfied.
There was always work to be done. Not just in the books or in the policy, not just on paper. He was hands on: he walked the grounds, he cleaned, he built, he planned. He was familiar with all of his staff, and he was familiar with how everything ran in his park. He could fix most anything that broke, or at least know just who to call to fix it for him.
He was kind enough to the animals, but they were not his forte. They took a kind of quiet and calm hand that he found he lacked, though he tried. It was as if they sensed the temper in him, and they tended to shy away from him. Save one of the larger cats, with whom he had a strange kinship.
He was walking back from visiting the animals for the night when he heard a strange noise. He tensed, moving toward it, and saw the source. A girl, he realized, though he had not seen her as a cat moments before and was probably lucky for that. There was so much he was already trying to cope with, with his new 'powers'.
He was keeping them on the down low for now.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 5:55 pm
When you had gotten tangled in something at one size, it wasn't much easier when you shapeshifted to be bigger and pulled on it. Zia was just about free and trying to hop out when she just about jumped out of her skin.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?"
She yelped and fell backwards, suddenly looking up at a man maybe a few years older than herself. Her real age, not the one she was frozen in. "I... uh..." She stuttered and then laughed, resting her open palms on either side of her head in a mock 'surrender' motion.
"I fell," She stated before making one last struggle to kick the tangle off her feet and get up.
In the process of standing and brushing herself off, though, she looked over his totally-not-security outfit and raised an eyebrow with interest. "I... wait, what is this place?" She asked, looking around and feeling just an ever so slight nagging in the back of her head.
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Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 6:27 pm
Chester saw that he had startled her, but he didn't move to help her just yet. She was, after all, trespassing on the lands: the park was closed and she had no business being on the premises as far as he knew, and he was the boss. So it was his job to know.
He watched her with a cool, even expression, his eyes sharp but not wholly cold. He was cautious, suspicious, but he at least wasn't being aggressive. No, that only came if she managed to anger him.
So far, she was just a lost kid. If it got worse than that, he'd have to change his tactics.
He looked up, then back down at her, arching his eyebrow at her pointedly. It was not in confusion so much as simply daring her to make what she said make sense to him.
"How did you fall from up there? What were you doing up there?" He frowned. "This is my attraction park. It hasn't opened to the public yet, we're still setting things up here." The area had a strong circus vibe to it, at least in its decorations and style. The large tents were classic in form, and the booths, games, and even rides were themed to match. There were utility lights glowing, though they didn't showcase the whole park for what it was, just doing their job in lighting the immediate area.
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Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 7:30 pm
"Mostly just running," Zia said, not even making eye contact as she spoke. She was looking up and around, completely enamored, even more so as that small feeling in the back of her brain turned into a very distinct stabbing feeling.
"Ow..." She murmured, reacting to it like a migraine.
And suddenly it broke through. "Ah..." and she was suddenly glassy eyed at the hazy memories swirling through her head. Something about dreamers was mumbled, before she seemed to come out of her trance with glee and giggles. "It's a circus!"
Well duh, Zia.
"I'm sorry, I know it's rude to spoil the show when it's not even properly set up," She laughed, suddenly bouncing into his personal space. "You could still give me a private tour if you wanted, you know," She added facetiously.
"Then maybe I'll show you how I got up there." Not that she expected him to just outright accept this trespasser, but her headspace was tangled up in other things and she didn't really seem to care she was playing with him.
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Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 7:55 pm
Chester frowned at her as she spoke, wondering for a moment if she was drunk or not. But no, she was sober enough, at least in that he could not smell it on her. He did not see her wobbling, either. But that glossy look in her eyes had caught him off guard.
He was sure something very strange was going on here. He just did not know what it was.
"You're not on something, are you?" he asked skeptically, his frown deepening, if that were possible. He sighed, though, glancing around. No one had seen the place yet, but he supposed it did not matter if one girl saw some of it before it was open. It was the games and events that made it special, and those were not running yet.
Maybe she'd tell her friends to go... but he was not sure if he wanted to meet her friends.
"Or I could just call the cops on you, and be done with this whole thing," he said, shaking his head. "You shouldn't be snooping, and climbing over things is not safe. Unless you were trying to audition for the trapeze."
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Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 8:37 pm
"Totally sober," Zia said, holding her hands in the air in that 'totally innocent' surrender pose again. "I'm sorry, it's just... just something I forgot and now it's kind of... Hm..."
She shrugged at his threat to call the cops. "You could," She said airily, obviously not all that concerned. Trivial things when she was wallowing in exotic and oh so familiar memories of different times. Probably not better. The way they had been shattered and disjointed and in a haze made it pretty obvious these were remnants from corruption, but the feelings seem to flow easily.
"Is the trapeze an option?" She laughed. "I used to work in one of these places," She added in more of a murmur as she craned her head back up to look around.
"Or at least, I think so."
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Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 11:20 am
"You think?"
Chester had to admit, though he had met plenty of strange people in his travels and had amassed a crew that could write a thousand books and never tell all their strange stories, she was still managing to confuse him. He couldn't follow her thoughts, and couldn't guess anything about her, really.
She wasn't like some other people, who were easy to read. Most trespassers, in that way, were easy to figure out and kick out promptly.
That was probably why she was still there, even talking him into a tour.
"Don't you remember? I mean. You were there, you would have to remember something like that. You can't be that old, either, so what age would you have been?" He couldn't help but ask the questions that came to mind, something about the way she was speaking catching his attention.
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Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 4:54 pm
Zia gave a slight snort. Age? What age? Her physical age? How long she'd been alive? How far back her memories went? Age was just a number, and she had a ton of them.
Suddenly she was a shadow. Or, at least, it looked that way as she had shapeshifted to a large housecat and darted right back up the structure she had fallen off of moments ago. And then she was girl. Sort of.
Her anklets clinked as her bare feet swung in the air and her tail swished behind her. "Ah ha, I remember now, it was something about mirrors and dreams and dead moons."
One hand was lifted in the air in an obvious pose of showmanship. "I am a timeless alien creature displaced by dimensions and space, age is irrelevant." And then a pause and a shrug, and with slightly less ham to follow. "And also my memories are a bit... messy. Anyway, this is your circus?"
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 11:24 am
It took a long moment for Chester's brain to process what he had just seen. Or he was pretty sure he had not seen. People did not just turn into cats and bounce away.
Nope.
He stared at her, though, and saw her transform this time, watching her directly as she became a human again. No, not a human. She had cat ears, and a tail, and she wasn't wearing the same thing she had been before. She was barefooted and...
What was going on here?
"You're like me then. One of these... whatever we are. Where we turn into other things and fight each other. But you're a cat. I'm a... I don't know." He was a knight, a page, but so far he had just been following the flow of traffic, as it were, and mostly just ignoring this new ability he had gotten by accident, when he picked up that damn glove.
He nodded his head, though, thinking he'd better be polite now. She was an... ageless space cat.
"Uhm. Yes. This is mine. I built it from the ground up, though we traveled around until we got... here... and strange things happened." He was beginning to think he should never have come to Destiny City.
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Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 7:22 am
Zia's feet stopped swinging, ceasing the light clinking music from the anklets as she focused yellow eyes down on the ringmaster. "No one is like me," She said with deliberate ice in her tone. And like a flash that small moment was gone. "Oh! But what are you? Besides a develishly handsome kindred spirit?" Added flirtatious wink to overcompensate for the brief coldness earlier. "It's very impressive." She purposely ignored the bit about Destiny City being a mistake. She had heard similar statements from her brother and her feelings were a mix of agreement and contempt for their privilege. They were becoming what they were meant to be. They were becoming more, when she was losing more of herself to artificial power daily. Bare feet hit the ground with a small bit of twirling flair and she bounced back into his personal space. "Have I earned a tour yet?"
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Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 10:54 am
Chester stared at her helplessly, though he tried to keep his composure. He was a generally calm and quiet guy, with a temper. He stared and thought and scowled, but he didn't flip out unless he was pushed. Right now, he was feeling like flipping out, and that, in itself, was straining him further.
It went against how he tried to hold himself.
He watched her and cleared his throat. He remembered vaguely how to speak and tried to say something, but he didn't make an appropriate sound to start any word, and had to stop, compose himself, and try again.
"You can have a tour," he said with a nod. "And I'm... I can change too. I can't remember what it's called right now... my brain is... stalling. A knight of some kind." He felt like a foolish child, and that was making him anger. He felt it boiling in his stomach in a way that was wholly unbecoming, and while he was trying to be patient he was losing his ability to keep a cool head.
This was all so strange. First the whole changing into a half naked super hero thing, and now a talking cat. What the hell planet was this anymore? Still, at least she was fascinating and not attacking him or insulting him, like the senshi he'd met.
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Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 8:40 pm
Zia shifted back down to her human form, after a minor ditzy moment of realization that this was not home, this was not her original base, and this was not the moon and energy leaking here was a very bad idea.
"Are you okay?" She practically purred, reaching out to touch his face because Zia had a serious problem keeping her hands to herself
And then she prematurely relieved him of any unwanted touching because she clasped her hands together in excitement. "I love knights. The use of old magic and lineage is... it's just..." Like home.
Zirconia's home. But that had been muddled in her mind.
But he traveled, he said, and the circus was definitely new in town. "Oh, are you new?" She had been scolded by her treatment of newer inductees recently, more than once. So she was suddenly more conscious of the issue than usual and was suddenly carefully planning out her actions rather than acting first and thinking later per the norm.
Unfortunately the norm was more her forte.
"Well!" She took a deep breath, repeating over and over in her head not to be overbearing. Be a good girl, don't push him. "You probably have questions! Which I might be able to answer and I will totally not brush off or half listen to and will answer with full answers that are not sarcastic or mean at all," The sentence was carried out awkwardly and stilted with pauses as she tried to think about absolutely everything she had been reprimanded for recently. Except that was a long list and this was the best she could do. She smiled and nodded at her own efforts, declaring them passable.
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Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 10:13 am
Chester watched her, curiously, still feeling rather strange and unsure as he watched her. This was all too new to him, and he had not really gotten any explanations for what he was doing or why. So far, he only powered up because he was told to, and after that first night he hadn't done so again.
Why should he?
He watched her and relaxed a bit as she touched him, nodding his head despite himself. Maybe he was just trying to make sense of it, and her interest in his park made him like her more than he should. But whatever it was, she helped him to relax.
"Magic and lineage, hm? You make it sound much more... romantic... than I've heard yet. More like a story book. I suppose I don't have questions yet because I just... don't know how... I don't know where to start. I only... found my glove a few days ago. it turned me into... this." He glanced around and then sighed and powered up. He looked at her with a bland, expectant gaze. A towel and a few belts. That was what he thought his outfit was comprised of.
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Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 1:37 pm
"It is romantic!" Zia practically burst. "Some people don't-- I mean... I just..." Brain clog. "I guess it's like... people just take it and accept it as something being done to them or something, but... it's a piece of history. It's a piece of your history." There were some subdued hand gestures as she tried to figure out how to phrase her thoughts with a little more eloquence.
"Your kind of magic-- well there's all sorts of magic-- but knight magic is... it's different, It's old magic. It's elegant. I can understand it. Senshi magic is always ingrained in a sort of technology that's just lost on me. Which I guess is my own failing, cats should know these things," Her excitement was suddenly subdued as she glanced to the side and cringed as she twisted her fingers. Unintentionally personal self depreciation was unintentional.
And then he powered up and while there was a ghost of a beginning of a gesture to reach out and inspect the aforementioned glove, she stopped, one finger still in the air as her eyes went up and down his figure in blatant inspection of something else instead. Zia was a pervert.
"Well that's interesting," She ended up saying after a long pause.
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