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 Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 3:39 pm
Irinei Lazarev was a specter, and all that remained of his presence had crumbled to dust.
Zircon had scoured the databases for weeks following her encounter with the defected captain, searching for any signs of his activity now that he'd thrown in his lot with the White Moon. There wasn't much to be found--a name, a few family relations that had long since gone to rot, something about a transfer from St. Petersburg, a few local museums where he'd been known to roam. Every time she came across a new lead, it slipped through her fingers just as easily as he had left his given purpose for the cold, unfeeling light of Order. It was an offense that Zircon refused to bear, a stain upon her career in the Negaverse, and she was determined to set things right.
But how? Camlann's starseed was able to repel her touch, and his civilian identity was nowhere to be found. The captain had nearly been at her wits end when petitioned by...well, the Beast. Cinnabar was a loose cannon, danger wrapped in leather and chains and fur and scales and teeth. She was fire made flesh, and a different sort of terror than the ones Zircon had known, but she had Schorl's favor, and that was what mattered, even if there was something unsettling in the woman's eyes.
(Had she seen the woman licking her lips at her the last time they'd spoken? Zircon must have imagined it.)
Hesitations or not, Cinnabar had proven herself time and time again to be loyal to the cause, and Zircon took the opportunity to work with her more personally as a way of killing two birds with one stone. She'd relinquished her investigative notes, sparse as they were, and agreed to scout out locations that Cinnabar might otherwise not have access to, given her...unique state. (Was it offensive to call her half-youma? How did these things work?) The efforts of her cooperation had led her to the roof of an apartment building on a more colorful part of town, perched in wait for the arrival of her partner. Her eyes idly scanned the horizon, but her sense for auras was on high alert, waiting for anything that might crop up. After all, it was naive to assume that their operation couldn't be compromised by White Moon forces.whimsical blue Let me know if I can change anything!
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 11:36 pm
Leaving the Dark Kingdom barracks was always a literal and figurative breath of fresh air. Even if she and Stroud had padded the stone walls with posh furniture and soft rugs, the fact remained that they were stone. There was a sort of... lifeless feel to the whole of it that was both appealing and repelling. Maybe it was simply the lack of sky to be seen while she was there, but the moment she materialized into being in the city she felt herself expand and open to a world teeming in life and light and noise... maybe that was what she missed, living in the Citadel. The noise of other people.
Cinnabar lifted her head, nose into the wind as noise assaulted her pointed ears. Traffice. Voices both low and raised. The wind and faint strands of music. It was almost a cacophony, but one she welcomed. It energized her and the half-youma hooked her thumbs in her belt as she lowered her eyes to the rooftop she stood on.
Zircon had said to meet here, so here she was. Opening her inner senses brought the velvet warmth of a Captain to her, so she oriented on it and set off at an easy pace. There wasn't far to go and no need to rush. She debated, and discarded, the idea of drawing up her glamour. If Zircon wasn't powered down, she probably didn't feel the need for secrecy, power wise, and time without a power signature was in limited supply. Better maybe to wait and see if she needed it first.
"Zircon?" She called as she rounded the small shed that housed the stairs down into the building, her tail swinging back and forth with the sway of her hips. There... a smudge of brown in the grayness. "Ah, there you are. I'm glad you agreed to help me with my pet project."
There was warmth to her smile as she approached the shorter blonde, a hand lifted and offered out in greeting. Maybe she wouldn't take it... there seemed to be a hint of nerves whenever she was around this particular Captain, but Cinnabar figured it was better to err on the side of friendly rather than come off cold and detached. Today, at least for this woman, she could show the p***y cat and not the lion.
"Have you heard anything new of note since you gave me your notes?" They had been sparse... but she'd worked with less before.
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Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 5:12 pm
Zircon felt the other captain before she spoke, but her name being called from those fanged lips made her shiver, standing tall and at attention. "Happy to help," she blurted out, feeling even smaller than usual in the shadow formed by oppressive aura of the half-youma. She kept her hands close to her chest, almost defensively, but when she glanced down at the open claws presented to her she felt her eyes widen and her stomach drop. They were officers of equal rank, there was no reason Zircon should feel so nervous under that feline gaze, so cornered like a bird in a cage. Cinnabar was an ally, and one of Schorl's favorites at that, they were family. She might have been a living breathing vision of the things Bischofite had taught Zircon to fear, but they were still family and that's what counted, right?
Skittishly, she darted a hand out, shaking the hand once to show solidarity and sisterhood. Nailed it.
Zircon found it easier to relax once they were talking business, but there was still an air of caution about her as she retracted her hand, never taking her eyes off of the other woman. "Nothing but dead ends, really. There were reports of Irinei spending time in this complex, but it's not really traceable to a particular person or unit." The captain let out a small huff in pent-up frustration, her eyes darting down to the complex below. "It would be ambitious to think he would return here while powered, I'm not even sure he would remember this place if he remembered me." Her scowl furrowed even deeper, and she curled the fingers of her right hand. That starseed had been hers by right, until he'd done something and ruined everything.
"But it's a start, maybe we can sniff something up," she commented off-hand, shrugging her shoulders. The moment she realized the potentially offensive suggestions in her phrase, her eyes widened, stumbling over herself as she looked away from Cinnabar, her face red. "That is--I mean, we--we could find something, maybe."
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Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 9:38 pm
She snapped to attention rather quickly, Cinnabar noticed, as she called her name. Was that nerves speaking?
Her eyes swept the petite blonde from top to bottom and she smiled, unable to help that doing so revealed the pointed tips of her teeth. How cute. Did she think she was going to pounce on her? Or was it the youma bits of her that made Zircon uncomfortable? The latter was a shame if it were true... some people just couldn't deal with something non-human, even if they happily used and abused the Negaverse's youma servants as they pleased.
She felt the quickness of the hand grip, the eagerness to release, and her lashes lowered over her eyes as she brought her hand back to her belt. Trying to seem biddable. Not succeeding terribly well. I wonder if Schorl hasn't told her about me... or if she has. Would she set the captain at ease, or warn her about my loose-canon nature to the point of bringing on this discomfort? It was hard to say. Despite the comfort that had come hard on the heels of the chastisement she'd received from the General, she still felt the sting of it. That was why she was here... why she was doing this. To prove she had grown beyond the angry, spiteful lieutenant she had started out as.
"There should be a visitor log we can check against his name and known aliases. One of the girls in the office might have seen him and be able to give us a lead, if we ask... nicely." She chuckled, the tip of her tail curling back and forth in anticipation.
A real smile spread across Cinnabar's face as she watched the other Captain turn red, a bark of laughter breaking free.
"I think that sniffing out our prey would be better suited to someone merged with a canine, hmm?" She teased, cocking her hips as her head tilted in a playful, challenging way as she gave her a wink. "I'm better at getting into places I don't belong and seeing in the dark. Shall we go check the log book?"
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Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2015 11:50 am
Zircon looked back to Cinnabar, expression blanching as the other captain let out a laugh. Oh no, no no no, she'd gone and done it, said something out of turn, and Cinnabar was almost certainly stronger, faster, and it was all too easy to imagine those clawed hands at her throat, around her starseed--
The smaller captain stared blankly as the amazon winked, and willed her breathing to return to normal. Cinnabar was not Bischofite, and Zircon's little mental misstep was not the same as willful insubordination. She was safe, and with that realization came the nervous gurgle of laughter that spilled over from her mouth.
"R-right, the log book, of course," she trilled, hoping that her voice didn't quiver too much as she turned towards the task at hand, a fire escape door that led to their prize. A quick jiggle of the handle revealed it to be locked, but Zircon had little patience for such a weak and trifling thing, and with a flex of her free hand summoned her crystalline boomerang, swinging down on the doorknob as if she'd been wielding a hammer. Metal screeched against stone but ultimately gave way, and with a few moments of finagling, the captain managed to tear free the mechanism of the lock inside, swinging the door with a cautious glance back to Cinnabar.
"It'll be safer than going through the front door..." Zircon offered, trying not to seem too out of her element. She'd been trained to track and hunt senshi, but there was nothing to be done about her upbringing in the upper middle class. She'd never known the need to know how to pick locks, and the only thing she'd ever seen of breaking and entering had been from the villains in spy movies. In many ways, this felt more delinquent than sapping the energy from an unknowing civilian, and Zircon wasn't sure if she liked it or not.
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Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2015 1:05 pm
Oh, cute... she was nervous. It was flattering, in a way, that Cinnabar had enough force of presence to make someone around her nervous, but at the same time, if it got in the way of working together...
The half-youma mulled over the problem as Zircon dealt with the door, her hands hooked on her belt and one hip cocked. She had a boomerang weapon, which held some interest. Cin herself had never had more than the basic joke weapon lieutenants got... she was almost jealous of the lethal looking bit of crystal. How much more would it have increased her abilities, to have a lethal weapon to hand?
When the door was opened, the half-youma straightened and offered her fellow captain a smile as she passed, her tail trailing.
"Good job. Do you remember which apartment was his?" She said over her shoulder as she paced down the hallway. To be on the safe side, Cinnabar pulled her glamour up around her as she went, her tail and scales dissolving to be replaced with skin and her uniform with jeans and a black tank top. If someone stumbled across them, not looking like a monster would be a good thing. "I can jimmy the door open and we can poke around inside, unless you've been there and can teleport us in. It might be worth asking the neighbors the last time they've seen him and if there were any strange happenings."
Sometimes, nosy neighbors were the best for getting gossip from, and sometimes people were so insulated they never even noticed when their neighbors changed. Hopefully here would be the former.
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Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 9:08 pm
Zircon glanced back to the other captain and nodded once, giving the other woman space to saunter inside. Taking care to check and make sure there were no wandering eyes about, she shrugged away her tie to chaos and resumed being Suri Ellis, the high-school science teacher who unironically wore high-waisted capris on her summer vacation, paw-print clips in her hair. If anything, walking behind Cinnabar's glamour felt even more dangerous then when the two of them had been on the roof, as captains and equals. She knew from Tanzanite that it was all a ruse, a paper-thin disguise that would crumble and flake away after a short length of time, revealing the monster underneath. Stuck as Suri, her only option was to believe in the benevolence of this other captain, which didn't settle well with the butterflies in her stomach. But she had no choice, really--it was trust or be obtuse, and this mission required discretion.
"It's this way," she said softly, somehow feeling even smaller in her white ballet flats. She led the way down a cramped flight of stairs and into a hallway filled with the lazy buzz of the fluorescent lights above. Suri made a face as she took in her surroundings, then stepped forward with purpose, stopping about a third of the way down at a door with faded numbers. "This is the place," she confirmed, motioning to the door. "I checked the address after I encountered Melanite, and the apartment had already been cleared." Whoever had taken part in her lieutenant going AWOL had at least been thorough about it, to her frustration.
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 7:40 pm
The building was quiet around them, though Cinnabar's ears could detect movement inside some of the apartments and somewhere, a TV played a game show. She followed along behind the powered down captain with her hands shoved into her back pockets, looking casual while her eyes swept the area for details and possible ambushes.
The unease in Zircon never seemed to abate, but there was only so much Cinnabar could, or would, do to make her more comfortable. She would just have to learn how to deal.
When they reached the door, Cin eyed it as she stepped forward and reached to wrap her hand firmly around the knob. She rattled it to get an idea of how firm it was and considered her options, but there wasn't a whole lot of them. Its not like she had a lock picking set... Well. Nothing else to do then. Dropping her glamour for a moment, the captain put her hip against the door by the handle and pushed until it gave way with a sharp, splintering crack. She grimaced as she pulled her glamour back up and stepped inside, glancing about quickly.
"Come on, before someone comes looking for the source of the noise..." The brunette hissed.
The apartment seemed empty and abandoned... If there had been anyone here, it was a while ago, probably when the place had been cleared out. That made things harder, but there was always the chance something had been missed.
"I'll start on this side..." She tossed back before she started in. Closets were opened and swept on every shelf, particularly the top ones. Appliances were pulled out from the wall with a scrape to peer behind them and all drawers were investigated, including their undersides in case anything had been attached to the bottoms to hide it.
By the time they were done, the place had been poked and prodded to the last square inch and Cin had found precious little. Whomever had cleaned the place had been careful and thorough. Not surprising, she supposed, if they planned to rent the place out again.
"Maybe we should ask the neighbors. Its bound to give us more information than we found in here." She said as she came to join the shorter woman, hands shoved deep into her pockets again and a slouch to her step.
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Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 5:42 pm
There was something soothing about the methodical search that went along with stripping the apartment top to bottom, touching every cabinet and drawer. Suri had the advantage of already knowing the rough layout of the rooms, and while there was a certain defeat when nothing came of their search, there was nevertheless a mild satisfaction in knowing that she hadn't missed something critical in her own scouring of the area. It was the smallest of affirmations, and one that only she felt, but she nevertheless left the empty apartment more satisfied than perturbed.
She touched the numbers on the doorplate and thought back to Camlann and the face he'd made after she'd been repelled by his strange magic, and the golden feeling in her chest turned to rot. There was no time to celebrate, not when there was so much more work to do.
"Right," Suri affirmed when the other woman suggested talking to the neighbors, lifting her posture and pulling her shoulders back in order to look professional and refined. She held a certain measure of distaste for talking to strangers that kept her out of most sorts of Infiltration work, but this was not a confrontation to be avoided and there was another captain watching, so she had no room to be afraid.
Steeling her nerves, she walked to the next door in the hall and knocked, holding her breath. Though the thud reverberated through the door, no one came.
"Hmmm," she frowned, trying to hide the relief as she exhaled. She tried the next door, and the one after that before someone opened up, an older woman with a critical stare.
"Hello," Suri chimed, forcing her best impersonation of a customer service voice. "I'm with Missing Persons, do you have a moment to talk about--" The small blonde found herself cut off by the quick swing of the door, and she let out a frustrated huff to the tune of several latches being hooked.
"How are we supposed to find anything like this?" Suri bit her lip, her voice straining like strings that had been pulled too tight. She was trying to contain her irritation for the sake of maintaining a professional demeanor in front of the other officer, but it was hard when the world was being so...difficult.
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Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 7:34 pm
Standing behind Suri as the old woman opened the door, Cinnabar got a bare glimpse of the room inside before they were rudely cut off and the door slapped home. A frown flickered over the captain's face and she had to visible restrain herself from doing something rash. Rash, like bust the door down or teleport inside and make the old woman talk... but the growling of the youma inside her mind was a warning the urge wasn't just hers.
So. Despite the burning desire to give chase when the woman fled, she let her go with an effort and moved on to the next door, leaving Suri to trail behind her. This one opened more readily at her knock and the young man in the door way seemed startled to be confronted by the tall, well curved woman. An easy and seductive smile slipped onto her face and Cinnabar fell effortlessly into flirtation mode, leaning on the door jab. Her conversation with the man made him smile and he all but preened and strutted for it. At one point, she reached out to straighten his button down shirt and he puffed up even more, if that was possible, looking ready to explode.
He was not the only resident they managed to talk to that night, but they had only marginal success in their information gathering. Cinnabar finally had to call it quits when she ran out of time for her glamor and the pair wound up the trip on the roof of the building.
The half youma let the artificial face dissolve with a sigh, her tail and scales returning with her leather.
"Something is better than nothing." She said as she stretched. "Its more than we knew when we got here."
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