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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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 Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2018 5:50 pm
It was strange that she had a different power to "protect" the city. Previously, she had just been Dr. Mjoli, and she knew she did good work as Dr. Mjoli, would continue to do good and important work as Dr. Mjoli, but something was quite different about donning a costume and wandering about Destiny City later at night. She wasn't much good at fighting, and honestly didn't want to be; the concept of fighting others was weird at best and felt deeply wrong at worst. She was a psychologist, and also a doctor. 'Do No Harm,' as a concept, was deeply important to her. But youma were monsters, and they were actively harming others, and although attacking them was awkward and unwanted, it was no moral quandary. When she saw someone actively harming someone else, it was a similar thought. Interfering in defense of others was not something she couldn't do, necessarily. But mostly, Richtersveld just wanted to be available. She didn't know many yet, Camelot her main contact, but it seemed that fighting in this war was difficult. With the way it wore on the civilian populace to see such strange things every day, to see their families disappear without a trace, to hear reports of monsters lurking, she could only pretend to imagine the ways it was wearing on those who were already fighting in it. Richtersveld had only been a knight herself for a short time, and already it felt different than just being a civilian. Better in some ways, sure. She could defend herself. The Negaverse was no longer a nebulous force who would some day, likely, attempt her life again. But it often felt worse in others, to feel the auras lurking around the city, to see the active suffering. Maybe she could do something to help. She wasn't sure. For the moment, Richtersveld would patrol, rolling her terrarium around in her fingers as she kept her eyes forward. Whimsical Blue Let me know if this works!
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Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 6:02 pm
A loud, joyous roar caught the still air and ripped it to shreds, followed by a comet of red and gold fire that shot over a nearby building and crashed into the pavement with a monstrous howl of pain, the clash of metal on rock and snap of bones breaking.
A sudden cloud of dust kicked up, thick and greasy but dispersing fast. With it came laughter, light-hearted and quite pleased with itself. From the shallow crater, a body unfolded and a woman stood, covered in grey ash and bleeding from a cut across her cheekbone. It slid down her cheek, curling around her broad grin, and dripped to the brassy gold of her chestplate, not quite as shiny as it could have been, beneath the dust.
Tanais shook out the metal gauntlets she wore, shedding gravel and ash, and slapped her hips, shaking more from the red cloth that wrapped around them. Busily cleaning herself off with a deep feeling of satisfaction, she was slow to notice she wasn't alone. She'd just been... distracted, and a page's energy signature was so much smaller than she was used to sensing with a skill she was still working to improve...
The tall knight blinked at a pretty page who was as tall as she was, if not taller, and she couldn't help a little... wander of her gaze before she pulled it back, clearing her throat.
"Ah, hey, sorry! Youma, you know?" She said with a laugh and a shrug, waving to indicate the little divot she'd made in the cement when she'd dusted the beast she'd been fighting. "They do make a mess when they die. Uh... I'm Tanais."
Unsure what else to do, she nodded her head in greeting, a hand pressed to the snarling lions head that guarded her chest.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 6:58 pm
Her walk had been relatively peaceful... well, until she suddenly heard the joyous roar of another knight. She watched a streak of gold and red fly across her vision, and she watched something crash against the ground. In front of her. Richtersveld jumped backwards, heart slamming in her ears. The kick of dust came with some level of relief, admittedly. Richtersveld was not overly adept at picking up what the auras around her were, and she hadn't exactly sensed that there was a youma in the vicinity. She was still a bit shook by the sudden arrival, though, and she watched, mouth agape, as a woman rose from the dust with a merry laugh. As her thoughts booted themselves back up, she noticed a few things. One, the woman seemed to be bleeding. Richtersveld looked at what she was carrying on her person, trying to figure out if there was anything she could use to maybe help with the bleeding. She could probably rip a part off her wrap if she needed to. The second thing she noticed was that this knight was strong and powerful and she had just destroyed that youma and ... damn. Richtersveld had eyes, after all. Wait, were the other woman's eyes-- "Ah, yeah, they do a bit," offered Richtersveld, sheepishly, perhaps grateful for the distraction. She rubbed her neck awkwardly, before opting to copy the greeting that Tanais gave her, placing a hand over her chest and nodding her head in response. "I'm Richtersveld, page of Pluto. It's a pleasure to meet you. Ah," she paused, moving to unclip the small Pluto emblem from her belt and wrap. Maybe she could help with the blood a bit... Once the wrap was taken off, Richtersveld approached Tanais a bit closer, offering the cloth. "You've got a bit of blood on your face. Can I help you out with that, a bit?"
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Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 5:59 pm
A part of Tanais relaxed when her awkward introduction was well received. She hadn't meant to make such a bombastic entrance and part of her had worried, a little, that it had scared the woman off.
Page of Pluto. That was an interesting little detail. First she'd met so far. The Knight's eyes swept the other woman again, but with a more professional gaze this time. The colors were different, and the style of her outfit. Mars, as far as she had seen, greatly favored greek styles in reds, browns and yellows. This woman wore plum and grey, and if she looked for it, she saw a scattering of a different symbol from her own.
"I've never met a Pluto knight before, its quite a pleasure." She said with a grin. The blood had gone mostly unnoticed until the page called attention to it and her own back from considerations of different planets and what that might mean for the knights that served them. Did she have different magic? Different abilities?
For once, Tanais didn't really have to lean over to let the other reach her face, though she did so, just a little, to put her head into a more comfortable range.
"Oh! Sure. I hardly felt it in the thick of things. Kinda stings now." She chuckled as her lashes lowered. When was the last time she'd had someone patch her up? The grey spaces of her memory stayed vaguely blank, barely even swirling as she dug around in it for something, anything. Long nights of patrols alone stretched out instead, going out and coming back to an empty apartment, quiet and still, to pull out the first aid kit from under the sink in the bathroom. Standing at the counter, wiping down the cuts with alcohol to clean them and hissing into the quiet as it stung.
She didn't feel bad about it, but there was a warm feeling growing in her stomach now and she couldn't help a rakish grin that stretched the corners of her mouth.
"Do you do this often?"
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 7:57 pm
When Richtersveld had realized that the knight symbols seemed to match up with legitimate symbols of planets, she may have done a bit of digging on the internet to see if she could come up with any symbols that might have matched up with any of the other knights. The symbol she saw on some places of Tanais' uniform reminded her of what she had seen from Mars. She hadn't met a Martian knight, yet. Were they all this ... "I've never met a knight like you either." She was going to leave out that she had only met a couple knights. "Your armor is very nice. Martian, right?" asked Richtersveld, as she broke the distance between them. She didn't exactly need to reach to get to Tanais' face, as the other woman was a bit shorter than she was--most women were, though Tanais was admittedly quite close to her height--though she appreciated the shift nevertheless. It made it so Richtersveld didn't have to raise her arm too awkwardly. Carefully, she balled up the piece of cloth she was holding, carefully dabbing at the blood on Tanais' face. It was too bad she didn't have a first aid kit on her. Perhaps she would need to consider carrying one with her in the future, if she was going to often run into other knights suddenly slamming down in front of her to destroy youma... The cuts didn't seem too severe, though perhaps she should see if there was a vending machine nearby. Get some water in the cut, wash it out before it got infected... Her thoughts suddenly derailed once again when she caught the grin Tanais was shooting her. Her cheeks felt a little warm, and she was thankful for the cover of the darkness combined with the cover of her dark skin. "Ah, this?" Richtersveld kept dabbing at Tanais' face, checking on the status of the blood as she did so. "I try to. Being helpful to my fellow knights, I think, might be why the Cauldron chose to awaken me. I have a job outside of this form that lets me be helpful to other people, too." After a small pause, she asked, drawing her hand away for a moment, "Do you drop in on top of youma often?"
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Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2018 10:20 pm
Tanais's grin grew, the corners of her red eyes crinkling mischievously.
"Yeah, Martian." She murmured. The flirting was nice. Playing around, not terribly serious. Just enjoying the company. Things with Ghen had always been heated, regardless of the disconnect between what she didn't remember and what her body did. It had never been light and easy, like this.
The cloth rasped, stinging her cheek, but it wasn't much of a bother. The motions felt oddly tender, something she rarely got to enjoy... Her left shoulder lifted and fell again.
"Its a self imposed task, ridding the city of the monsters. They're like vermin, someone needs to clean them up. Its a never-ending chore. I don't, though, run into a lot of other knights while doing so, or I might enjoy it more. Its a lot more fun to patrol with a partner, don't you think? It would be safer, probably, too, but who cares about playing it safe?" Her shoulders rolled and she straightened back up. "I keep an eye out for their masters while I'm at it, in case any of them are up to some mischief. I don't have much patience for them and they need to learn that we're not push-overs. That we're not going to let them get away with terrorizing our city."
There was steel in her voice, though she kept it light and friendly, an edge of restrained threat and disapproval.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2018 8:03 pm
That grin was so-- Richtersveld needed to stop blushing. Her cheeks definitely felt warm. Very warm. Her whole body felt warm. She needed to focus on her task. Richtersveld chewed on her bottom lip very slightly in an attempt to distract herself as she listened and worked. The cut was definitely looking a bit better, now that she took the cloth away from it. Maybe she could find a source of water, somewhere. Was there a fountain? "Perhaps we should look for a water fountain," murmured Richtersveld, partially to herself, before tuning fully back into the conversation once more. It was nice to have her suspicions confirmed about the Martian thing. That meant she would be able to easily identify nearly any knight she came across, right? ... Well, so long as they all came from planets... But who cares about playing it safe?There was an element to Tanais of Mars that was dangerous, and Richtersveld couldn't help her appreciation of it. She did care about playing it safe, herself, but she mostly cared about playing it safe for those around her. She was a psychologist, after all, with patients that relied on her. She hoped that one day, the knights would rely on her, too. "I'm glad we could run into each other. Patrolling alone is awfully lonely." That much was true. Richtersveld didn't necessarily enjoy being by herself, even if it was often necessary. And there was safety in numbers, even if Tanais herself didn't necessarily care about keeping it safe. "I'm glad for your passion. The Negaverse has been harming Destiny City for far too long." She scanned the environment for a water fountain, and when she thought she saw one, she beckoned for Tanais to follow. Perhaps she could clean out the cut a bit... "They seem to think they can get away with it. The people who come through my practice, some of the things they've seen," she let out a quiet sigh, uncertain. "The monsters are bad, their masters are worse. They take more." They took souls. She knew from her own personal experience. Sometimes, the memory of feeling her life leave her chest continued to haunt her, but perhaps, it made her braver in the face of all of this. At the very least, it would be nothing she hadn't experienced before.
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Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2018 5:57 pm
It felt good to move again. Standing around wasn't really her thing, even though the company was appreciated more than the idleness bothered her. Long strides were shortened to fit the shorter woman and Tanais worked the leather wrapping her hands as they moved, unwinding and rewinding it. She probably didn't really need to, the magic could have fit them perfectly with a little concentration... but she was used to the feel of it, of the wrapping and the tightness she preferred.
"Those assholes have been operating for way too long. I don't know if we just haven't been able to get the upper hand, or if Order side is just too content to sit back as long as nothing visible is going on to interrupt their patrols." She said. "I haven't... actually be working at this for all that long, so I can't speak to what was going on before. I just see agents running around as though nothing can touch them and it makes me sick. I'm not going to put up with it any more. If it means taking the fight to them, then that's what I'm doing."
The line of her mouth and jaw tightened, the muscle shifting beneath her skin, and her red eyes narrowed, darker with shadows from the tilt of her head. Every line of her felt coiled... every muscle tight with potential, with need. She wanted to feel the impact of knuckles on flesh, on bone, on whatever it was that made up the youma she fought. She felt the purpose in the way her body moved and knew from experience how right it felt to deliver her kind of justice...
The tone of Richtersveld's voice echoed in the dark swirl in her gut, in the part of her that saw the injustice of it all and raged against it. She angled a glance over, sympathetic, if not as morose about it. Angry. That's how she felt.
"If you ever need another fighter, you can call me." She said suddenly, dropping her hands to fist at her hips. "I'll come as fast as I can. I do kinda live for the fight, but more than that, I want to help if I can. If it could be the difference, then I want to be there."
Tanais grinned suddenly, banishing the shadows from her eyes. "You're not Mars, but I think I'm okay with that."
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2018 10:08 pm
Sadly, neither had she, so she couldn't really say much more about how Order had been before Richtersveld any better than Tanais could say it had been before Tanais. Still, it was interesting that Tanais admitted she had not been at this very long. She was a knight. Unless something about her sheer determination to end the Negaverse's grip on their city had caused her to level up quickly, what she said did not quite match up with the level that she was. Richtersveld knit her brows in thought. Was it an appropriate question to ask? Would Tanais become offended? Richtersveld was liking Tanais, and she seemed to be hesitant about the fact that she hadn't been a knight for long. Perhaps she needed to be careful about where she stepped, how she stepped, why she stepped. With this determination, she dropped the thought for the moment and listened to what else Tanais was saying. That fire in Tanais definitely fit the planet that she was from, Mars, and Richtersveld appreciated it. It was that dangerous aspect that was admittedly a bit enticing in all the wrong ways, but it was also the fact that she wanted to be heroic. That she wanted to help. That she wanted to end suffering. That was something Richtersveld could appreciate. When they arrived at the water fountain, Richtersveld moved to wet a nearby piece of her uniform that she could use to dab at Tanais' cut to clean it out. "It's good to have someone who is willing to go on the active offense, I think. I obviously haven't been at this very long either, so I can't necessarily speak to prior Order behaviours either," she giggled, "but as much as I personally take a less active approach, in most situations, it seems like it may be necessary in some situations, especially considering the monstrous things the monsters' masters do." She turned around and moved to clean out the cut, hopefully stemming any chance of infection. "And thank you for the offer, Tanais." At that, her smile strengthened. "I really appreciate it, especially since I'm not Mars." She understood, from the way Tanais worded that, that Tanais may have been more innately friendly and willing to help towards fellow Martians. Being Plutonian, she was very much not Martian. "I'll keep that in mind if I need someone to stand beside me or to help me out. I'm glad to hear you're willing to help. We need to stand strong, to stand united, to stand together, I think." She pulled her hand back to inspect the cut and make sure any dirt was washed away from it. "That applies to me too? I'm not sure how helpful I'll be physically," though she could certainly try, "if you need any help, I'm here. Even if it's just to bandage you up after a fight."
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 1:15 pm
The late August air was warm, the tinkle of falling water leading the pair towards it's source. Whatever Richtersveld was thinking, to cause that frown, she didn't share, and Tanais didn't press. They all had a right to their thoughts, yeah?
The red-eyed knight bowed her head as the other came to reach for her face, those eyes veiled by lashes. The cut stung from the attention, but she didn't flinch or grimace, more interested in watching Richtersveld as she worked. It felt like an intimate moment, this tending of wounds, and she rather enjoyed being looked after. It was rare she got to, these days. Who knows if it had been different in the past, if there had been someone to tend the pale, ragged scar that ran from shoulder to hip across her torso. Maybe she had cleaned and bandaged that herself too.
"I dunno if you want to offer to clean me up... I get scrapes like this an awful lot." She teased in a low voice, her grin roguish. "I'd keep your hands full every night, you'd never have a free moment. And then you'd have to put up with my brash, impetuous nature all the time. I tend to make lewd comments, I'm warning you right now. And I swear. A lot. I'm terrible company for decent folks."
Still, it wasn't a bad thing to have more contacts, especially pretty ones.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2019 2:16 pm
The cut was certainly looking a lot better. Richtersveld couldn't help the relief on her face, glad that she had been able to help in some way, somehow. And she couldn't have potential allies, other knights, getting injured strewn across the battlefield-- Oh. At the low, teasing voice, Richtersveld felt a bit of heat rise to her cheeks. She attempted to ignore it, clearing her throat quietly and averting her eyes for a moment. Lewd comments. Oh. Did she mean lewd comments aimed at her? Why did Richtersveld care? People made lewd comments in her direction all the time and most of the time it was simply irritating but she couldn't help wonder the context of them and she needed to get her brain to shut up-- Her sibling was the disaster dammit-- "Oh, that's okay," replied Richtersveld, with a giggle. "You think I haven't heard it before? Dearie," and that was said in an affectionate tone that proved she could play the teasing game right back, "I'm a 33-year-old psychologist. I certainly haven't heard it all, but I've heard enough." And that wasn't counting the dumb comments her siblings made on occasion, especially in the swearing realm. Her brother came up with new curses every five seconds or so, she swore... She paused, before offering, with a wink, "Besides, I'm here to support people, even if that requires my attention every night."
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2019 11:00 pm
She blushed and Tanais's smile turned positively wicked, her eyes lighting. She didn't push it further though, not yet.
"Thanks. For this. I do really appreciate it. I should probably get back to my patrol at some point... I haven't quite finished my sweep yet." She said as she lifted and dropped a shoulder regretfully. "I don't know where you're headed, but... if you're interested, I'm always happy to have a partner along."
It maybe wasn't the best idea. Richtersveld would be a distraction, though lovely and pleasant to have along. She'd have to rein herself in, if she wanted to keep the both of them safe... but she was reluctant to part ways so soon, if she didn't have to. She patrolled alone so often now. She fought, because she had to, because she'd made it her duty... but such a solitary one so far.
The prospect of someone to share it with was too tempting. Especially this one.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2019 11:36 pm
That wicked smile definitely caught her attention, and Richtersveld couldn't help pulling at her collar. Well. Happy to distract herself with whatever else Tanais was saying, she reeled her mind back into place and nodded in acknowledgment. She had already managed to injure her face and she still hadn't finished her sweep? What else did she plan to run into? Was this usual for her? Tanais had certainly implied it was with everything else she had said-- Oh, she wanted her to come with. Richtersveld had already offered. I'm here to support people, even if that requires my attention every night. Besides, what else did she have to do that night after this patrol? She should probably check in on her siblings, but considering the time zone difference, it wasn't like she didn't have time for that. They might not have even been available yet, anyway. Other than that, she had only planned on maybe sitting down and indulging in some chocolate drink before going to bed. And she was a knight. It really was her duty to be out here. It was her duty to make connections and to make sure those connections were okay and could fight against the encroaching darkness that was the Negaverse and their monsters. And it wasn't like she wasn't enjoying the conversation. "I can come along, especially if you think you might be getting into more trouble." Richtersveld chuckled warmly. "I should start carrying a first aid kit... "So, where do you head on your patrols?" Lead the way.
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