|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 5:34 pm
It was a lovely day for a stroll, especially if you had resigned yourself to at least a few weeks of life on land.
Katrina hadn’t been back to the lab since she had discovered that the child was still her responsibility. She had also shunned the associated ‘liberty center,’ although she was beginning to get the sneaking suspicion that Melchizedek would do well with company and other children to wear down his energy.
As it were, Melchy had been climbing the walls for the past few days—nearly literally. Katrina was a little bit worried that she was going to end up evicted, or at least forced to pay for the damages her young charge was causing.
The typical occupations of most small children—finger painting, colouring with crayons, making messes, playing useless games like peek-a-boo—were completely lost on the cat-child. Melchy only seemed interested in sleeping and making trouble. He had torn holes in the bedspread, ripped up a pillow and gotten feathers everywhere, and succeeded in climbing the drapes.
So Katrina had finally broken down and taken the child for a walk. There was a park not far from where she and her crew were lodged, and it seemed the ideal place to take Melchy for a walk. The boy loved playing outside, she discovered in the first few minutes.
As Melchy dashed from flowerbed to bush to tree, jumping happily and occasionally returning to Katrina for reassurance, the pirate took an opportunity to stretch her legs and enjoy some of the prettier things dry land had to offer.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 9:37 pm
How does one take a biting, independent child with a lion body, wings, and a serpent's tail, outside on a godforsaken romp? Why with a leash of course! And how does one trick the unwilling guardian to take said heathen child on a walk? By saying they'd meet up for lunch and then totally not!
This being said, Anya couldn't have waited to go home to smack her sibling over the head, but unfortunately her charge had obtained her own plans when they passed a park...and well, one screaming fit led to another and in the end led to the pair crossing the street and entering an area that Anya hoped wasn't very populated.
Keeping a firm hand on the leash that was attached to a collar around the child's feline body, the single-eyed Sven watched unamused as Keres darted this way and that, and cringed when the young thing let out an ear-piercing squeal as she caught a moth between her large lion forepaws and human hands.
"You better sure as hell not eat that!" Anya snapped, but her words fell on deaf ears as the jumble of animal parts darted to the left again and giggled, abandoning the crippled moth in the process.
Oh lord what a day....
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:03 am
Nothing could have prepared Katrina for what happened next.
It wasn't unexpected that Melchizedek randomly darted off into the bushes and didn't come back. Katrina was ready for that. As soon as the boy was gone, the captain let out an ear-piercing whistle. When he didn't come back even so, Katrina sprinted in the direction the boy had gone.
Katrina was not hedge-sized, and thus had to clamber over the thing. What met her eyes was totally unexpected.
Even living with Melchy for a few days, she wasn't ready for the jumble of animal parts she saw spread out over the two people (if she could call them people) she had discovered. One seemed to be woman-rabbit-deer, and the other, which Katrina decided was a child, was girl-bird-lion-snake. Or something.
"Calypso help us all," Katrina murmured, holding back for a moment before she realized that Melchizedek was already closing the distance between himself and the little lion-child.
Melchy squealed with either delight or rage--Katrina had yet to decipher all his noises--and pounced on the thing's hindquarters, growling. Katrina decided the growl was not all that fierce, but she didn't trust the other child. It scared her.
"Melchizedek, manners!" she snapped, hurrying over and tipping her hat to the rabbit-woman. "My sincerest apologies, it doesn't seem to know that randomly attacking people is impolite."
Melchy ignored her and focused on playing with the little sphinx's tail.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 5:29 pm
It was most likely the shrill whistle off in the nearby distance that had given Anya a heads-up that they weren't the only people in the park (much to her dismay...she could feel her prayers of a problem-free round-about already breaking). As she looked up from Keres towards a rather large hedge in between a couple trees...everything just went Topsy-turvy.
All hope of Keres not noticing the black thing that raced out of the bush went to hell and soon Anya found herself with another kid flouncing onto her kid, which was never good, and an unknown woman joining a few seconds later to scold and everything else.
"Keres!" The Sven scolded as the sphinx child growled back at the cat-eared boy, but Keres wasn't listening. She pranced her feline forefeet in place and then swung her rear around to try and smack at the kid who had her tail, which wriggled quite determinedly.
Anya looked up at the woman again with her single eye. "Apologies aren't needed, it seems my kid doesn' t understand it either-KERES! NO!" the rabbit-eared woman suddenly scolded again as she caught her charge attempting to smack the other kid with one of her taloned cat paws. Swatting it away herself, Anya then flicked the child on her ear...which caused a hissed reply, but the sphinx child did draw back her paw.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:31 pm
Melchizedek laughed aloud when the sphinx-child growled and tried to shake him off. He clung like a determined monkey, but—much to Katrina’s relief—didn’t use his needle-sharp claws. Completely delighted by the attention he was getting from Keres, he continued to fiddle with her tail. The girl’s annoyance didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest.
He did, however, seem rather alarmed when one of Keres’ cats’-paws lifted to punish him. Even though Keres’ guardian stopped the action, Melchy accepted it as the end of the rough play and let go of Keres, dropping onto the ground before standing up and scampering over to look up at Keres—the extra height her quadruped half afforded made her more than a head taller than he.
He bared his teeth in a mocking grin and made as if to swat at her—only to be grabbed roughly by the back of his shirt and lifted to his guardian’s eye-level.
“Behave,” Katrina growled, shaking the boy roughly and glaring him down until the cat-child stopped struggling and nodded his understanding. Katrina let him down, almost dropping him the last few inches. Melchizedek squalled but didn’t retaliate, and looked instead to Keres. He glanced at Katrina, who nodded, and then gingerly opened and closed his fingers in a baby’s wave.
Satisfied, Katrina nodded and then turned back to the woman she had so rudely ignored when her charge had acted up. “I’ve had it for barely a week, and it still seems to have a ways to go,” she mumbled. Her impeccable manners returned in a rush, and Katrina swept her tricorn off her head, bowed with a hand on her sword and the hat to her chest, and then looked to Anya. “Katrina Chandler, captain of the good ship Ghost, at your service. The child is Melchizedek.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:57 pm
Anya's mouth, which had been opened to compliment the other on her choice of discipline, closed almost immediately when the other woman bowed so... royally? Aristocratically? Did those words word? Anya didn't know, but honestly didn't care. She was just a perplexed. It was like watching someone from Pirates of the Caribbean...except Katrina was much cleaner and prettier and less...stereotypical dirty pirate things.
"Uhh..um... Hi?" floundered the one-eyed Sven as she tried to regain herself. "I'm Anya, aaannd....as I'm sure you've already picked up from my yelling, the kid is Keres..." She ended lamely as she looked down at the sphinx child and noticed that she, too, was confused by this new woman... who she evidentially hadn't noticed until just a few seconds ago.
Said Sphinx child cocked her head to the side as she blinked up at the pirate woman, though she had no idea that she was a pirate since well...she had no idea what "pirates" were. Flicking her finally free tail, the cat boy was ignored as she moved forward silently and tried to reach up at touch the shiny handle of the sword. The glinting of the metal from the gaps between the woman's fingers hadn't failed to catch her attention. She was like a magpie.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:25 pm
Katrina smiled wryly at Anya’s bewilderment; she got similar reactions from most people. But manners couldn’t be forgotten, even if she wasn’t at sea at the moment. After all, she had a shipload of pirates back at home; what would they say if their captain stopped acting like one? “Anya,” she repeated, demonstrating that she had, in fact, been paying attention, “and Keres. ‘Tis a pleasure.”
She looked down at the child and was amused to find the girl completely focused on her sword. She shot a glance at Anya as the girl reached up to her and tilted the sword, bringing the hilt within reach. “One of the finest blades forged in hundreds of years,” she boasted, aware that her words were lost on Keres. “You can touch, but you can’t have it.” She added the last bit rather sharply, though not angrily, making sure that her tone said it all. She was used to dealing with dogs and cats and Mechizedek; the latter two didn’t seem to listen, but they recognized displeasure when Katrina spoke.
Abandoned, Melchy blinked, bewildered, and padded a few steps over to look up at Anya. He smiled when he saw her ears, tugging one of his own and pointing at the top of Anya’s head as he did so. He glanced once more at Keres, found no recognition for the moment, glanced back at Anya, and grinned. Tail swishing, he crept up behind the sphinx, reached out, and tugged the edge of her wing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:57 pm
Anya had said nothing against keres' curiosity with the sword (Katrina definitely appeared hard enough to scold her on her own if something went awry), and she hadn't worried about taking her eyes off her when she looked down at Melchy and wiggled her own ears for him.
She smiled down at the boy with her single cyan eye, and watched him look at her charge a couple of times. Years of being in Abruna had caused the Sven to watch for the most minuscule signs of an attack... but it seemed that five years out of the country and danger had dulled her senses, because before she knew it, she saw Melchy tug at the sphinx's golden feathers.
NOT. GOOD.
A delayed yelp of "Melchizedek, NO!" fell into the air, but the damage had already been done. Keres immediately let the shiny and cold metal part from her small hands, and she whirled around with more baby fury then before. This time she didn't even try to smack the boy, but instead went all out and pushed off the ground with her hind feet and aimed full self at the kid...feathers, scales, claws and all.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 7:17 pm
{{Oh, LAWD, Melch, ye've done it this time!}}
Katrina had been watching Keres carefully, making sure the girl didn't try anything stupid and get herself hurt. That would be a disappointment, to be sure. She assumed, since Melchy always seemed to respond to her discipline, that the boy would leave the little sphinx alone and not get himself into anything he couldn’t get himself out of.
Melchy, of course, was much too late for Anya’s warning. He certainly hadn't expected to be violently assaulted. He yowled as Keres turned and launched herself at him, jumping out of the way as best he could, his catlike reflexes hampered by his clumsy child’s body. Stumbling, he went down, putting all four sets of claws in the air and hissing, swiping at the sphinx-girl. Anything cute about the cat-child was gone, and Melchy was just an angered cat.
Katrina watched, surprised, at the ensuing confrontation, admittedly curious as to how her charge would react. She had never seen Melchy go up against an opponent roughly his size, and he had thus far beaten every member of her crew. No one much liked crossing a ship’s cat; taboo, and all that.
Her expression shifted a little bit as Melchy went businesslike, and she looked more thoughtful than anything. She glanced at Anya. “How much damage can she do?” she asked sharply. If she needed to separate them before Keres killed Melchy, she would. If not…
The boy needed to be taught a lesson.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 11:56 am
(( xDD ))
When Keres had launched herself and made aim for the other kid, Anya jerked forward as if she grab her instantly by the tail, but when she looked to Melchy's guardian, she stopped and regained her posture. She noted Katrina's thoughtful look and out of curiosity she turned her single blue-eyed gaze down to the scuffle at her feet as well.
Keres had collided with the lower half of Mel, but now she was moving this way and that in attempts to slash her tail across some part of the boy. Anya could see a few little tufts of tawny fur laying on the grass where Keres had obviously been smacked with the cat-child's claws, but other then that couldn't see too much else in the way of damage, and soon she too found herself giving a thoughtful eyebrow raise towards her little heathen child.
A tall ear twitched in Katrina's direction when it caught her sharp words. Without looking up from the kiddy-battle, she gave a slight shrug of her shoulders and tilted her head to the side in consideration. "How much can yours do? All I have to say is that not all of these cuts are from household accidents," she stated, though then added, "they do, however, seem to both be holding their own, no?"
The Sven glanced over at the pirate captain for a second before she had to jump to the side as the two children came rolling past.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 8:29 pm
Katrina smiled when Anya did nothing more than she, feeling a sudden rush of amusement. She had finally found a kindred spirit, in a woman who looked half-rabbit and cared for a child that was more than half animal.
Melchy had gotten to his feet now, and was watching Keres warily. He couldn't avoid the slash of her tail, and squalled as he was caught with the hard scales. A few scrapes on his arms were testimony to the girl's claws, and the look on his face was mingled shock and excitement. He had never had a real fight before, and Keres didn't run away like the men Katrina commanded! He hissed again, flattening his ears, and launched himself back at the girl.
Katrina also stepped to the side, laughing a little bit at Anya's question. "Ever had a cat before?" she asked. "Imagine one a little bit taller and quite a bit heavier." She pointed to a long scratch on her cheek, still only partly healed. "That's one of his. I don't think he could kill her, though. If either starts bleeding too badly," and she lifted a leg to let her ward scrabble past her, "we can separate them, no?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:04 am
The smile that Anya had acquired, while listening to Katrina's words on Mel, turned into a hearty chuckle as she nodded in agreement to the plan. She was glad to have found someone who shared her way of thinking! "How much is 'too badly'?" she asked jokingly as she looked back down at the scuffling children once more. A little blood never hurt anyone, right?
At Melchy's latest launch, Keres reared onto her hind legs in hopes of boxing the incomer with her claws....however, when they collided, all of Keres' hopes of smacking the other one went down the drain as she went down to the ground and rolled backwards. Letting out a screech of both surprise and anger, the sphinx child actually had to try rather hard to keep her tone from showing any sort of...joy or the like. Fact was was that this was SO FUN, but Keres knew she couldn't show that yet. She had to keep the intensity!
Now on her back, Keres scuffled in the grass and dirt to flip over. She aimed her tail to slash anything it could reach, and she aimed a slap towards any bit of Mel that was close enough, while all four sets of talons aimed themselves where ever seemed fit.
(( x-o bleeh, sucky post. Sorry. ))
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 9:57 pm
{{Nah, it’s fine! These two are so funny together. XDD}}
“If anyone screams in real pain,” Katrina said, watching Keres fall backwards, “we should probably separate them.” She smiled broadly at Anya, blue eyes full of dangerous amusement, and then frowned a little bit. “They’ll be the devil t’pull apart, those two.” She was really starting to like Anya; most landlubbers would have shouted at her and chased the child off the property. It was good to find someone who shared her child-rearing plan. Anya was as much a pirate as she was—especially with the eyepatch.
Melchy was working out a bit of a strategy. The farther out of Keres’ range he stayed, the better he was pain-wise. The girl’s tail had landed a nice blow under his eye; the welt wasn’t deep, but it was puffy and bleeding on one end. The boy was no longer snarling in anger, and he found that the longer he fought with the sphinx-child, the more exciting things became. It was fun. His ears started to unpin, his tail smoothed down, and he darted in to grab a lock of the sphinx’s hair. Putting himself in her range made him easy prey to talons and slapping hands, and he only got one good jerk in before Keres landed a hit. Squalling, he scampered back out of her circle, baring his teeth in what might actually have been a grin.
“Goddess of the sea protect us, I think he’s having fun,” Katrina said, watching the boy bemusedly.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 5:17 pm
Again the Sven laughed in agreement and she crossed her arms loosely across her middle. "Yeeaahh, probably," she began, then glanced down at the growling kids for a second before looking back up, "all I should have to do is grab Keres by th-What?!" Anya interrupted herself when she heard the last remark of Katrina's. With a slightly widened eye, she looked back down at Mel and Keres with a raised brow.
She wouldn't have believed Katrina's words if she hadn't seen the boy's face. She then looked towards her charge, and well...what she saw almost made her jaw drop. "Well my word..." she muttered.
As Keres continued to rub the spot where her hair had been pulled, a sudden smirk-y smile spread across her dirt covered face. It wasn't a "nice/friendly" smile, but it showed that she was indeed having fun... even as the malicious twinkle in her unblinking eyes seemed to intensify.
With a sudden lash of her tail, her bottom went into the air while her front half lowered to the ground in a crouched position. An evil little giggle escaped her as she lowered her hand from her head, and a split second later her giggle turned into a full out battle cry as she launched herself towards Melchy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 6:34 pm
Katrina nodded grimly at the Sven’s incredulous expression, shifting her gaze to Keres. The fact that the girl seemed to be just as amused by the potentially deadly situation was slightly more disconcerting. Neither of the two seemed to be able to kill the other, but Katrina had the sneaking suspicion that if Keres got her talons in Melchy’s stomach, she’d be heading to the hospital with him. “This can end in two ways. They’ll either be fast friends or sworn enemies.” Tilting her head to one side, she watched Melchy.
The boy bared his teeth in another vicious smile and put his hands up in front of his face as Keres launched herself at him. He squalled, the sound no longer fearful but simply infuriated, putting up his hands, all at the ready, in front of his face. He swiped at the human torso when Keres entered his range and then dropped, trying to roll out from underneath her paws. His ears were pinned again, though his expression was more of concentration than anger. He was obviously thinking quickly.
Katrina had a second to notice that Melchy had landed near a fallen branch. It wasn’t long, wasn’t something that could hurt, but she yelled anyway. “Oy, Melchizedek! No!” But the boy wasn’t listening. He had picked up the stick and was holding it out like he had seen Katrina hold her sword, tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth as he concentrated.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
