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It was already too late for that, though. Ruuvan had stepped outside of the circle.

Almost immediately, a wraith-like figure decended through the ceiling of the gymnasium as if it weren't even there, flying directly for the elf spirit as silent as the grave. There was no decrepid, bony hand reaching out for him, or a long scythe the color of pitch ready to cut him down; the drone appeared as little more than an empty cloak with two black arms reaching out from beneath it, the right clutching a kama-like blade intended for cutting the elf's spirit thread.

As soon as it appeared, Joshua rushed past Ruuvan, interposing himself between them. As the reaper attempted to pass through the living body and reach Ruuvan's soul, the man grabbed a handfull of the cloak where the torso should have been and threw it violently to the side. It recovered almost immediately and swooped around to come back for Ruuvan; the weapon's handle stretching longer into that of a scythe for greater reach. Though instead of moving to block it again, Joshua turned quickly and slammed the back of his forearm against the elf spirit's chest to knock him back inside of the circle.

The reaper raised the scythe high, and brought it down upon the elf- only to impact suddenly against a wall that had formed around the spirit. The reaper seemed to be struck back by it, but quickly turned around for another pass... like a bird repeatedly flying at the same window.

"....s**t-"

Joshua jerked his head to the side just before another reaper flew through the opposite wall; scythe already outstretched and ready for D. He reached his hand towards them, cueing the barrier, but D had moved, too... he was only halfway inside of the circle.

Without a sound, and without a warning, the second reaper swung for D's head.

The reaper had missed, barely. Partly because of D's movement and partly because the tip of the scythe had struck against the barrier, causing it to be knocked aside. The reaper was pushed back a small bit, but quickly raised the scythe again in order to bring it down upon the boy's head-

WHUD.

Joshua slammed his shoulder into the base of the reaper's scythe, grasping the shaft with both hands and raising it against the cloak to push the reaper back. When they reached the edge of the array, another barrier flashed at the edge of the circle and the reaper was pinned against it by its own weapon.

He looked back only once to see if D still had a head, then pressed the drone harder against the wall; dragging it along the crackling barrier towards a semicircle drawn in union with the outside line. As soon as it was within reach, he released the drone, shoving it the rest of the distance inside of the semicircle.

The drone recovered, raised the scythe again, and rushed for D once more- only to strike a barrier. It moved around it, only to strike it again. The drone was trapped inside now, like a fish swimming in its bowl.

...but what about the other reaper?

It continued striking at the barrier around Ruuvan, being knocked away, and swooping around again. Despite that D was unprotected, it payed no attention to him at all. There was a reason for this: it was because this drone had come for Ruu, and Ruu only, just as the other had only come for D. As long as the target remained, the drones would ignore everything else in favor of it, and as long as the drone was still there, with the task of taking the target, no others would go after it.

For this class of Reaper, this was how things worked. There was no frenzy, just pure, mechanical efficiency. One target, one drone.

Eventually the drone began to circle the barrier, looking for a weakness in it to exploit. When this brought it close enough to another semicircular etching along the outside, just like the other, it was activated and the drone was trapped inside.

"...alright," Joshua said, signaling the two circular barriers around the bodies to deactivate, "NOW you can move."

"Yeah," he said, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand, "because you wouldn't want me to screw THAT part up and... you know... KILL YOU or something."

He twisted his head to the side again, issuing a few pops from the vertebrae, and then walked to where Ruuvan was; taking the thread that connected the elf spirit and body and wrapping it over his wrist and through his hand. The thread, oddly enough, seemed to stretch endlessly and offer no resistance at all, like there was an endless supply of it laying around just out of sight.

"No, there shouldn't be any more coming... unless one of you did something to seriously piss someone off." As he said it, the first thing he did was give a sharp, almost suspicious glance towards D... though no doubt the boy was still too consumed in his own enormousness to catch it. "Those are just drones... like worker ants, they exist only to carry souls across when their time is up."


"Simple," he said with a grin as he crossed towards D, "head towards the light... woooooo~ scary. The great beyond and all that." He repeated the process with D's thread, wrapping it around his own arm. "No, nothing like that, really. I'll send you on your way in a minute, as soon as we're ready..."

Standing beside the dark giant, Joshua gave him a good look over, up and down...

"...nice hat."

Elven armour, it was definitely a strange sensation feeling on his body again; the weightless feeling even though one would think it to be heavy, the almost empowering affect it had on his soul as if wearing it brought it back to his old self, but that still didn't stop the anxiety of getting this show on the road and finding his old friend.
"I think I'm ready, how about you?" A rather open question addressed to neither D or Joshua, kinda said towards both to see when they could head off.

::A six foot suit of jet black armor...and a giant 5ft sword...in a closet. D, was entirely too hyper of a child to allow any calculated plan or intelligent course of action Ruuvan was calculating to function properly. He turned, he twisted, and with a thump, fell out the closet door with his sword clamorously clanging on the floor.

After tiny moment of being stunned he immediately shuffled to his feet, standing up the sword beside him trying to look like a very noble Dark Knight. A whispered...::

...Sowwy!

::Escaping his lips as he looked back at Ruuvan.

Oh, so they were heading off right now... before he could even finish his thought they were there, in the dark confines of something rather awkward. Something like this took Ruuvan a few seconds to make a plan for, but with D already stumbling out of the closet and laughter being heard, he had to assume it was relatively safe.

So, gathering himself mentally and physically, Ruu stepped from the closet and walked beside where D was standing, looking at the two women with a rather puzzled expression.
"Hey there, sorry about the ki-- I mean my friend, he's a bit jumpy." With D no longer resembling a child, apart from that young voice in the large body, he would have to refer to him as a friend instead of a kid to avoid confusion.

Ban. Ban. Ban. Ban. Ban. Ban. Ban. Ban.

The sounds slowly faded to nothing, drowned out by his own thoughts as he sat in silent meditation...



Not in the room around them, not even on the other side, in the spirit world. Something moved inside of him, like a cold wind had just blown through an open window in his mind.

"Come out, then..." he said to whatever presence had intruded. He envisioned a featurless, empty area, waiting for the unknown to step out from where it was lurking.

Joshua was still sitting, as he had been, in the center of this nothingness. He watched as the other showed itself, and when the other showed its weapon, his own equipment appeared in responce.

"What's it to you?" he muttered in answer.

When the horizontal swing came, it was easily seen... with a weapon that large the windup for such a movement is much greater than with a normal weapon, and the man's responce to a horizontal swing was simply to lay back, flat against the ground as the blade passed over. He rolled immediately to the left following that, into a three-point stance on his right hand and the balls of his feet.

"Why are you here? Couldn't get a date?"