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[Angela poked me...forgive me, please crying And sorry I vanished this afternoon; you guys were so nice I ended up sitting up too long xp ]

The cat perched carefully on the edge of the red stone wall, lifting its paw to its mouth with languid grace., sand paper tongue wrapping delicately around a mod-podge of different claws. Moth-eaten ears flicked back and forth as the beast picked through the noise of the crowd, searching for the distinct click-click of hob-nailed boots. A group of grubby-faced children crept close, the cat's mis-matched fur and enormous fluffy tail catching their attention. But one look at the gaping, eyeless socket sent them scattering in disgust, back to their game of stones.
The cat waited patiently, needing its paws against the stone. Its ears froze suddenly and the scarred face pulled further back to bare yellow teeth. Ah, the target.
Click-click, the hob-nail boots matched the soft scratch of claws against stone as the cat minced forward, tracking the mark. Easy, easy... it thought. Teeth bared, it made to jump, paws and claws spread wide to grab the man's neck ... when it felt an odd tugging, somewhere deep in its chest.

In a flash and a painful jek to the chest, the cat found itself hurtling out of a dark, dull sky and directly into a small knot of people standing in the middle of an empty plain. More precisely, it fell onto the head of a short, white-haired woman.
The cat reacted in the only sensible way it knew. It turned into a small, spitting dervish of claws and teeth. Which, sadly, only served to tangle it further into the woman's hair.

Zen sighed, thinking that that last hit looked kind of painful. He bent over, fighting his coat while trying to pick up the cat off the light skinned lady.

He was still trying to respect the modesty of the women and personal space, but time for that was about over, pretty much no one other than the creepy little girl the man seemed to recognize had a shred of dignity left for first impressions.

The scene couldn't get any more awkward.

"Thank you for saving me from the cat?" That had to be the first time he was thanked for that, and to top it off she was blushing now. Zen remembered when he had had his face up against hers a second ago, and tried not to blush too in the odd situation before him.

"Thanks for saving me a from a cat?" How did a guy respond to something like that?
Zen wondered if his face as the color of his hair, and swallowed. "Ugh, you're welcome?" He said stupidly.

[ gonk <-- Angela's facial expression throughout almost this entire post]

Angela stared in horror at the white dog-boy--Inutai was it? She'd just been thinking there was no way for the awkward situation to get any more awkward.

She had clearly been mistaken.

And she was almost absolutely certain her face was now beet red. GAAAAAAH! Why was she blushing? She was created for the purposes of sabotage, assassination, espionage, blowing stuff up. She was currently a mercenary pirate. Romance and physical attraction and all those idiotic things did not figure into the equation. And why was she bringing up physical attraction anyway!? It's not like she was attracted to the red head. Or that black haired guy who'd crashed into her.

She paused. Why was she even bringing him up!? GAAAAAAH!

She half covered her face with her hand and turned away to look at the distant mountains, willing her face and ears to stop burning. She cleared her throat softly.

"Anyway......how long a walk do you think it is to that forest?"

In the vast outer world where the twelve figures watched over the events as they played out. Everything was silent and still.

Finally one of them spoke.

"Are these people really capable of saving us?"

"..." said the others.

[For the record, any plot related posts or NPC actions/dialogue will be posted in blue so you can tell them apart from my regular posts]

[Nim. I was going to reveal this in my next non-character post but it's not a big deal. It's around 9 in the morning. On a side note, Angela would probably be really fast to react to this but I'm going to resist the temptation to post and let Zen and Chee post first] ^_^;;;

Zen was having all kinds of confused thoughts while watching the woman try to stop blushing. He was wondering what brought that on for a while, other than personal space violation.... when the crazed cat bit him.

Some sharp teeth gouged his wrist hard, enough to where he was trying to stop some blood by using his undershirt. He began mumbling swear words in a dozen languages like Yosemite Sam, but then that girl came over....

Her, she was taunting him, and looked... well, like someone who usually ended up trying to eat him. He just watched her, now distracted from any minor cat bite pain. That red girl earned his full attention, for she reminded him of someone else.... someone else who was perhaps the only person he genuinely feared on occassion.

"Let her go now...Try to fight back and you'll learn very quickly what it feels like to have a few hundred thousand volts of electricity pumped through your body. I don't care who you are and this is not the time to pick a fight with someone else. So just let go." For a split second, so brief most would have thought they imagined it, fury filled the redhead's face. Then, any aura of anger around Sin evaporated, at least on surface level, and she smiled perhaps one of the most eat-s**t smiles anyone could ever wear.

The grin widened, as out of the corner of her eye she saw little Gypsum tense to jump into action.

"Sure!" She let go of the cat, almost cheerfully, surprising and confusing her captor. Gypsum opened his mouth to shout a warning...too late.

Then she spontaneously burst into black, flickering flames.