He fell back a step or two, clutching his face--because shield or no shield, a fist to the nose ******** hurt--and glaring daggers* at Ever like he hadn't just asked him to do exactly what he'd done. He brandished the knife in a hand that was suddenly now shaking again, and he looked for all the world like he was going to bring a world of pain down on him for having the audacity to put a dent in his shield. When he spoke his voice was no less full of anger.
"Better," he barked. "Again. It's telling you s**t, right now. Listen to it."
HP: 44 DEF: whatever this roll is /lazy CHG: 1/3
* heh
and be blue rolled 2 8-sided dice:
7, 2Total: 9 (2-16)
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 8:13 pm
Amory was speaking to him, but much of the time, his weapon's speech was...cloudy. Confusing. While others might get a sense of meaning without actual words, with Amory, it was the opposite. The meaning came through now and then, fragments, ideas, a sentence like a clear bell. The rest of the time, it was a wave of words that he was starting to get used to, and something about that wasalarming, actually.
"He wants to eat you." He understood that much, at least, shrugging in a crooked sort of way, and listening to the sea. If he let the words wash over him, it was slightly easier to glean the core message. A memory of swinging like this, and so he did.
"Classy," he said, and he spread his arms wide but he somehow looked, as he did so, just as if he were flinching instead. "Tell it to do its worst."
It, it, it.
HP 44 CHG 2/3
and be blue rolled 2 4-sided dice:
4, 3Total: 7 (2-8)
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 8:26 pm
At least Amory didn't care. And Ever didn't, either. It or he or they or we was all the same to him. He didn't hesitate this time, at least, but conveyed the message along to his weapon, even if he didn't fully understand what it meant.
He hit, again, but this time it did no damage. It did nothing; he barely felt the strike. The only sign that anything at all had happened was Amory's hungry growl in the back of his mind.
Dice: 2d4 First Dice: indicates how many turns the effect will last, starting with your next regular attack. xxxxx 1: 1 Turn xxxxx 2-3: 2 Turns xxxxx 4: 3 Turns Second Dice: represents how much health you steal per hit. xxxxx 1: 0% (Absorb no health) xxxxx 2: 25% (divide your damage by 4) xxxxx 3-4: 50% (divide your damage by 2)
The sensation on the shield was... off, in ways he found difficult to explain. He watched Ever's perplexed expression grow, and motivated by irrational irritation and by the uneasiness he always felt down here on the fields (diminished, to be sure, by his defensive role, but not eradicated), he abruptly nipped in.
Just as he'd told Ever, there was almost no strength behind it, a light, rapid movement of his arm like the flickering tongue of a snake, and then the sudden, vicious bite of blade into ribcage, bloodless but violent. There was that suggestion, again: catlike, and everything it suggested, but this time with the accompanying suggestion of claws, of teeth, of cruelty. He'd no sooner struck than he fell back, instinctively putting space between them, and he grinned like a snarl, shaken, as he always was, by how good it felt. Fiona was silent, exulting approval.
"Well? She ******** hers up the first go around. Same thing?" It had been showy, a transparent display of I am the bigger animal, but he gave himself a visible shake as though he'd just emerged from freezing water.
DMG: 9 CHG: 3/3
and be blue rolled 2 8-sided dice:
7, 7Total: 14 (2-16)
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 8:42 pm
"...what the hell, Thompson." He didn't care about the question, his eyes coming back into focus, and he tried to echo the movement. There was nothing catlike or expert about his own, none of that easy grace. It was a lash back, clumsy and frustrated, but so long as it worked --
And it did work. It landed, and as it did, Ever blinked again. Surprised again. "Oh."
He almost didn't register Ever's little sound of recognition, swept up in the sudden feeling (Fiona was abruptly all alarm, all wordless warnings) of something important draining away from him, leaving in its stead a sickly, pleasant feeling of absence. It reminded him, too strongly, of the kinds of poisonous weakness he'd willingly sought out (begged for, hurt himself for, needed) before the Island.
He did not think. He reeled back and then, with all the instinctive, defensive ferocity of a wild animal, he snapped back at Ever, the knife biting deep and twisting viciously. There was nothing friendly or instructive about it, but a sort of awareness flickered into his eyes at the taste of Ever's shield, and he fell back again, this time fumbling back several steps, shaking himself off again.
"Shield," he barked, and then, with ample irritation to cover over his disgust both at the feeling of the charge and his reaction to it, he clarified: "How's your ******** shield holding?"
HP: 36 DMG: 6 CHG: 3/3
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 9:12 pm
There was an alarming savagery to Taym's motions that, in this moment, Ever found oddly engaging: it mingled with his own lingering sense of warmth, of pleasure, not quite sexual but almost. It was the look on the man's face, though, that kept him from diving in for another, as much as he would have liked to. As much as Amory clamored for him to. As much as he was hungry for it.
He stepped back with his pulse racing and his pupils just a bit swollen, fingers clenching and unclenching around the hilt of his stiletto. And stared at Taym, a hand going almost distractedly to the spot at his side where Fiona had dipped, processing slowly.
"It's fine." He licked his lips and dragged his eyes off of Taym, around the field. "It's holding."
And then, less serenely, with a touch more focus, "That was ******** crazy, though. You have issues."
"We all have ******** issues here," he hissed. "Being on the defensive is not ******** one of them, though." He darted in again, but this time it was with the flat of the blade, smacking it not-at-all gently against the side of Ever's head and continuing past him with his weapon dangling loosely in his hand, clearly having decided the fight was over but leaving himself (perhaps suspiciously, given what he'd just said) completely open to retaliation, should Ever personally disagree.
As soon as metal met Ever's shield the runes had flickered, shifted; it was accompanied by the sudden sensation of having been plunged, on a hot day, into cool water, and a sudden surge in the strength of his shield.
"Learn something?" he asked, without turning around. He said it in the way you'd say it to someone you fully expected to fall into step. I am the bigger animal.
HEALING FOR: 17
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 9:31 pm
Ever ducked, but too slowly -- scowling just a hair as Taym came to a halt on the other side of him. It was immediately clear that he'd been healed, impossible to miss that fact, but there was still something impossibly rude about the way the man had done it. When it came to teachers, maybe he was better off finding another one.
Although, in contrast, Taym had at least taught him. Even if the experience was a pain in the a**, and did little to foster good will between them.
So instead of biting into the man again, Ever blew a breath out through his nose and rolled his shoulders in a slow shrug, considering the easy target of his back. In his mind, Amory encouraged it. If Taym wasn't an ally --
"I learned I can make you lose your s**t pretty easily. Haven't you been here a while?"
"I don't like fighting people," he snapped, with a strange, barely-there emphasis on the last word. "Not what I ******** signed up, not what I ******** enjoy, not my ******** job, no matter what Caelius seems to think." He hesitated, swallowed a fraction of his pride, and added despite himself: "Whatever it ******** did, I didn't ******** like it. All right? Made me ******** jumpy. Warn the next one."
and be blue
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 9:44 pm
Ever was quiet for a moment, shifting Amory in his grasp -- and then, all at once, desummoning him back to the cigarette case, to suppress the urge to take a swing at Taym all the same. He shook his head a little as he flicked it open, absently, thoughtlessly. It was empty. It was always empty. That was the point of it.
"What should I tell them, then?" A hard question, because Ever knew exactly what it had felt like, and he'd like it a hair too much. "And does that mean we're done?"
He shifted, uneasy, because what they'd need to be told wasn't what he needed to be told: hey, remember all those times you said you needed to switch your brain off? Remember all those times that you suspected a masochistic streak applied to more than just liking a girl who used teeth? Remember how it felt like you'd won a ******** fight the first time you got dizzy from the hunger pains and still didn't eat?
(Remember when they told you were good, a good dog, and you knew that you'd debased yourself enough to buy another easy day?)
He watched him toying with the empty cigarette case, and with a resigned sigh he reached into his pockets and tossed Ever the mostly-empty pack, because maybe he hated the kid on principle but he hadn't stabbed him in his retreating back and he'd asked for work. He ignored the first question, and went for the second: "We're done for--for right ******** now. I am not the person you want on the field, ******** obviously, although plenty of assholes here would have reacted to losing their temper by removing your ******** arm. This is not my division. You want a Sun, or a Mist. Maybe a Moon."
He did not say that the last would one day apply to him. He didn't like what it implied about his future work schedules. "You learned something, anyway, and I don't mean that snarky ******** comment you just made, either. You wanna learn more from me you meet me on a ******** mission roster, or a training course. This is not," he repeated, with emphasis, "my division."
and be blue
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 10:22 pm
Ever fumbled the pack and had to stoop to scoop it up -- without a thank you or, really, any gesture of surprise. Maybe he was the good dog now, doing just enough to get tossed a bone, and he was perfectly fine with that. Eventually, he'd be lonely, but for the here and now this worked. He'd take it.
Let Taym talk. Ever counted the cigarettes and then tucked the lot into his pocket, considering the other man in a more serious way: some of the easy sarcasm gone out of him as he considered his reply.
"Do you realize just how often you've told me you're not as bad as x, or that y would have done something worse?" He stepped off the field as he said it. Taym wanted gone and, honestly, Ever did almost as much. Certainly he could find better opponents than this. And better teachers.
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