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 Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 3:13 pm
"Huh. Odd."
Giving the bandaid a final discreet look, Lenore raised a clawed fingertip to her arm and scratched herself on a whim. The bird-like talon left a weal behind, welling with spots of blackish blood.
"I can't heal so quick like Mum and practically everyone else can."
She watched the droplets of blood well together, then wiped her hand across the injury thoughtlessly.
Still smiling at the thought of the abused bodies shuffling around the grounds trying to get back to their desecrated graves, Julian gave Rabid a curious look.
"Yeah, I might take him up on that - except.... well, d'you think Clemmie was buried around here or something? I don't want to disembowel her relatives or anything."
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 3:45 pm
"Yeah, but you're not blood," Ike said, wondering is he should be more careful, "I don't think that everything can heal quick." His eyes never strayed from the scrape, though. No matter how much he tried to train himself, blood always entranced him.
"I don't think so, but it doesn't matter," Rabid's expression turned serious for a moment, "They're the ones that garrotted her forever ago. Just don't go around digging up your own bodies. Thanks for caring though." She smiled and gave Julian a quick hug. So maybe he wasn't totally gone.
She made a mental note to be around for the ritual slaughter of the undead, though. She needed to see some action.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 3:57 pm
Lenore shrugged, pinching the wound to stem the dribbly flow.
"Well, Mum told me one time before she got all sick and demony that she got stuck, no, um... shot, yeah, shot in th' eyeball and that healed up. Pretty cool if you ask me. I wish I could do that - all I do is cut things."
Looking a little morose, Lenore shrugged it off with a quick grin. Noticing where his eyes were fixed, she covered the scrape very discreetly.
"Garrotted....huh. Nasty way to die," Julian murmured, pensive. Maybe if he could find the ones who did it, he could give their heads to Clemmie as a birthday gift or something. Get her something thoughtful.
Leaning sideways so that his head just slightly rested on her shoulder, Julian smiled lazily.
"Next time I go hunting, I could take you with me," he said mildly. "Haven't caught anyone yet, but it's still pretty fun."
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:03 pm
"Cool," Ike said, wrenching his eyes away from the cut as it was covered, "I haven't had anything too bad happen, but my mum broke her neck. Twice."
The boy was now quite aware of Len's pulse.
"She was 7 years old," Rabid sighed, although her expression soon turned serious.
"Don't hunt anyone around here! Mei-Vaar's the place to go. It's still illegal, but you're foreign, so laws don't apply. They make it real fun too. Lotsa screamers," she smiled happily, her pupils shrinking, "I'd love to go hunting some time. I haven't had a real meal in ages." She licked her lips at the simple thought.
Processed blood just didn't cut it sometimes.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:16 pm
Julian was about to argue he could hunt where ever he damned well pleased when Rabid mentioned Mei-Vaar. The thought of the place made him shudder a little, though the prospect of fresh blood and screaming victims was unbearably tempting. Maybe something young, innocent.... and slow moving.
His eyes went pupilless and feral at the beautiful thought of a child dying by his hand, though an unexpected swell of horror welled up beneath it. The shock of the return of a shred of his morality shook him out of his bloodlust for a second. He straightened and took a breath - maybe hunting in Mei-Vaar wasn't the best idea.
"I don't usually hurt anyone - just track them. Sometimes set their hair on fire. No big deal - I'll take you to my usual haunts. Tons of people that'd be fun to knock off if we get bored," he said, trying to stave off the surge of humanity with an edge of amused viciousness.
Lenore winced at the thought and put a hand to her neck reflexively. More than a little envious of the healing factor everyone else seemed to have, she was determined to prove it wasn't particularly special.
"Yeah, well, I can't fix broken bones or anythin', but I can do this," she said, hooking her fingers into the darkly green shadowed vine she sat on. Raising her hand slowly and deliberately, she gave a bit of a smirk as the shadow followed her hand, wispy and thin as smoke.
"Healing's overrated when I can do stuff like that," she said, pleased.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:22 pm
"I refuse to kill anything that hasn't badmouthed me at least once," Rabid said, but then recognized the vaguely familiar reaction of Julian's, "Full-blown Vavvians are only kids for a little less than a month."
She thought for a moment, and cocked an eyebrow, "Lighting people's hair on fire hurts them, damnit. I prefer death." She pulled her legs closer together and crossed them. Maybe she'd go without him, if he was so set on stalking Gaians.
Maybe she'd listen to Liam and start trying to forget about him.
"I can't do anything like that yet," Ike sighed and grimaced, "My alignment? Yeah. Light."
What a wussy power.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:32 pm
"But it's fun to watch them flail around and try to put it out!" Julian protested, though that damnable scrap of humanity he'd let resurface seemed to disagree. Ignoring the faint thread of guilt, he drew his claws across the floor, leaving deep gashes.
"I'm game to kill if you are," he said, willing it to be so. The human in him was dead, and the blood staining his reflection made it the truth. No more need to be the compassionate weakling that had come before.
Fighting of a grimace of sympathy, Lenore's face still twitched slightly. Cripes, poor Ike had gotten screwed.
"Well....light isn't so bad. You could blind people, or make it so bright that their skin burns off, or a hun'red other things!" she said, only slightly forcing her enthusiasm. As she thought on it, she cocked her head to one side in confusion.
"Didja only get one alignment? I got Air, too - 'cause of the bird thing, I guess."
Maybe he could summon the dead - after all, she's seen a stray rotting creature wandering around here or there when she sneaked out to play at night.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:38 pm
"Maybe," Ike sighed, "Erf. Time. Bloody time. What am I supposed to do with a weak time alignment?" Man, had he gotten screwed over.
Rabid took a breath as if to speak, but quicly closed her mouth, made some kind of unintelligable noise, and turned away. Something inside of her chest twisted painfully...a familiar feeling she didn't quite want to re-live.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:47 pm
"Time, huh? Maybe you could slow stuff down or speed things up, that sort of thing," Len said, removing a scrap of shadow fully from the branch and willing it to shift shape in her hands. It took on a bumpy spherical form, and she flicked it away into a patch of sunlight, where it hissed and seemed to explode in a lick of smoke.
"See, light's better than shadow - you could totally beat me." she said, trying to cheer him up and feeling like kicking herself for bringing up an obviously sore subject.
Disconcerted, Julian looked at Rabid in confusion. What had he said wrong? He thought she'd be pleased with his offer - killing things together seemed like a perfectly decent thing to do.
"What is it?" he asked, looking a little distressed. An echo of humanity shadowed his cruelty-hardened features, making him look almost normal and (dare it be said, sane) again.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:54 pm
"I doubt it," Ike shrugged, replying to both of Len's statements at once, "but I'm im...immuh...immortal. Yeah. Thassit. I guess that's kinda special. People talk about it like it is." He let go with his feet and hung from a high vine with his hands.
"Nothing," Rabid turned forward as if finished, but quickly turned back, "No. That's a lie. It's just that...I dunno...you're..." She stumbled over words and cleared her throat to try and control the tears pressing at the back of her eyes.
"You're...I'm...I dunno. ******** it. You're different. Very, very different. Not the same person we left in Rijan. Hell, not the same person that was lying in a pool of blood on my floor. I don't mean the way you look...although that took a ******** bit of time to get used to...it's just, I...Gods, I dunno..." Her voice cut her off sharply, and she buried her head in her knees.
All hope of the homicidal insanity being temporary was suddenly gone.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:03 pm
Feeling something vaguely like confused humiliation burning in him, Julian drew back form Rabid and looked away.
"I'm not a well person. I haven't been for a very long time." he said stiffly.
"You can hardly blame me - look at what Crow's done to me," he said, letting the humiliation turn to blind anger. He got up and started pacing a bit, looking irate. "It's not my fault. Do you know what's in me now? What Crow really is? I can't help being....like I am. I'm not ******** all nice and human and pure anymore."
He turned to look at her bitterly, breathing a bit hard.
"I thought you wouldn't care."
Lenore gave another approving nod, determined to make him cheer up.
"See, that's pretty cool! You get to live forever - not a lot of people can do that. Not even Mum! Or me!" She said brightly, though a faint sense of shock went through her as she thought on it a bit more. She, Lenore, would die one day, while Ike would get to live forever. It was a sobering thought.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:10 pm
Rabid stood, feeling horribly ashamed of herself.
"I know, I know," she sighed and crossed her arms, peering down at her feet, "It's not Crow's fault. If you want to blame anyone, blame the idiot sleeping on my couch. Yes, I know what Crow is. I don't give a damn either. She's not completely absorbed with homicidal thoughts that are apparently growing increasingly worse. It's...it's not that I care, really. It's just hard to get used to. The person I fell in love with wouldn't have agreed to run around and kill innocents. I mean...that's still you, but--"
She gave an aggrivated groan and collapsed to the floor, laying with her knees curled beneath her and her forehead on the ground. How was she supposed to explain that she was terrified of him half of the time?
Ike thought for a moment beforing peering over at Lenore with large, sad eyes.
"I know. That's why I don't like it."
Life had screwed him over, period.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:23 pm
Grief clawed at Julian's insides. He felt unclean and foul, and grew more angry because of it.
"The only reason Crow doesn't run around killing people is because of that god damn Marque of hers - you don't even want to know how many times it's nearly broken. She's worse than you can even begin to - oh, ******** it. Like it or not, a lot of this falls on her. Liam brought me back - she didn't have to help."
Saying what had eaten at him for such a long time felt like poison spewing from his lips - but he couldn't seem to stop himself. In a fit of rage, he raked his claws down the glass panels of the wall, leaving slashes in the surface that spiderwebbed outwards, crackling sharply.
"I'm not him anymore! Don't you think that burns at me every ******** day? I'm a monster!" he shouted, curling his hand into a fist and ramming it into the clawed up glass. It smashed outwards but remained unbroken, the blood from his split knuckles staining it scarlet.
Realizing she'd just made things worse, Lenore took Ike's hand comfortingly and looked up at him kindly.
"Don't worry 'bout it. It...it's not a big deal. Th' way things are going lately, I'd be sorta surprised if we live to see high school." she said jokingly, though she jumped in surprise at the sound of shouting.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:31 pm
Ike began to smile, but his expression quickly turned to one of terror. He made his way up above the canopy of plants, still holding Len's hand, and made a move to start crawling toward the noise.
"Lessgo see."
"I know, I know," Rabid mumbled into the floor before leaping up at the smell of blood, "Liam didn't need to take her soul. Please...please calm down." She rushed over and wrapped her arms around Julian's back, simoltaneously bracing herself for an attack.
"You're still you, damnit. You're just...different."
This was the first time the scent of perfectly good blood was horribly unpleasant.
"I'm sorry..." she sobbed into his back, muscles still tensed.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:37 pm
Feeling the dull burn of total humiliation flare up again, he twisted away from Rabid's touch, as much as he wanted to lean into it.
"Don't patronize me. The things I want to do...the things I've done..." he breathed, looking miserable. He glared at her, his eyes animal-like and unreadable.
"I'm not Julian, not Nahalthes, not anyone. I never was. I'm just a cheap, twisted copy of someone too weak and noble to curl up and die when it was his time."
Creeping through the growth of vines that smothered the ceiling, Lenore pointed down at Rabid and Julian and pressed a finger to her lips.
"They're fighting - look's like someone just got their head cracked against the window," she whispered, her voice a thread so as not to draw the adults attention.
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