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 Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:26 pm
It was a perfectly normal autumn evening at the Destiny City Plaza. Warm lights from the open windows of shops and restaurants cast a tangerine glow upon the streets and the sidewalks, which were littered with wide, flat piles of pumpkin-colored dead leaves. The clinking of glasses on tables and silverware against dishes could be heard over the sound of mellow music that permeated through the atmosphere of the street, loose streams of pedestrians crunched their way across the leaves, and Simon Ferris was running like a bat out of hell through all of this.
His panicked facial expression and wide, wild flailing footsteps had become a common sight to regular meanderers of the plaza. To others, well... to some others it wasn't like they knew him, and for the kinder-hearted types he was always moving too fast and was too consumed by whatever fear was plaguing him this time to answer anyone who tried to slow him down and ask him what was wrong.
What was wrong this time at first seemed a little curious. It had gotten later in the day, yes, but it wasn't quite late enough that the Hillworth boy would miss curfew again if he went back up to his school at a more normal human pace. There weren't any rugby players hot on his tail eager to test out new ways to torment him, either. The only thing he currently looked like he could possibly running from was his own shadow - and honestly, those who knew Simon probably wouldn't put such behavior past him.
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Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:46 pm
Alba had been completely consumed by the past occurrences of her week. She could hardly believe anything was really real anymore, and there was very little around her that could convince her otherwise; not even her cup of cocoa or the Cafe's terrace, with the normal group of people gaggling about the day's events and fabulous weather.
They could be just like her, or they could be just like that girl, but in any case they're not really themselves, potentially, and they don't even know it yet. It's like some devastating and physical form of existentialism dropped heavily onto Alba's shoulders, and she couldn't decide wether it was really there or not, pinning her down on the ground.
However, there was one thing that gave her a flitter of real, and it was in the form of a subtle breeze as Simon's heels tore up the ground beneath him and carried him passed the confused girl. Her reaction was confusion at first, though it didn't take her long to recognize the blur and his distinguished cry (mostly the cry, honestly) as the boy from Halloween night.
"..Wait!" She cried out. She had been meaning to meander on over to Hillworth to see how he was doing (he just looked so sad and tormented on that night!), though thanks a list of recent events, had completely forgotten about it until, well, now. Was he still being bullied? From the look of the running, it certainly seemed so.
Besides, Simon was the last person in the world that she could imagine ever changing. He was stable, and stable was what she needed right now to help her.
Abandoning her cup of chocolate comfort, she quickly jumped over the decorative terrace fence and chased after him. "Hey, hey wait!! SIMON!"
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Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:10 pm
A cloud of misplaced guilt was still hanging over Simon's head about the events that had taken place on Halloween night - if he ever learned that it had been Alba's first Halloween in America, he would never be able to forgive himself about it, ever. Hearing one of the sources of said guilt call out his name was enough to make him jerk his head backwards, and his mouth even twitched around the shapes of the syllables of her name for a brief instant.
The next instant, however, saw his eyes panning upward, up above Alba's head to some space behind her, where they widened into pools filled with panic. He choked, looking as if he were desperate to tell the girl to run, except his voice had stopped working entirely.
A few yards behind Alba was a perfectly good reason why Simon or anyone else would be terrified.
It was large. And chitinous. Overall it looked as though a praying mantis had had a lovechild with an ostrich, and then some sick grad student had come along and exposed said lovechild to an excessive amount of gamma radiation. And now, it was after them both.
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Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:25 pm
It was almost ludicrous that she didn't notice the giant monster advancing towards the two of them, or heard the once peaceful and murmuring crowd of people suddenly burst into a frenzied, terrified panic of screams and screeching of chairs and tables scraping against the concrete floor as they're aggressively moved out of the way. People began to run into the Cafe, or beyond Alba and passed Simon, whose expression had the girl completely transfixed.
It was what fears were made of, was what his face read.
In a dawning of horror as more people pushed there way behind her and in front of her, she turned around to just briefly catch a glimpse of the atrocity. She didn't need another look to encourage her feet to pump pavement, a scream ripping through the noise already generated by the mass of people around her.
NO NO NO THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING. THIS ISN'T REAL I'M NOT HERE were the only thoughts left as she scrambled to take a hold of Simon's hand, though in all honesty, the boy didn't need any urging from her to follow.
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Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 4:28 pm
Simon made an "Unhmmuh?" of surprise when he felt his hand being grabbed, but gripped it firmly, not keen on the idea of losing this girl and witnessing her getting trampled, or devoured, or whatever the hell it was this thing behind them wanted to do to them. They exchanged a look that mutualized their fear and established in a split second that now was most definitely not a good time to talk about the whole panty raid thing.
With the monster's half-talon, half-roach-legs clawing into the ground a few feet behind them the two ran, silently and breathlessly for a handful of moments that felt like a handful of hours. Simon's limbs were moving almost autonomously, as if they had forgotten how do to anything else.
A descrescendo of the screaming and chair-scraping around them hailed their exit from the plaza. Soon the panic from outside the cafes and bookstores was just distant background noise, colorful static, as they were pursued into the dark and drab of a failed and abandoned business district nearby. Water-stained, brutalistic towers of crumbling office complexes loomed as much as the monster behind them did as they continued to be chased, around a corner, into a narrow alley.
It was an unfortunately cliche alley as far as encounters with horror movie monsters went, containing a single dumpster and abruptly ending in a wire fence too tall to jump over.
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:00 am
The alleyway was damp and discomforting, a kind of penned-in box that practically had THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE YOUR UNHAPPY GRAVE lit up in neon lights above its chainlink fence and singular dumpster. Both Alba and Simon backed into the fence as though standing upright against it would somehow help them: as though it would give them a stance to see this youma through, as the befeathered, belegged abomination crept towards them --
Astraea had seen this situation happen way too many times. Frankly, she was pretty sick of it.
"Sailor Alcyone!" she bawled, balancing precariously on top of the fence. "Are you going to transform, or are you just going to stand there with a mouth full of teeth and get eaten?! Go ahead! Fine! That's just ******** marvellous!" (Astraea was a big amazed that she had articulated '******** marvellous', but after a history of watching Nerissa, Thuban and Elektra pummel a spider youma with their bare, inexpert hands, she needed a good stiff drink.) "This is what you're a SENSHI FOR, ALCYONE!"
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 1:24 am
As though being cornered against a chain-linked fence beside a dumpster by a sci-fi horror movie monster reject wasn't bad enough in Alba's book, the sudden appearance of Astraea added the cherry to her sprinkle-covered, banana-vanilla split of turmoil and doom.
She still couldn't get used to the idea of a cat talking to her, let alone angrily yelling at her to get her s**t together and become what supposedly destiny had meant for her to be all along: a ....terrorist? A savior?
Unfortunately for Alba, right now wasn't the best of times to question wether or not she had joined a freak circus troupe of delinquents bent on global destruction. Eyes still fixed on the youma in what can only be described as deer-in-the-headlights fright, her hand managed to find the henshin pen within the confinements of her tote bag. Whipping the pen out and holding it in front of her, she yelled those magical words to trigger her transformation sequence: "Alcyone Power, Make-Up!"
Apparently she also didn't have time to worry about Simon receiving more than just an eyeful of underwear.
"FORCE OF WHIRLING TEMPEST!" The wind around them suddenly picked up tremendously in speed as Sailor Alcyone summoned a miniature storm to downpour above the youma, thunder rumbling all the while.
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:45 pm
The fence rattled noisily as Simon pressed his back against it, trembling so violently that it was the ninth wonder of the world that his feet hadn't given out from under him yet. His breathing was staggered and far too deep, spots were dancing in his vision; it honestly looked as if the poor kid was a few seconds away from passing out. Which would have been a merciful way for him to meet his end, really.
Then there was a voice, above him. He clung to it as if it were a lifeline for his consciousness, shakily removing his shoulders from the thick wire they were on, craning his head up, up...
It was a cat.
His gaze crept over to Alba, meaning to wordlessly ask if she, too, had just heard that cat talk-- but his eyes reached their target right when she had whipped out her pen and shouted her henshin. One would think those green pools of terror couldn't widen more than they already had, but they did, his vision filled with Alba being bathed in sparkles and twirling, twining ribbons until she stood before him again clad in a short skirt and bows the colors of an ominous sky.
He was so shocked by this that it didn't even cross his mind to blush at how he had just seen the girl's naked silhouette spinning in front of him.
Simon's gaze darted between Alba, the monster, the cat, and Alba again, his poor mind so cluttered with signals that he barely even seemed to register the miniature storm that had formed around them, making the monster hiss irritably as fat raindrops tore at some of its feathers.
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 10:02 pm
The cat was also getting caught in the storm -- looking annoyed as cats ever did at getting buffetted with wind and wet, though she leapt down from her vantage point on the fence. Then she appeared to hork up a furball -- and something hard and green-and-plum coloured rolled onto Simon Ferris' foot.
It was a pen. It was a really odd kind of pen.
"Look," said Astraea, who sounded terribly world-weary, "hold that up and say 'Atlas Power, Make-Up!'. Can you do that for me? Can you please do that for me? -- Good job Alcyone keep it up -- come on, Mr. Ferris, just please do this one singular thing for me, this one TINY LITTLE THING, this one infinitesimal little thing."
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Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 10:18 am
She didn't mind the wind or the water that teemed down on the group now, though she was definitely trying her hardest to concentrate the heart of the storm at the youma itself. Despite all her efforts, though, she couldn't help but notice that mere rain and bursts of gusts weren't doing enough damage to kill the monster, and she suddenly started to really panic at the thought: her attack isn't working, and she hadn't the faintest idea on what to do at this point.
"ASTRAEA!" She called out, hoping that the cat could hear her despite the thunder and gale. "The storm isn't doing much, what else can I--WHAT?!?!"
That was when she noticed the all too familiar shape of a henshin pen lying uselessly against Simon's feet. Simultaneously her eyes widened and mouth gaped as she felt complete and utter shock strike her. How?! How could SIMON, of ALL PEOPLE in Destiny City, become a fighting accomplice of justice?
"N...no way," She stammered, her attention fixed on the wet pair of them, which unfortunately for her, left her wide open for the youma. "You're joking. He couldn't possibly...there's just no way."
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Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 1:45 pm
It seemed, at least, that the whirling winds were doing something to impede the monster - it struggled against the wind, croaking and scrabbling and stamping, more of its odd chitinous feathers shaking off of its form and getting pinned to the walls by the tempest. How long Alcyone's attack would keep it immobile, however, was up in the air.
And Simon Ferris was more terrified, more utterly confused than he had ever been in his entire life. A talking cat puking a pen that looked like a cereal box prize at his feet really was not helping things much.
Though despite the nightmare-inducing bizarreness of the situation he was in, despite the thrashing monster and the talking cat and that girl from Crystal's sparkly transformation sequence, despite how tired and utterly disdainful the cat was sounding when she asked him to pick up that pen, Simon could still feel a sense of urgency to what was going on outside of the whole 'moral peril' part of the equation. Or maybe that was exactly it, desperation to do something, anything that would prevent his untimely demise. Whichever way one stretched it though, there he went picking up the pen with hands as graceful as a drunk penguin in a sand dune, fumbling and almost dropping it for a second, until he was finally holding it up and looking as if he was expecting it to explode in his face:
"A-a-atlas p-p-p-p-p-p-- Atlas p-powngh--"
He took a deep, staggered, shuddering breath that hissed through his teeth.
"Atlas P-Power, m-m-muh-mnfff..."
This was going to take a little while.
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Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 4:29 pm
"Yes, way," Astraea snapped back. Alcyone was right: the monster was being buffetted, but seemed more irritated and discombobulated than it was being ripped to shreds. It was being whacked from side to side in the narrow alleyway, grunting with distress. "Oh, for the love of Serenity -- ATLAS. POWER. MAKE. UP. This is worse than Castor. COME ON, SIMON. Why, I ask you, why -- just keep it distracted, Alcyone, maybe he'll be transformed by CHRISTMAS. ATLAS POWER MAKE-UP."
Astraea was not the nicest cat. She then enunciated again, as though she were speaking to a very small child: "AT-LAS POW-ER MAKE-UP."
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Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 9:50 am
Alcyone was having a hard time grasping the scenario she was in at the moment. Here she was, manipulating this tiny little thunder storm to distract this ridiculous feathery monster so that Simon, the same boy who had cried in her dorm that fateful night, could also turn into a fighting figure in short...shorts? She could only hope that were the case for him.
She continued to procure the storm as much as she could, though it was after perhaps the third attempt of the boy's stuttering phrase did she notice that the the tempest, regardless of how much she didn't want it to, was beginning to subside. What was once fat droplets of water were now a light drizzle, accompanied by a breeze instead of a strong gale. The storm was dying out, and it was happening very, very fast.
"SIMON! Please!" Alcyone begged. The monster should be feeling pretty freed up from its original restraints.
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Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 10:11 am
With Astraea's annoyed enunciating and Alcyone's pleading to focus on, Simon... well, Simon's phrasing didn't improve very much at all. There was a fourth attempt at wrapping his voice around the henshin, then a fifth and sixth, each their own artful garbling of the words the cat had spelled out for him. Alcyone's storm was just a whisper with a light spray of mist at point-- the monster realized it could move freely again, and poised itself to lunge-- "A-A-A-ATLASPOWERMAKEUP!!"If Alba or the boy had any doubts about whether this would do anything, they suddenly, jarringly dissolved when Simon felt the ground rush out from underneath him before there was even any time for him to be shocked. A flashy display of colorful lights and sparkles lifted him up, and gently guided his luminescent silhouette through a disturbingly graceful bit of spinning and bending (at least his dancing talents were paying off somewhere) within the confines of the otherwise darkened alley. When he was deposited back on the ground he honestly looked just as confused and afraid as he had before, only now he was confused and afraid in a circlet, easter-green coattails and legs magically rendered as hairless and smooth as painted porcelain. At least Alba had been right about the short shorts.... the fighting figure part, not so much. 
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Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:32 pm
"Atlas!" Astraea barked again, exactly like a gym teacher who was displeased with your broken leg. Walk it off. The youma was shaking itself dry like an annoyed dog, and she herself had leapt back up onto the wire fence separating Alcyone and Atlas from freedom. "Atlas, quit sounding like someone in a tumble dryer and attack. FALLING FORCE SNARE. I'm sorry for your sake that there's so many f's -- DO IT."
The youma had brushed itself off now. And it was mad.
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