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 Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2010 3:29 pm
There was always fun to be had during the holiday shopping season.
Normally it was a stressful time, where people didn't know what they were doing, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, waiting in long lines and pushing their way through crowds to try and find the perfect gifts last minute. Because that was how much they cared. About deals, anyway. It wasn't the best time of year in that sense, and usually people hated coming out into the fray.
And Nate probably would, if he was there to do shopping.
Instead, he was in the shopping center to make chaos. Or rather, just make someone's life a little bit harder that hour. Or just confuse them. He didn't really care about the outcome: it was the act that he enjoyed. He walked through stores or the parking lot, when it was crowded, and switched things in peoples shopping carts, or added extra things to them.
It held up the lines at the registers even more, and was just fun to watch.
But it got boring quickly sometimes, and today he decided he wanted to do something else. He had left the shopped center, someone staring at him suspiciously like they were aware of what he had been doing, though he just waved.
He stepped outside, not expecting any kind of trouble. But, of course, this was Destiny City, and trouble was everywhere.
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Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2010 4:15 pm
The hustle and bustle of everyone with their large packages, and over stuffed shopping bags made for great people watching. There was a small boy crying and tugging on his mother's pea coat as they stepped out of the toy store, and over there in front of the electronic store a man was juggling packages and trying to get his keys from his pocket.
Desma watched them with interest, she was taking a break from her Christmas shopping to smoke a cigarette. The cigarette between her lips she growled out of the corner of her mouth and shook the cheap bic lighter trying to get it to spark a flame.
"Piece of crap," she grumbled, didn't it figure?
The teenager was leaning against someone's car in the vast parking lot, her bags were bunched together at her feet. She was pretty sure she'd found almost everything on her shopping list. She was paying too much attention to lighting her cigarette, and the sobbing Destiny City civilians that she wasn't paying attention to what was behind her.
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Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2010 4:53 pm
The youma slipped through the middle area, where two rows of cars met. The parking lot was packed, and it could slighter its way effortlessly between the cars, or under them if they were taller, slipping its long body in search of something human.
All these cars were empty.
Then it spotted the warm body up ahead, tongue flicking out, and it moved toward it. Though it slithered like a typical snake, it also had small, needle like legs down its lower body, like some horrid combination of a centipede and a snake.
Nate, walking a row over, saw the monster, then the girl. He looked around, then ran to hide and transform. Sailor Chaonis, Senshi of Danger, popped out a moment later, hopping onto the roof of the cars and bouncing over toward the girl.
"Hey! Watch out!" he yelled, seeing the youma rearing back.
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Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2010 5:12 pm
The lighter finally sparked and she touched the tip of her cigarette to the flame, inhaling slowly. Desma dropped the bic into her coat pocket, and thought that the best thing she could get from Santa this year would be a new, nice lighter, one of those zippos that the rebels in movies usually carry.
There was an oddly dressed man jumping cars, who's this gu-
He shouted, in her direction and she jumped looking around. What was he yelling for?
"Don't tell me you're one of those anti-smoking campaigners," she called back laughing.
The youma let out a hissing sound like a snake causing her to turn her attention to strange centi-snake-thing.
"What in the hell is that?" She stepped back not taking her eyes off of it, "What, what do I do?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2010 5:46 pm
"They do say those things will be the death of you," he called, watching as the youma coiled and hissed at the girl. Probably not the best time to be making jokes, however hilarious he found them.
"That is a monster and it is hungry: you should probably hide!" he called, denting car hoods as he finally got himself close enough to the snake to lunge at it.
But he went sailing right over it as it lunged at the girl, ducking down under Chaonis, and trying to coil around its chosen prey. It didn't seem to have fangs, but it didn't really need them, considering every part of it was probably capable of crushing bones if it wanted to.
"Whoa, s**t, run!" he told her, trying to scurry back and grab the snake before it could get too far. Holding on to it, however, was rather difficult, until he reached its spindly legs.
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Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2010 6:03 pm
She was about to explain that there was no such thing as monsters, but the creature coiling in front of her did indeed look like a monster, it was large, had legs and looked like a snake all at the same time.
As it lunged toward her Desma let out an awkward girlish screech, it was trying to grab her. She was positive she'd faint if it actually wrapped itself around her. In an attempt to escape, Desma pushed her lit cigarette into its face.
The youma let out a hiss and slithered backwards shaking its heard back and forth. The monster rearranged itself and poised itself to strike again.
"Running," she gasped, "Running sounds good." For all of the weird events on the local Destiny City news, Desma never thought she would actually see any thing this weird up close and personal.
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Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:53 am
Chaonis grinned, watching her as she used her cigarette on the youma. He was a bit of a smoker himself, and he nodded his approval. At least she had some self preservation tactic. Most people screamed and ran around with their arms flailing, or just stayed put like idiots.
Not that he had ever encountered a youma like this one before, but the basic principle remained the same regardless.
Chaonis saw the youma trying to coil and lunge again, and used the time it took for it to recover to get in front of it. He caught it by the head as it barreled forward, but it hit him with such force that it sent him sprawling backwards into Desma, spilling them both to the ground.
Winded, the senshi rolled to his knees and took a deep breath.
"Damn. Alright, you need to get behind or under something," he told her, thinking that now was a good time to use his attack, and he might as well give her a chance to hide.
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Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2010 11:56 am
"I believe I am already behind and under something," she replied and wriggled away from him and the centi-snake-thing. She could feel the snow and slush seeping through her 'good' pair of school pants. And her ungloved hands were already starting to feel like they were burning from the cold of the snow. She clambered to her feet looking at him and the snake thing. He wasn't going to have to ask her to leave again, that thing looked dangerous and her cigarette hadn't even phased it!
"Aren't you coming too? What're you doing?" She called looking over the hood of a small sedan. Who the hell was this guy wrestling a snake thing for her? And again, what in the hell was this dude wearing?
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Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2010 11:47 pm
"Well obviously something that is not me," he corrected, glaring at her pointedly.
Once she scooted off to hide, he looked back toward the snake. It had pulled back and was lashing out at him by the time his attention returned to it. It coiled around his legs, or tried to, but he scrambled to his feet and punched his fist into his own palm.
"Alright, play time's over. Warning! Fisticuffs ahead!" he yelled, grinning broadly. He charged, leaping at the youma and punching it right in its snake face.
His attack was all physical. He got a boost to his power and speed, and he got to fight as hard as he wanted: he loved it. But, with each blow, he built up a bit of power overflow, as it were. It would discharge destructively, usually in the form of something like an earthquake, breaking anything around and causing some major trouble for those nearby. Including himself and the youma, as well as the person or persons he might have been trying to save.
Property damage, though, was at the bottom of his list of concerns.
He punched the youma a few times, getting wrapped up once but managing to escape and punch it again in the head. It wasn't dusted yet, but it wasn't too eager to keep fighting, and he was about to finish it off with a good stomp, but that was when his attack gave out.
The floor split open and car alarms started blaring. Windows shattered and a lamp post nearby fell over. It was a big discharge this time, he realized, the floor rocking and cracking, some chunks dropping off unevenly.
"Whoa!"
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Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2010 5:38 pm
She watched. ducked behind the vehicle as he wrestled with the snake, shouted something absurd and then went berserk on the monster. How could someone have so much power? That snake seemed too large for him to be treating it the way he was.
She suddenly remembered a news segment she'd skipped over about funnily dressed women vigilantes who were terrorizing Destiny City. Was he one of them? She thought they were just short-skirted girls in the fuzzy surveillance videos.
The Earth shook beneath her and she yelped in surprise, watching as the earth cracked around them. Things were falling over. Did the monster-thing do that? The idea that he was the cause of things hadn't even crossed her mind.
Desma gawked at him. "What in the hell, Dude? What was that?" She stepped cautiously toward him. The monster looked worse for ware and Desma was pretty sure it was dead, or well on its way by the beating the stranger gave it.
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Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2010 9:07 pm
Chaonis looked at the girl, blinking. She wasn't yelling at him or trying to hit him with her purse. Not that he had seen a purse. He shook his head at her, offering her a less than innocent shrug.
"That was awesome, that's what it was. I mean... uh... I guess it got mad, huh?"
Hey, if he didn't have to tell her what happened, he wasn't going to. Usually he got a lot of crap about his backfiring attack, going from looking super awesome to a super douche in a matter of moments. He didn't like it, and he wasn't interested in letting it happen this time. Even if this was a civilian and not another senshi, which were more likely to understand what had happened.
"Lemme just..." he was out of his powered up attack now, but he still stomped on the youma's head until it burst into dust, coughing and hopping away from it. He didn't care if it was excessively rough. Looking around the wreckage, he guessed he had a few seconds before cops would be swarming the place. With all the car damage and alarms going off...
He looked at the girl.
"You didn't see me," he said, pointing at her. It wasn't really a threat, his crooked grin ruining any chance it had at being one, but he held his finger out at her anyway. "Got it?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 17, 2010 2:49 pm
Admittedly it was pretty awesome, a monster shows up, attacks her, a man shows up...dressed oddly, saves, her and stomps the s**t out of the monster. On top of that there's some weird Earthquaking thing? That's pretty boss, in Desma's opinion.
Her eyes widened as the strange monster turned into dust "Are there a lot of monsters? I feel like I'm running in an old cartoon. That'd be pretty sweet, like Ben 10 or something."
She shrugged awkwardly, realizing this is the most she'd talked to someone that wasn't a teacher in at least a week. "Nothing to see, move it along, I guess?" She grinned haphazardly at him.
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Posted: Fri Dec 17, 2010 5:38 pm
Chaonis frowned, clearly not familiar with the cartoon. Or maybe he was just pretending he was less familiar with it than in truth. Either way, he shook his head and offered her a shrug, not commenting on the comparison.
"There are and there aren't. I guess it depends on where you are, what time of day it is, what the monster feels like eating and if you're particularly unlucky." He grinned at her.
It wasn't the most comforting explanation of things, but hey, that wasn't his job. He just made sure people stayed alive.
Nodding his head, he changed the way he was pointed at her. Both hands, thumbs pointed to the sky, rocking his hand back like he was pretending to fire two guns.
"You got it. I'd better book it, but here," he offered her a cigarette, an odd gesture but he saw she had lost hers in all the chaos. And anyway, he had looted it off her in all the excitement, so really he was just offering her one from her own pack, which was now his. "Alright, I'm outta here."
He grinned and then made to head off, looking around carefully so no one else spotted him and tried to give chase.
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Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2010 6:58 pm
His explanation of the population of monsters was not particularly inspiring and she felt as if she'd be checking under her bed for awhile before settling down to sleep. And the Dawn of the Dead movie marathon for Saturday night was going to be canceled indefinably, besides..who watches monster movies in December?
"Oh, a gentleman," she laughed and snagged the cigarette, tucking it behind her ear. She didn't notice that he was offering a cigarette that just so happened to be the brand of the pack she'd just bought, or that the pack must have fallen from her her pocket in the commotion.
"It was lucky for me you were here..tuh-thanks," she grinned rubbing the back of her head, "Adios."
She moved to the side picking up her bags and starting to move, it sounded as if there were police sirens in the background, and it was the last thing Demsa needed was to be seen next to all of the damage.
"Thanks again," she muttered and took her treasures and started back towards the shops. Desma was hoping the second small snowglobe she'd purchased had not been disturbed during the attack.
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Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2010 4:36 pm
Chaonis was at least polite enough to not run off before she thanked him, nodding his head. He thought getting thank yous were good enough, though the time he was actually paid by someone whose life he had saved probably topped the list. A free pack of cigarettes worked too, though.
He grinned, sticking around behind a car just long enough to see that the girl had gotten away before anyone tried to stop her. The snake was dead dead, so there wasn't any danger there at least.
Nodding his head, congratulating himself on a job well done, despite the damage, Chaonis hurried off, powering down when he had a moment to do so, then taking to the street and walking leisurely away as emergency vehicles rushed by. He chuckled, shaking his head, and whistled a song he had been practicing on the piano a lot recently while he lit a cigarette for himself.
Sometimes being a Senshi was just awesome, and a lot of fun.
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