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 Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 11:53 am
It was a pretty normal day, she thought. Quiet. A Saturday. Her homework was done, and her room was clean, she'd mopped the kitchen and vacuumed the living room. She'd showered and neatened up some of her notes on the whole Destiny City gang war thing, and then she'd noticed the date and that the rent was due. That was okay; Parker had paid up and she could take the two money orders down to James at any time. Instead she took her time, brushing her teeth and hair before heading downstairs.
Once that was done, she walked past the stairs. She planned to take a detour onto the first floor; on her way down, she'd heard their racket all the way out in the stairwell, which meant she'd sure as hell be able to hear them up in her room. The library's traffic wouldn't go down for an hour or so yet, and she wanted to get some reading done in the meantime.
The first thing she noticed was that it was very, very quiet. As a rule, the first floor was almost never quiet; apartment 1C was full of DCU frat boys, the really ******** annoying kind. 1D and 1B were okay, but they had kids who liked to make noise. Today it was just... deathly silent.
Her mission of annoyance became a mission of concern. If there was something making people sick enough to be this quiet, she wanted to get the ambulances there and the infected removed. She stopped in the open doorway of 1C, a feeling of foreboding rooted in her mind. There were the tenants, all right, sprawled across the floor. Slowly, she looked up from the nearest body to check the room. She didn't see anyone...
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Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 12:24 pm
But that didn't mean that the room was empty. As a rule, Linarite loved DCU frat boys in a way that Audrey Collins never would. They were so easy to get close to before draining the precious energy from their virile bodies; there was always more than enough in one or two to stop the craving in her bones. The process was becoming particularly easy once Lina had realized that all she needed to do was place a small stone on the body of the person once she knocked them unconscious. The local New Age store had gotten quite a boost in business so that the general could do things such as wipe out the entire first floor of an apartment building on a Saturday.
It was surprising to hear someone come down when the building had been silent for some time as she contemplated whether or not to 'go all the way' with both of these delightful representatives of the human race. It didn't take more than a thought to have her agile body behind the door, grinning with the wide smile of a predator as a hand pushed it almost entirely closed behind the girl.
"Didn't anyone ever teach you that entering without announcing yourself is rude? Worse than not knocking in my opinion." There was a giggle and a smile in Linarite's voice. This girl couldn't be much older than she herself was, and looked like even less of a threat than the currently incapacitated frat assholes. It was why her back was turned to the door, it wasn't locked, and her pose was what could best be called 'menacingly casual'.
It was always a mistake.
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Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 8:45 am
[Got Akina's response through emails =)] Akina!! After a long night of patrolling, all Super Sailor Taranis wanted to do was come home, drink some tea, and curl up with Aristotle in bed. He'd much prefer curling up with one Sailor Magellan, but she was still currently out of sorts and avoiding his all-too-eager embrace. He had her back, that was true. So why did it feel like she was pulling away from him all the time? Taranis had just reached the rooftop of the apartment complex a block away when he felt a surge of Nega energy. It was strong; his experience translated that to general, or perhaps negasenshi. Apparently, his night wasn't over yet. The Senshi of Sand moved closer and closer to the point where the energy felt strongest, but it wasn't an exact science. His feelings told him that whoever it was was in the two blocks in front of him. When he realized what he was looking at, his stomach dropped. It was his apartment building. Assuming 'worst case scenario' to be the only scenario, Taranis burst into his apartment complex in full fuku. The ground floor was empty so he went to the next floor. He arrived just in time to see Tate walk into an apartment. An apartment that he knew to house several rowdy DCU boys -- AKA Tate would never go into that room voluntarily. Without a thought, Taranis ran up to the door and forcibly kicked it open, totally oblivious that his arch-nemesis was standing casually on the other side, and burst on to the scene. He saw the bodies, he saw Tate, and he shouted, "Get out of here -- now!" Okay. Okay, what was going on here--these were the bodies of her downstairs neighbors, all right. Deep breaths, deep breaths, if this was the coma sickness again she was probably immune like people who got the chicken pox were immune. Maybe. It was possible, wasn't it? She wiped her damp palms on her pants. Tate jumped when she heard a voice. Her first feeling was relief--thank god, someone else was here! She wouldn't have to prove she hadn't gassed the building or something--but the words registered, and she turned very slowly. Snarky villain dialogue, she registered. Blue hair, militaristic uniform--she didn't recognize this person but she knew Zinkenite and Wolframite. They weren't similar in style, but she guessed this was maybe another member of their organization. Which didn't really bode well for her, did it? Either someone was going to burst through the door, or she was going to die a horrible death in some kind of spiritual-energy ponzi scheme. It really depended. She couldn't bet on Wolframite's arrangement with Zinkenite extending to every member of the Negaverse. Or even on that holding up. Better to just make peace with whatever deities were listening, right? Just in case... This was when the door burst open, knocking the blue-haired woman aside. Tate made her first noise of the last few minutes, a tiny breathless shriek--it was immature, it was damsel-in-distress, but who could blame her? She had enough time to register the dark-haired man's presence and words before she was moving, darting past him and into the hallway beyond. Where could she even go? She knew this place like the back of her hand, but... Tate clenched her hands, dug her nails to her palms to balance herself, and decided to take the stairs. Wasn't there a closet of some kind between two of the unoccupied apartments on the second floor?...
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Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 9:51 am
Any senshi who had slammed a door into her would have brought all of Linarite's bubbling feisty nature to the surface, but it rose even higher when golden eyes saw one of her two embodiments of senshi hatred. Castor could not, by his very affect on her, be one of those. So it had simply shifted itself into the form of Taranis, with Pegasus as the female representative. White fingers reached around the door and simply ripped it off the hinges to be tossed back against the wall with a raucous SLAM! No doubt she would have a bruise in her side from where the doorknob had hit for days! For someone who needed only to exist to make Linarite hate them, it was not fortuitous.
"Well lookie what dropped into my lap here. I come over to play with some frat meatheads, maybe skim a bit extra off the mousy thing that just ran out...and I get you." That sunny cheerfulness with which the bluenette general had tried to menace Tate had grown cold and hard. It was now the sort of malevolence with which serial killers did their work and there was little doubt that Lina would take pleasure from ripping the life painfully from the Senshi of Sand's body in much the same way Tanzanite had tried to take Castor's.
"I'm gonna enjoy this. I haven't had a senshi in awhile. You remember your girlfriend? She was one of my first." The general had been moving to a clear space of floor as she spoke, moving on the balls of her feet and lashing out right at Taranis' midsection with a pointy-toed kick.
She knew Taranis' buttons and was pushing them ruthlessly. She had no idea that he could probably push them right back.
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Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 10:41 am
Akina Tokuwa A coldness entered Taranis so quickly that it made him draw in a hasty breath. The door, ripped free from his hinges, sailed past him (as did Tate), leaving the Senshi of Sand alone with the one Nega who he hated above all others. The power wafting off of her stifled his senses for a moment, but he stiffened his resolve into a clenched fist. The deadline for Castor to kill Linarite had come and gone. Clearly, the Senshi of Hail had failed -- but where he had, Taranis would succeed. It did not soften the hard edge in his throat to see her alive. Part of him, a small part, hoped that Castor would prove his dedication to the senshi by doing the deed himself. In Taranis's mind, it would be an apology -- a proper one -- to the people he had put at risk with his selfish, thoughtless actions. But she was alive, and so was Castor. Clearly he lacked the stuff to put things right. The only silver lining to this entire encounter was that Linarite still believed Magellan to be dead. Taranis scowled fiercely at the memory, and it was a flash of distraction that allowed her kick to land painfully in his gut. The senshi went flying backwards into the hallway. He turned his head to get up and saw Tate taking for the stairs. Good, he thought, get to safety. His trope-happy roommate had always been good about following storylines. She saw that this battle was not one meant for the plucky civilian to stick around. Taranis clambored to his feet, immediately falling into a defensive stance. "I guess Castor couldn't take care of you himself," he said dryly. "Want me to send him your love?" There wasn't much time for banter. Linarite was stronger than Taranis, and he would need to stay sharp to fight her. It didn't mean that pushing at her buttons was a bad idea. Running down the hall to gain some range on her, Taranis stopped abruptly and shouted, " Taranis Mud Blast!" The ball formed in his hands and then ricocheted from his fingertips, flying toward the place where Linarite stood in the doorway.
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Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 7:15 pm
Hereafter, Linarite would always be rather thankful for doorways. The blast had been aimed perfectly where her head would have been had the doorway not stopped the brunt of Taranis' mudball slapped against the metal frame and exploded. Still, a chunk of it hit her squarely in the cheekbone and had her head cracking backwards sharply as mud splattered all over her frame. A hiss that was filled with anger and perhaps a bit of pain as Lina took up her stance in the hallway, wiping an arm across her face to remove the mud splattered there.
"How about I give him your dead body? Then maybe I can take his star seed as well. I almost had him once, before you interfered! I should have killed you when I killed her." No, Linarite had no idea that her previous victim had been brought back to life. Though she had dropped the seed, who would have picked it up? And even if they had how would they be able to tell who it belonged to? As far as she was concerned, Sailor Magellan was dead. It was this misinformation that would lead to a series of mistakes, one of them involving Tate.
Her iconic staff materialized in her hands as amber eyes followed the trail of the stairs upwards. No doubt a girl that curious wouldn't have gone far and was even now potentially hanging on their every word and action so that she could Tweet her friends all about it. In other words, she was probably a goddamn idiot. Lina loved eating the seeds of idiots. It always made her feel...justified. "Maybe I'll just take your new girlfriend instead!" The red ball flew out of her staff with a snap to hopefully distract him as her gray-clad body went to fly up the near flight. Catching a civilian wouldn't be a problem but fighting off a senshi, even a Super, at the same time complicated things.
"Come on out, I promise I'll make it fast!"
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Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 9:01 pm
Tate wasn't stupid. Well, she liked to think she wasn't; sure, she'd only gone one floor away, but she didn't want to go to the third floor where Paul and Grayson were. She really didn't--that'd put them in danger, which was something she wasn't all that keen on doing. There were three ways that could go and none of them turned out well. So she was hovering at the other end of the hall, at the second set of stairs, cell phone in hand while she dialed. She wasn't stupid, she knew that really her best hope here was--
Her thumb slipped and her phone clattered to the ground when she heard the door at the other end of the hall open; Tate didn't even bother to look up, she could see gray and blue and know that it was the blue-haired Negaverser. She whirled in place, fled down the stairs and back to the first-floor hallway. There was a closet here, wasn't there? An industrial closet. The door locked and it was pretty sturdy, wasn't it? She'd had to get lightbulbs from it once to replace the lights in the second floor hallway--she'd locked herself in, and twenty minutes later the super had come along and, laughing, showed her how to unlock it from inside...
The senshi was still there, close enough to the door that she could grab his arm and drag her into the closet after her. She slammed the door behind her, plunging them into near-darkness, and locked it. Her cellphone was upstairs. "Ugh, stupid," she breathed. They were trapped until the blue-haired woman decided to leave.
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Posted: Wed Jan 26, 2011 1:01 pm
Akina Tokuwa Linarite's staff and Taranis had met before, and it had been a less than cordial encounter. The second he saw the orb glowing, the Senshi of Sand threw himself to the ground. He immediately sprang back to his feet, anticipating a follow-up strike, but Linarite was off down the hall... toward Tate. s**t. He had to think fast, really fast. "I protect ALL civilians, you idiot," he said, chasing after her. His lips called to his regular senshi attack, and he fired it after her. It smashed into the far wall just as Linarite ran past it. He had to keep her from getting to Tate. He kept chasing, tried to summon his attack again, but the sand ball dissolved in his hands, splattering onto the floor at his feet. "And I will NEVER get over Magellan," he shouted loudly. "I will NEVER move on from her, and I will NEVER stop HUNTING YOU DOWN like the PARASITE you are, you stupid ******** b***h!" Was this convincing? His voice certainly rattled with rage. He most certainly meant every single word coming out of his mouth, so much so that he found himelf spitting. Just thinking of how he almost lost Dani was enough to make him shiver. Now, he just needed to use that anger to convince Linarite that Tate was nothing special to him. This was where they lived. If Lina thought Tate was anything other than a girl coming to visit those stupid fratboys, then Tate would be in permanent danger. Taranis couldn't stay home to protect her all the time. Linarite needed to believe that Taranis had just stumbled in here, that Tate was dressed so casually because she was just some ditzy girlfriend ready to crawl in bed with her DCU boyfriend. Lina needed to see that, or at least to doubt that Taranis cared. It was paramount. His hands raised again to attempt an attack, but a small, pale hand gripped his forearm. He only had enough time to see that it was Tate before she pulled him into the closet before Lina had a chance to see them enter. Unfortunately, the door made an incredibly loud noise as it slammed shut. Maybe she would think it was a distraction? A ruse? It probably should have insulted Taranis that Tate -- the civilian Tate -- had actually been the one to craft the master plan to save them both. Her knowledge of the building had paid off. Well, except for that unfortunate part where they were now trapped in a closet several feet away from a murderous psychopath. Taranis looked sharply at Tate. "Do not speak," he said quietly. A firm arm grabbed Tate and pulled her back deeper into the closet. Maybe Linarite would just assume they ran out of the building... Well, okay, she'd agree that in retrospect she could have handled this a little better. But she didn't think that she'd done too badly--even Superman took a while to get through steel, and the entire closet was constructed from it. It was an industrial door. She wasn't going to argue with the man who could evidently throw mud balls hard enough to get someone that mad--although she was pretty sure his rant qualified as 'trying too hard'. What was he trying to do?... Save their lives, hopefully. She tried to watch her step as they moved away from the door; the idea seemed to be to stay as quiet as possible, especially in the light of the command to keep her mouth shut. It seemed... quiet, again. That was unsettling.
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Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 3:41 pm
On the other side of the door, Taranis could hear the stomp of Linarite's boots. Damnit. They had been too loud, and it was obvious now. His hand fumbled feebly for his senshiphone. If he could only text someone to help... but who? Magellan? ******** no. He had no intention of ever letting Linarite know she was still alive until the moment before he killed her. Castor? Ahahaha, no. No, a thousand times no. This was a General here, not some low-ranking Nega. Taranis did not want to put one senshi in danger to save himself. He eyed his cellphone again, his finger pausing over a single button. Was it.. was it possible? The first time he had tried it, it had taken an hour. But he was stronger now, wasn't he? Could he find inner quiet long enough to save them both? The Senshi of Sand explained nothing to Tate. He just dragged her onto his laps, wrapped his arms around her middle, and began to concentrate very hard. His grip was too tight for her to wiggle out of, even if she tried, and the door was too thick for Linarite to burst through immediately. She didn't seem to have realized yet where they had gone. It bought him time, and right then, time was precious. When Tate began to struggle, Taranis murmured, "Please, trust me." He fell silent, eyes relaxing. He pictured his mind as a blank expanse, forcing himself to forget of the danger outside the door. He concentrated so hard that his heart beat slowed, his breathing too. It was as if he was in a trance. Ten minutes passed. Linarite was back outside the door. There was a knock, then a laugh, and then the distinct hum of energy building in the air. Just when he was certain what he was attempting would be impossible, Super Sailor Taranis felt a surge of energy, a rush of adrenaline and then... They were gone.
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