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 Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 7:39 am
Solo RP, all ponies belong to Nisshou H. Please no posting. Cast: Carmine- Boss Lorenna- Right Hand Gal Wolf- Body Guard Raven- Scout Khaa- Errand Boy and Othelia      
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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 7:59 am
Time in this place was impossible to track. The days all blended together. What may have been three days could be slept through or forgotten until it seemed that only one day had passed. On days when clouds eclipsed the sun time seemed to stop all together. The only way to track time was the seasonal weather. Four rainy seasons had come and gone and the chill and frosted rim of the "skylight" indicated quite clearly that it was now the snowy season.
Othelia lay on her side staring up at one of the few windows into the outside world that her cavernous prison held. The rock ground beneath her was warm, the mare hadn't shifted positions for a few hours. She was conserving her energy. For the past few days the number of rodents that scurried in and out through small holes in the rock had decreased. Her last meal had been a day ago and had only been a single rat. Her stomach ached with hunger pains but there was nothing to be done, she could smell no food nearby. The pain was something she had grown used to over the years. Every so often there was a food shortage, she would eat what she could and rest to make it last as long as she could.
She was much like a living corpse these days. She had long ago stopped trying to dig her way out of the mess that had sealed the one exit. All hope of her wings growing to the magnificent size her father's had held had died out as well. Her wings would never grow. She didn't even have enough food to allow her body to grow to the full height her predator blood should have allowed for. Others in her situation would have given up long ago but for some reason she clung fiercely to the hope that she would get to see her family again. That hope and her pride had kept her going so far but that alone could not sustain her. If the mice had moved to a less dangerous place than she was doomed. She blinked blank golden eyes slowly and frowned.
Othelia didn't want to die.
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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 8:27 am
Black wings rose and fell in strong, steady beats carrying their owner gracefully across a grey sky. The clouds made a great back drop for the thief. Her blacks, tans, pinks and reds stood out against them like a black spot on a white cow. Many thieves believed that it was better to move in secret to avoid capture. Carmine had a different mantra: 'The bigger the audience the better.' Letting out a whoop of joy the mare banked to the left before leveling out only to switch directions and head to the right. She avoided pulling any death defying spins and dives only because she had a tiny passenger today.
After a few more moments of dancing in the skies she settled down enough to descend back to the earth. She landed on a ledge of one of the mountains, she didn't know which one, the humans had their names for them but she couldn't be bothered to learn such dumb things. It was curious though, this ledge seemed to have a fairly sizable hole in it. Forgetting her celebrations of a successful heist for a moment she crept closer to the hole, it seemed to go down for quite a way. "Woah..." She said sticking her head into it. "It's a cave! Hello down there~" She grinned and pulled her neck out before trotting away from it. No way in hell did she want to fall in even if she could get back out. The area surrounding the little patch of light that the hole provided was black as pitch. There was no telling what sort of things were hiding in there.
Away from the hole she turned her attentions back to the new jewelery that she had obtained: a pair of long coils of red gems attached to thin silver chains. It was obviously quite valuable and now it was hers. "So what d'ya think, Renna? Worth an impromptu job?"
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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 8:43 am
From out from under the feathered mare's mane what appeared to be a small insect emerged. Upon closer inspection one would realize that it was no insect at all but a very tiny winged horse. "Miss Carmine, for you I would actually consider this a planned job." She said sourly trying in vain to settle her curled mane. Her winged boss was quite accurately called a 'wind' by the local people. The girl rushed in like the wind, stirred up trouble like the wind, moved like the wind and spent most of her time riding the wind like a half crazed maniac. "After all you actually took the time to plan out what you were doing...for once." Had she not been so distracted by her haphazard appearance at the moment she would have fixed the mare with an icy look.
After a few more moments of fussing with her hair she let out a frustrated cry. There didn't seem to be anything for her to do. She couldn't even get her hat seated back on her head. She'd have to visit a two-legger village to get everything righted. "I am never flying with you again!" She snapped before fluttering off the mares back and onto the ground. "I say, 'go slower' and you speed up! I ask you not to do any tricks and you start flying like you are dodging arrows!" As she griped from the ground something amazing happened, she began to grow larger and larger until she was at a normal size. For the flutter mare, however, this was still quite short. Her head barely coming over the winged mare's shoulder.
"Never again Miss Carmine!" She repeated firmly her voice sounding less like an angry chipmunk now and more like a mature mare. "The next time you select a random target I will be promptly returning home." She huffed but it was quite clear that it was not just a random outburst. While it took a great deal to really rattle the mare even when irritated she never said something she didn't mean.
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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 9:07 am
Was she dreaming? Othelia blinked long lashes slowly a few times before lifting her head off the ground. There was a mare looking into the cave, looking at her. Her heart began to pump at a dangerous pace from excitement. This was the first time she had seen another soquili for a long time and the first time she'd seen a non-kalona not panic at the sight of her. She was burning with hope, was she to finally be freed?
When the mare pulled her head away Othelia could feel her heart breaking. 'Don't leave!' She thought urgently as she struggled to get onto her feet. Her legs felt stiff, it was making moving difficult. 'Please help me!' If her voice hadn't been frozen she would have been screaming the top of her lungs. 'Help me! Help me!' She didn't want to be left her anymore. She could hear voices talking from above but didn't have a clue what they were saying. It calmed her a little, the mare was still there. There was still hope.
She was finally able to stand only to be knocked down again when the cave began to shake. Her eyes went wide in fear and then wider with disbelief as her prison was suddenly flooded with light. The shaking was over almost as soon as it had stopped, however, leaving the half mutant, half kalona mare to look around. What she saw left her mouth gaping open for flies to nest in. The mud and rocks that had kept her inside for so long had toppled. Some had fallen inside and some out but the wall had all but vanished. She had been freed...the pink mare had saved her!
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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 9:24 am
"Ummm...what the hell was that?" Carmine asked as the shaking subsided. It hadn't lasted very long, only a few seconds, but it wasn't something Carmine had ever experienced before. It was like someone had knocked down a rather large tree or tipped a very fat cow. Maybe...two very fat cows actually. She looked uneasily around the area before glancing at her second in command. "You know...on second thought...I don't wanna know. Let's get out of here. I don't wanna get blamed for freaky weather or whatever."
Lorenna really couldn't explain any better than her boss could. As knowledgeable as she was she knew nothing that could cause the ground to shake like that. "I believe that would be a wise decision." She said in agreement glancing at their surroundings. Whatever had caused the shaking had been big or many in number and neither she nor Carmine were fighters. "I will meet you back at the hide out." She said in the process of shrinking down to roughly the size of a swallow. Flying on her own would take longer but she was keeping to her word, she would never be a passenger on Carmine again. With a quick bow of her head she scooped up her hat and took off toward their cave head quarters.
Carmine made a face at Lorenna as she shrunk down and headed off on her own but wasted no time protesting that she was a good flyer. She spread her black wings and took off glancing back just long enough to see the rock slide that had occurred just below where they had been standing.
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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 9:45 am
Othelia slowly got back onto her feet and staggered to the cave's entrance. She stood in the shadows for a few long moments just staring out into the bright light of the day. She almost wasn't sure what to do. She had been in the cave for so long she couldn't even remember what life outside it was like. For years she had dreamed of being freed and now that the day had come she found herself terrified.
She wanted the mare to come down and show her what to do from here. She had saved Othelia, logically she'd take the next step too right? Wrong. A feeling of being kicked in the gut hit her as she watched her savior flying off. Her wings fluttered uselessly on her back as the desire to chase after her kicked in. 'Wait!' She thought stumbling over the rubble. 'Wait for me!' She took one step into the open world and then another and another until she was racing awkwardly after the mare on the ground. She had gone quite a way before she lost sight of the other mare. Still she kept moving not knowing what else to do.
~***~ ~***~ ~***~
Night had fallen before she caught sight of the pink haired mare again and Othelia was ready to drop dead. Her stomach hurt so fiercely that the pain was giving her a limp. She should have been hunting this entire time rather than chasing something she had no hopes of catching. When she caught sight of her hanging around the outside of a cave she thought herself to be dreaming or dead.
Slowly she hobbled toward the cave entrance, her head low, eyes fixed on the mare. She had to say 'thank you.' She had to find a way. However, when she opened her mouth and tried the only sound that escaped were low raspy sounds reminiscent of a growl.
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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 10:10 am
The first one to notice the intruder approaching was not the mare standing guard nor one of the two in the caves. Instead it was a little crow who had been forced to go find food for the raven sized crow, appropriately named Raven, waiting in the cave. He clutched a dead rabbit in his claws that miraculously hadn't yet been eaten by anything bigger. "K...kalona..." He said quietly landing awkwardly on a tree branch with the creature. "K...k...ka..." He swallowed his fear before opening his beak wide and letting out a series of warning calls. "Kalona! There's a kalona, Boss!" Keeping the rabbit clutched tightly in his claws he hopped up to a hire branch.
The reaction to the warning call was instantaneous. Khaa watched as Wolf, the mare keeping guard, fearlessly charged at the kalona with a series of kicks aimed to drive the creature back without doing any damage. From the cave Carmine, Lorenna and Raven appeared to see what was going on. At the arrival of Carmine, Wolf ceased her assault but kept on alert. If the word was given she would attack again.
"Kalona?" Carmine stepped forward and looked over the intruder. While the mare clearly had some kalona traits she looked more like a walking skeleton than a kalona. She snorted lightly as she tried to suppress her laughter. This thing didn't look like it could take on a hedgehog let alone any of them. She was small for a kalona too. She was barely an inch taller than Carmine with wings so small they probably couldn't lift a rat. More than likely she'd just been passing through in search of food.
"Hey listen...ya better be on yer way. There's nothin you'd want here." Carmine said casually not noticing that the mare's eyes seemed to be fixed elsewhere.
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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 10:27 am
It had food. The scared little bird that had panicked over her arrival had food. Now that she was not under attack her entire mind seemed fixated on the limp rabbit that had been flown up a tree. She licked her lips barely aware that she was being spoken to by her savior. She was so hungry that her mind didn't seem to be processing anything past her stomach. She whined slightly as she took a step towards the tree.
Khaa shuffled nervously feeling the kalona's gaze on him. She hadn't looked at anything else since Carmine had come out. He got the feeling that he was about to get attacked. "I...I'm not for eating...I'll fly away!" He cried wanting to disappear.
While the others seemed fixated on other things, like Khaa's predicament, Lorenna was thinking. For a kalona to be so malnourished could mean any of a number of things. She could have been a lousy hunter or from a group that kept her from eating. She also could have been from a land with little food, the high mountains perhaps? Either way it seemed to her that Carmine was passing up a potentially valuable opportunity.
"Khaa, bring me that rabbit you have and get inside." She said to the young crow keeping her eyes locked on the kalona.
Khaa flinched. He had to fly down there? "Alright..." he said slowly spreading his feathered wings. He hopped off the branch and glided over to the flutter. He dropped the furry corpse at the mare's feet before hurrying into the safety of the cave.
Othelia watched the bird coast down from the tree carefully. However, the moment he dropped the rabbit her gaze focused on the mare instead of the bird. Now she had her food. The mutant kalona whined plaintifly.
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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 11:06 am
It was just as Lorenna had suspected, the kalona mare was not interested in Khaa in the slightest. "You want this food?" She asked nudging the rabbit with a hoof. Carmine had an issue with dead things, she found them disgusting and Lorenna could feel her boss shrinking away from her now. Luckily for her the flutter had no issues being near corpses. They often caused her to fall into thought but she had never bothered to tell Carmine the details about any of it.
"Carmine..." She said keeping her voice low as she turned to look at her boss. "I suspect that she is only after food, not any of us and not your treasure."
"Yeah..." Carmine looked from the flutter to the kalona. She had suspected that the mare was hungry from the beginning. if Lorenna was only now figuring this out than she questioned her seconds brain power. The girl had no meat on her, obviously she was hungry. "So let's just give her the rabbit and she'll go away."
Lorenna sighed quietly. As she had thought, she was on a different page than Carmine. It was really no surprise. While Carmine was the founder of this little gang she hadn't really thought at all about it's potential. For her it was just a group to hang around with and help her with her career as a thief. Lorenna was the one with the bigger ideas for it.
"I believe if we do that we will be missing out on an important business venture." She declared as quietly as she could. She wasn't sure if the kalona could understand or if she was paying attention at all but she didn't want her overhearing. People generally did not think well of the people who plotted about them like this. "Think about it, Wolf is trained well enough but she has her limits. She has the flat teeth and hooves like the rest of us and no horn to use. A kalona could do more damage than Wolf without any training...if we could win her over...I think you get the picture."
At that moment a tiny light went off in Carmine's head. She was finally on the same page as Lorenna. "Hey, ya want the rabbit?" She asked the kalona mare. "Then yer gonna hafta do somethin first." She grinned finding that she liked this idea quite a lot.
~***~ ~***~ ~***~
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Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 6:48 pm
It had been close to a full lunar cycle since the kalona had stumbled into their midst. She now lay on a blanket that had been lain to one side of the cave's entrance. Wolf watched her as she slumbered. It was unusual. She had been warned to be on guard always with kalona because whether they intended to or not they could easily harm a soquili. This one, however, seemed quite tame. Her tail twitched as she contemplated the differences between what she had been warned about by her parents and friends and what she had actually witnessed this far.
Kalona were killers, eaters of flesh, hunters. This was most certainly true. The mare, Othelia as she was known, ate meat and once she had regained enough strength had quickly become an effective hunter. The mare had come to them looking about ready to drop dead at any moment but now she had put on a good deal of weight. Her ribs no longer stuck out, in fact, one could barely see them at all now. It was all the effect of meat Wolf decided.
Kalona were strong. This was debatable. Wolf had never exchanged blows with the other mare and she had no intention to. Carmine would likely panic in her on way and things would get blown out of proportion quickly.
Kalona were evil. This was also debatable. 'Evil' in and of itself was not something that could be judged with facts. It was a matter of opinion. Her boss had slipped and called Othelia evil once and it was met quickly with protest. Could something be evil if they didn't see themselves as evil or was it something to be decided by a majority vote? She didn't know and Lorenna had given her no insight on the matter simply shrugging and replying with a dismissive 'she is what she is'.
Wolf sighed and before moving away from the spot she had been rooted to in order to stretch. Raven was more decisive with such things but Carmine had gone out and brought her friend with her. She wanted to talk to him. Right then would have been best but what could she do?
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Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 7:07 pm
Wolf had not been the only one watching the sleeping kalona. Lorenna also found her eyes glues to the demon mare but for many different reasons. As Wolf pondered over what she was Lorenna thought over what it was she could become.
At first she had protested on the day when Carmine had given the mare the bloody gems to wear. She had been in contact with several soquili that would have handed over any number of goods to have them just before Carmine had handed them over. Things like bundles of herbs and grasses, blankets, baskets and satchels for carrying objects, special containers for water or furs seemed like valuable commodities. They were things they could use over the winter. What was the point of being a thief if you died from starvation or exposure? There was no value in giving them to a kalona they already owned to use as an accessory.
She had been very wrong.
Giving the mare the jewelery to the mare had won her further than she ever could have imagined. For close to a week Othelia had not left their boss's side. Carmine had won her complete loyalty somehow and by extension so had Lorenna. She had tested it a few times, sending the kalona to do this and that and much to her surprise she had done everything without hesitation or complaint.
Her pale pink eyes now glowed with a sort of wicked cunning that didn't look like it belonged on her face at all. She had been thinking too small in the beginning. This girl was not meant to be Wolf's powerful partner. She was far better suited for something more beneficial. She had much to discuss with Carmine when she returned. The mare enjoyed being the center of the world enough that everything was likely to go smoothly.
"Wolf...," She started shifting her gaze to look for the silent sentinel. She jumped slightly to realize that the mare had moved sometime in that last ten minutes. Lorenna frowned slightly, it was out right eerie the way the half-uni moved so quietly sometimes. She shook off the mild shock before continuing, "Any sign of Carmine yet?"
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:16 am
The tan mare's ear twitched at the sound of the familiar stern yet musical that belonged to the flutter Lorenna. An eye of pink and an eye of blue shifted together to look at the elegant mare. She was the UnderGround's second and she looked and acted the part as though she had been involved in such things long before she joined Wolf and Carmine. While Wolf would listen to the mare she never acted on her order. Raven had told her once that this refusal irritated the flutter but the half-uni didn't truly care.
Luckily she was not presenting an order now, simply posing a question. Answering was certainly something that Wolf could do without the okay from Boss. "No sign of her." She said shortly giving her tail a twitch as if to punctuate the statement. Without any further comments she returned to her previous post by the entrance opposite of Othelia to resume her watch.
The light outside was beginning to fade rapidly. The sun was nearly below the horizon and then it would only be a matter of minutes before Wolf was unable to see much at all. The moon would be barely a sliver of a waxing crescent tonight and that was no where near enough light to see by. She was beginning to lose hope that Carmine would return before nightfall when a pair of shapes appeared in the trees, one in flight and another trudging along almost grudgingly.
"Boss!" she called happily alerting the rest of the cave.
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:35 am
Lorenna frowned slightly at the brief response. She was not entirely accustomed to Wolf's unusual behaviors that seemed downright dismissive sometimes. The flutter was not entirely sure that calling her dismissive was too far off base. The mare only took orders from Carmine and no one else. It was as though she believed herself to be the second, which, given the fact that Wolf had been the co-founder, in a way, was understandable. Even understanding this Lorenna found herself clicking her tongue in disapproval as she wandered about in the rear of the cave mentally cataloging the goods in their possession. Keeping busy reduced the stress of waiting.
The moment the "watch dog's bark" echoed through the cave Lorenna swiftly trotted out the door ignoring everything else and very nearly stepping on the crow Khaa. She brushed past Wolf as she made her way to the pink-haired mare. Wolf had far longer legs than she, as the mare preferred to stay just a little larger than a foal, but with her brisk step it often seemed that even the wind would be unable to catch her.
"Carmine!" She called out sharply. "We need to talk." Even to her own ears her voice sounded harsh but come across as angry was practically the only way to have a talk with their boss alone. It was clear the wind mare had no desire to be scolded in front of others and so she would excuse them. Or at least this was how she operated with friends and partners. It was very likely that she'd just fly off if it was someone she barely knew or didn't like.
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:58 am
Carmine's first thought when she saw Lorenna marching towards her was 'uh-oh' or something equally elegant. She had actually gone through the trouble, for once, of telling Lorenna that she was going out to pick the next target. It had been an unsuccessful trip in terms of finding something worth her time. The humans had beefed up security on their treasures even though they were all little more than worthless trinkets to her. It was all seashell necklaces and earrings made of fangs. Such dull things were not worth the hassle of sneaking past a very alert human to get. What was interesting to her was that she had not yet targeted this particular group of humans. They had no reason to be cautious but she had shrugged it all off in favor of more pleasant thoughts and activities.
Had word somehow gotten back to Lorenna already about her little tryst? She glanced at the mutant crow that had already flown back to his friend. Somehow she doubted that he had made the trip back to the headquarters in the time that she had been preoccupied. He was, after all, a very lazy bird. So that meant that this was either because it had taken her so long or Lorenna was steamed about business, as usual.
Carmine frowned. "Yeah, alright." She muttered with a roll of her eyes before she turned around to head right back down the thin trail she had been following. It lead to the usual secret meeting ground that the two used for their private discussions. "Just be quick, I'm tired."
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