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 Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:55 am
Gehenna looked irritated as he stood on the empty street. He was near one of the only working street lamps the neighborhood boasted, staring down at the broken pavement of the lonely road. Everything around him was in disrepair, from the cracked sidewalks to the boarded windows, but what he was concerned with wasn't his unfortunate surroundings or the poverty of this particular section of Destiny City.
At his feet stretched a large, oddly shaped pile of ashy dust. It wasn't the first time he'd seen it but, with Cimmerian not around to celebrate his triumph and Nemesis too busy doing who-only-knew-what, he was finding that he was a little curious about what exactly these beasts were. Where did they come from? Who made them? Gehenna was less than just completely incapable of answering these things himself, but he also had no idea who to ask.
With a sigh and shrug, he turned away from it and walked a few paces to a darker area of the street. He picked up something large and square that made angry, clinking protests as he transported it back into the light. Then he squatted down over it and opened the top of the blue box. Inside were pieces of dark brown glass shards that he began to toss out carelessly onto the sidewalk. Nothing else could hurt this place, right?
Then, after every few chunks of dripping glass that he chunked, he would pull out an intact beer bottle and set it down on the pavement. In the end, out of the entire case, there were less than half a dozen that he managed to salvage. <******** Negaverse, always ruining the booze." He sighed, flopped onto the sidewalk, and twisted off the cap of one of the still cool bottles. It was just as good a place to start drinking as any. No cops, hardly any people, and youma didn't strike the same place twice, right? He thought that sounded like a good theory.
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Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 7:15 am
"If that's all they got from you then you're pretty lucky." Just outside of the glimmer of street lamp was a faint bluish glow, hands tucked in the slim pockets of her duster coat. Stepping up closer the glow subsided a bit in the yellowed light of the old street lamp and an eyebrow was clearly raised beneath the gleam of her scouter. After meeting Babylon it was easy to see that this grumpy man was a Page but the colors suggested something else entirely.
The smell of alcohol had her nose wrinkling somewhat delicately but nothing else was said as she gestured at the dust blowing away from them both on the evening breeze. "So you figured out how to handle that at least? Is there someone else around here who knows what they're doing besides me? That'd be a big relief." There was only the sound of clinking glass and a steady look before shoulders rolled and a hand came up to brush at her hair in impatience and annoyance at herself.
"Sorry. Bad with the introductions, never something I've much needed in the past. I'm Lina. Lina Knight officially but please for the love of everything just call me Lina. Knight of Mercury, official blue glowbug of Destiny City."
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Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 3:51 pm
"Speak for yourself." His eyes swept up from where they were mourning the pile of broken beer glass and landed on the glowing female that had appeared out of nowhere. Ghen was still not very good at keeping his mind open to the auras that he knew he should be constantly aware of and if she'd actually been something dangerous, he might have been in trouble. As it was, he double checked after she showed up and seemed pretty confident she wasn't going to be attacking him with a spear anytime soon.
So he just went back to sipping his beer while she talked.
"Don't sweat it," he shrugged off her apology, but she had gotten his attention again. It should have been pretty obvious the moment she arrived, but sometimes Kam wasn't the brightest bulb in the box. The fact that she labeled herself as a Knight had his attention - this was the first one he'd met apart from Cimmerian and her presence meant that they weren't alone. He studied her for a moment and then, after he decided this conversation might be a little more serious business than discussing his flawless record with youma, he pushed himself up to his feet so he could look her in the eye.
"I'm Gehenna, Page of Mars." Then he was at a loss of how to follow that up. He wasn't official anything of anything. So, instead, he stooped down and swept up one of the few precious beers he had left and held it out to her with his brows raised in a question. Then, while he was waiting for the ultimate decision, he glanced down casually at the last wispy remains of the youma he'd dusted.
"And youma are the easy part. Meri and I are pretty pro at exterminating those overgrown gremlins."
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Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2011 12:49 pm
The point of the bottle was politely pushed back in his direction. "Thanks but if my edge gets dulled I'm a dead man." Let Gehenna think whatever he wanted about that but it was the truth. Sometimes Lina wasn't entirely sure why she ever left the house without Prince Castor at her side for protection though the answer was readily available. She couldn't hide behind him or none of her old comrades might ever approach her in a friendly manner.
And that was more important than whatever safety Castor could provide.
"Meri? Another Page or have you found a senshi to hang with? Not an officer of the Negaverse or you guys wouldn't be dusting youma." Captain Obvious was sometimes a role that Lina played to the hilt. She was horrible at dancing around a question and if she could be blunt she was. If it took twenty minutes to get to the point of what you wanted to know because you were too busy muddling around being delicate...well.
Obviously it was a waste of time.
"What would you say is the hard part? I'm curious, if you don't mind indulging me."
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Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2011 7:38 pm
"Suit yourself," he shrugged and took another swig of beer from his own bottle, then leaned down to put the one he'd taken out for her back in the more-than-half-empty box at his feet. As he stared at it, he realized he was going to have to head back and grab another before he went back home. Damn it.
"Cimmerian, Page of Pluto," he retorted, his body still bent over and his hands rummaging through the few bottles that were left. He finally stood back up, done worrying with them, and leveled his dark eyes back on her. "She's my partner, we woke up to this whole ******** up world at the same time." He waved a hand at the buildings around them as if it just summed up the whole of Destiny City, and threw back his head to chug the last of his beer.
He hefted it over his shoulder and tossed it at a half bent garbage can in the alley behind them. It hit the wall behind it and shattered, half falling in the pail and half littering the already dirty ground. He stared after it a minute and then simply shrugged, looking back up at her.
"The Negaverse is the hard part. Some b***h beat the hell out of Meri, then stabbed me through the damn shoulder with her ******** spear, javelin, whatever the ******** it's called." He brought a hand up and pointed at his left shoulder where the skin was healed, but the mass of tattoos was broken and distorted around a pale scar. He shrugged and dropped his hand then, not overly interested in her investigation or whatever she was trying to do. The most interesting part about her was that she was a powerful version of his knew super hero class, which meant there was more power to be had - something he was looking forward to. Otherwise, he didn't really care what she was doing here drilling him on youma and negas and turning her nose up at beer.
Then, of course a little later, something dawned on him. No one came out of the gate that strong, right?
"You've been around a while, haven't you?"
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 5:26 pm
Lina would have turned from lightly curious comrade to the prissy snot Gehenna was imagining her to be almost immediately had she heard his thoughts about 'turning her nose up at beer'. Then there would have been a tirade about how she'd been drunk once in her entire life and the experience the morning after was enough to render her rid of the stuff for the rest of her unnatural life. Not to mention 'dulling her edge' would probably prove fatal.
That or she'd meet Tanzanite while intoxicated and end up right back where she'd started. Somehow, the bluenette didn't think that spending an eternity leashed to the darkness that powered the Negaverse would be a good time in all.
Thankfully for both Gehenna's ears and Lina's dignity he kept his thoughts to himself and all he got was a quiet nod from the girl. "Two years in September. Was just finishing up my junior year of high school when I got pulled into this mess." Her hands mimicked his gesture before she continued. "I hadn't met anyone like you or the other pages though. Not until the last few weeks. I was worrying that I was the only one and that I didn't belong or something." Not that it would be the first time. But it was the simplest explanation for the whole thing, without revealing her dubious past.
"I'm actually missing a kidney." It sorta came out before she could stop it. It was obvious that this guy was ten degrees past cool and that was something that Daphne would never be comfortable with, so information came flowing on out. "Stabbed right through the back, thinking to finish me off, but somehow I got to the hospital in the nick. Doctors man. Useful." It was finished almost lamely with a shrug. "If you can get through the Negaverse alive, you're doing pretty good."
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 3:28 am
Gehenna frowned slightly as she said she'd been around for two years. A Knight had been around for two years? He thought back to the discussion he'd had with Nemesis and it only made him frown that much more. She'd said she had never seen another Knight, or Page, before him and Cimmerian. He had gathered she'd been around a long time herself, so how was it possible their paths had never crossed?
"You've been a Knight for two years?" The look on his face seemed like painful confusion, as if he were breaching on a subject that didn't make sense to him but he had no idea how to straighten it out in his head. It seemed like Gehenna was just as incapable of deep thought as his brother was.
"You lost a damn kidney over this s**t?" His confused face broke into an incredulous one and then he let out one long, low whistle that implied he was pretty impressed. "That's pretty intense, wow. Most I've ever done is broken a few bones. Well, you know, apart from that whole spear thing." He was beginning to think she wasn't as much of a prude as he'd first imagined because of her distaste for beer. Kidneys were important for drinking, right? Probably.
He glanced up and down the street briefly, then back to her, as if he was just beginning to consider that being so sedentary after a youma dusting was not the smartest thing in the world. He always wondered if those things had some kind of tracking beacon that went off as soon as they exploded.
"Do you like slushies?" He needed more beer anyway, and if she wasn't keen on it then maybe he could bribe her with his second favorite beverage. If anyone deserved a free slushie, it was definitely the girl that had lost a kidney.
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Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2011 2:35 pm
Having at least impressed Gehenna at least somewhat, Lina felt a lot more comfortable and her hackles went down just a bit. She couldn't quite say why she felt the need to be impressive. Maybe it's because he was very tall, very muscular, and those tattoos were a little intimidating. When you used to cuddle up to someone who was half-youma you stopped being intimidated rather easily.
Lina was puzzling out the reasons for her reaction when his initial question registered on her radar and had a little warning blip going off in her head. "Close enough. I was almost seventeen when this all started and I'm halfway to nineteen now. Three months shy maybe?" She was focusing on the time far more than the title. He didn't need to know what she was going through, not one bit.
"Slushees are almost as good as cinnamon rolls. But the blue ones though and no, it has nothing to do with color preference. It's the taste. Gotta love that sour raspberry when you get brain freeze, you know?" Changing the subject was also a really good tactic though she didn't know if he'd go for it.
"You sound like you've been doing pretty good on your own though. I mean yeah you have a partner but there's not really a support structure in case something really bad happens." Heels tapped the pavement thoughtfully as she inched in the direction of the nearest 7-Eleven. "Should probably do something about that one day."
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Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2011 7:33 pm
Gehenna took the hint when she started to inch in the direction of the gas station, not needing any further hints to fall into step at her side. She was down for slushies, what was there to argue about?
"I wouldn't blame you for playing color favorites, even if you did. Blue slushies are clearly the superior flavor, even if Meri likes the red kind." He made a small face at that, despite the fact that he was clearly more fond of red in other things himself - it was plastered all over him from his outfit to his hair dye.
Then her subject changing attempt flipped back to the Knight thing and he glanced at her sideways, shrugging a little as he did so. He clearly hadn't experienced the full weight of the situation yet and it was blatantly obvious. "We're doing okay for now, right? Or at least I am. I haven't met anything that Meri and I can't handle together and I'm meeting new allies every day. I met an eternal just a few weeks ago, and now I've met you, right?" He shrugged again and looked back ahead of them. He clearly wasn't much for forming huge teams or playing follow the leader.
Then his own words hit him and brought him back full circle to the subject she had been trying to avoid originally. He was no good at subtlety or he might have noticed that she was tiptoeing around the subject.
"Which reminds me. Nemesis said she's never met another Knight before, but I think she's been around just as long as you have. Is Destiny City really that big, or are there just that many things to deal with here?" At least he wasn't aware of all the possibilities, or the questions could have been awkward. Well, more awkward.
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Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 2:18 pm
Boy he really couldn't let go of that, could he? None of the others that Lina had met so far had questioned anything she'd said about simply been fighting for two years, or that maybe she hadn't been a knight the whole duration of that time, they'd just accepted it at face value. Which basically meant that they were all naive newbies who were probably doomed to failure, so Lina was going to have to spend all her damn time making sure they all stayed alive.
Was that how Charonite had felt? It was an unsettling and somewhat amusing thought that had her rocking on her heels a bit as they moved towards the gas station. Addressing Gehenna's first comment would be by far easier. "You're alive and not in the hospital so if you ask me you're doing great." Without even bothering to power down, Lina just strolled straight into the station and started pulling at their largest size slushee.
If he was buying, she might as well take advantage of whatever goodwill she could get before ruining things utterly. They were back outside and leaning against the darkest wall of the boxy station before the bluenette spoke again. "I don't know Nemesis so that could answer your question but...here's the thing." A long sip of sugary, liquid courage before she kept going.
"Up until a few months ago I wasn't Lina, Knight of Mercury. I was General Linarite of the Negaverse." At least if he rushed her, she could maybe hold him off.
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Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 1:23 am
Gehenna followed Lina into the convenience store without a second thought, paying no attention to the suspicious look the man behind the counter gave them as they took their turns filling up giant cups. He swung into an isle and picked up a bag that read 'Muddy Buddies' across the front, then paid for their things and stepped out.
By the time they were leaned back against the wall of the station, he had mostly forgotten whatever he'd asked her in favor of his overdose of sweets. He was in the middle of chewing a handful of the chex mix when she brought up Nemesis, and he glanced down at her with a large gulp of his slushie to wash it down.
A gulp he choked on a little as she delivered that little tidbit.
He gasped for air as his lungs tried to expel the slushie that had gone down the wrong way through a series of convulsing coughs. He brought up one hand and beat it into his chest with a thud - it probably didn't do a damn thing but it made him feel better. By the time he had finally regained a normal breathing pattern, a little of the night's charm seemed to have been worn away for him.
"What?" It was mostly a rhetorical question - he didn't want her to repeat that. He stole some time by glancing at his cup to ensure he hadn't spilled any, then looked back at her suspiciously. "You can just do that? Switch sides and everything is hunky ******** dory?"
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Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 6:26 pm
Yeah she had a feeling that one wouldn't have gone down well. Slush was swirled in the domed cup and for a moment the bluenette thought she was going to have to step forward to pound Gehenna on the back when he mastered himself and delivered a statement that had her choking on her own ironic laughter. "Hunky ******** dory? Yeah that's my life alright. I'll never see my family again, I lost good chunks of the past two years to oblivion, I can't take anything with me. Including a scholarship I spent three years working for. But yeah no my life is totally hunky ******** dory." There was a river of bitterness flowing out now, and no time for Ghen to interrupt.
"I mean yeah sure I have Castor which is great. Honestly great. But with that comes the fact that every ally I ever had, people I don't think understood what they were getting into when recruited, are out for my blood. Tanzanite...well. The scariest b***h in the Negaverse has made it her personal goal to make me suffer as much as possible until I beg her to kill me." She'd gone too far and realized it almost immediately, jamming the straw into her mouth and sucking candied ice until her brain ached.
"Sorry. Switching sides for good? So far I'm the only one that's done it. You know a senshi, Nemesis? The Negaverse can take anyone and corrupt them. There were several senshi that had been corrupted before I left." Shoulders rolled. "I never met one to know if they felt any better about it."
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Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2011 9:42 pm
In the face of her sudden bitterness, whatever Gehenna could have said died on his tongue. He'd already figured out that this war was more serious to a lot of people than it was to him, at least at the moment, and that people like Nemesis had spent a long time fighting for some cause he barely understood.
He had no idea how much this could affect someone's life.
"Look," he started, pointing at her with the hand that was holding his slushie, one finger unwrapping to jab in her direction. "I don't know a damn thing about this war. I haven't been in America for the last three years, let alone in Destiny City trying to deal with all of this.. s**t." His free hand came up and waved at the air, encompassing the entire city in his label. "So excuse me if I don't understand this."
Then he drew his cup back and sucked on the straw, downing gulps and gulps of the half iced drink as he leaned back into the wall again. After a couple of seconds of silence he managed to look at her without feeling insulted by her bitter tirade.
"I'm sorry that s**t happened to you though, even if I don't get it. I'm still flying under the radar, I haven't even seen the tip of the damn iceberg yet. I don't know why I even exist." He tapped the fingers of his free hand against his breastplate to indicate himself as Gehenna. "But you've got allies, we're here now right? Better late than never and all that s**t?"
"I mean, I'm sure, we're all still pretty weak and ******** oblivious but you can help us understand this crap." He wasn't sure what he was offering now. To be useful? He'd have to talk about that one with Meri for sure.
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Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 1:25 pm
Lina had expected Gehenna to be either more outraged at her or be contrite. The fact that he didn't give ground or advance on her own, but remained a neutral position on the line had her giving him more than a little respect for it. So, sucking up her pride and her stubborn tendencies for just a moment, Lina apologized. "Sorry. I'm touchy about the whole thing. There are some senshi I've done some pretty bad stuff to in the past, they tell stories, and people who have never seen me before in my life just make judgements." Not that she really blamed them.
She just wished that they would be a touch more understanding!
"I can help though. I can teach you how to fight if you need it, I can tell you all about the Negaverse, what I know about the senshi, how the youma operate and why you need to kill them all as fast as you can. The most important thing I can teach you is that you don't want to kill unless you have to." A gulp of sugary deliciousness to wet her throat. "I don't mean youma. They died a long time ago, corruption gone horribly wrong. But the Negaversers? A lot of them are high school kids who have been lied to."
Not all of course, but most and that was the really important part. "You start killing and maybe you think you're doing better, but then it's out of control and you don't know how to stop." Fingers clutched at her cup. "You don't want to wake up one day and realize you don't know how many you've...taken care of." Blue curls shook as Lina made negating motions with her head.
"The iceberg is deep as hell and a pointy ********. She'll try to destroy you and as for what we, the knights, are here for?" Shoulders shrugged. "My personal goal is just to end the war without killing everyone involved. Harder than it sounds." Wasn't everything?
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Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 9:42 pm
For what it was worth, Ghen tried to listen. Then Lina began a tiny rant and was drifting through subjects he barely grasped, things that were impossible for him to understand through her off handed comments about them. By the time she finished, he was simply raising a brow at her and sucking on the straw of his cup.
"First of all," he mumbled around the straw before removing it entirely, "that kind of comes with the territory when you're pitching for the wrong team, my friend. But from what I've seen of some of their.. magical powers, or whatever that s**t is, they definitely aren't saints. Nemesis nearly tore my hand clean off." He shrugged over it though, and let his eyes wander out into the nearly empty street.
"I can fight plenty fine on my own, it's just the rest of this s**t I don't understand. Like why the ******** is anyone recruiting highschoolers to fight in a cosmic war?" Briefly, there was a flash of something on his face. Anger? Rage? Regret? It was gone though, buried under his contemplation and another long draw on the straw of his cup. "Then there's the fact that we're even having a war to start with. I don't get what the ******** problem is."
He let out a long, aggravated sigh and sucked on his straw until an annoying stuttering started, signaling the end of his drink. He crumpled the hard, plastic cup in his hand and then let it drop carelessly to his feet. "I fight the youma because that is kill or be killed most of the time, but I don't understand the rest of this." He leaned his head back against the brick wall behind him, then rolled it to the side until he could look at her. "If you could help me make some sense of all this bullshit, that would be great."
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