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 Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2011 9:27 pm
He was finally on the roof. Babylon let out a soft whoop as he lowered his backpack onto the shingles. All those months conspiring about how to get on top of the administrative building, and in the end, it was so easy! A few jumps onto the right ledges, and he was up! It helped that he was a glowstick-wielding superhero tonight, but still! It was so easy!
He unzipped the hiking pack and surveyed the contents. Bungee cords, flags, and the piece de resistance - a Chic-Fil-A cow. This was going to be the best prank ever. Babylon got to work hanging flags off the edge of the roof. Pride, Hemp, Soviet, Free Tibet, Peta, Galactic Empire, Pork: the Other White Meat, United Earth - each one was lovingly unfurled and secured over the edge of the building, creating a neat border from end to end.
Babylon considered the deflated cow. "I could lynch it," he said to himself, flipping the glowstick around in his hands. That would make a point, he supposed, but what? Serve chicken on sundays? Stop giving money to tea party campaigns? He hefted a length of bungee in his hands and stared thoughtfully at the cow. Two hours ago it had been sitting on the edge of the highway, beckoning people to stop at the next exit for some authentic southern comfort food.
Now it was about to embark on a second life as a Dada sculpture. Babylon dug his hand pump out of his bag and hooked it up to the cow's butt.
"Or stick it in the chimney..." he said absentmindedly. "But that might, huh, that might be dangerous..."
His art was obnoxious, always. Dangerous, never. Although he was currently on a roof three stories above campus. So that was debatable.
Babylon whistled while he pumped. The vinyl cow began to take shape.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 12:01 am
Zirconia figured she should have her own theme music for as much as she took it upon herself to prowl around without the safety net of a senshi or one of her adoptive mutants as a back up just in case, but tonight she had an ulterior motive of sneaking around the Sovereign Heights campus and it wasn't much more than nostalgia. Changing schools was a weirdly new experience, and she had wondered just how much she was going to miss the comforting routine of classes. At least, now that she was leaving, they were comforting. Before they were only annoying and trivial hurdles throughout her week.
However, it didn't take long to notice the unfurled flags. Those were definitely new. At first she passed them off as something school sanctioned since everything was weird and out of place due to the end of the year rituals. And then she actually read one. PETA? That had nothing to do with the campus! And there were more that just confused her, followed by a faint energy signature that she wasted no time running towards, trying to shimmy up to the roof to pursue it.
"YOU!"
It was a loud, snarling, vengeful 'you', one she shouted out the moment she was close enough to make out the figure and recognize what he was.
In a flying leap, the large cat latched all 20 pounds of fluff and claws to the top of his head. "Another one!" She proclaimed, having proudly detected and hunted herself down another mutant. One she had never seen before too. Good thing, she was starting to wonder if she was accidentally spawning them in her own little, egotistical way.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 4:41 am
Babylon shrieked, dropped the cow, and stumbled forward, clutching at his head. He narrowly avoided falling off the roof and managed to regain his balance a few terrifying, lurching moment after - all while exclaiming "AUGH, ME!" and trying to evaluate the thing on his head.
Huge. Fluffy. Youma? No.
He pryed the monster away and held it at an arm's length. Rabid raccoon? Negaverse officer? No. None of the above: talking cat.
The inflatable cow slid of the roof. Babylon noted this out of the corner of his eye, and stared crossly at the cat. "WHAT THE ******** DID YOU DO THAT FOR?" he demanded, and didn't feel ridiculous at all because the thing had just attacked him. It didn't even strike him to question the talking cat for its cat-ness or its ability to talk.
No. Instead he shook the little hellion and demanded, halfway miserably, "Another what?! I'm Babylon Page of Mercury, who the ******** are you?"
He decided right there, staring at the purple beast, that he'd always been more of a dog person, anyways.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 6:15 am
"Arawghfragginawrgh," The gibberish sounded off as she was shaken and even after as she pried herself loose with her claws to drop at his feet and stare with comically suspicious eyes.
"Mercury," Zirconia said in a super slow, enunciation, seeing out the planetary symbol on his uniform until she finally concluded, "Ah, Hermes' counterpart."
Finally taking better note of her surroundings, she noticed the cow and vaguely recalled the actions he was going through with it before she pounced. "Were you defiling a fake cow?" And then she rapidly shook her head, hoping the question would go unanswered. "I am Zirconia, guardian cat to the Black Moon royals," She said like a 'duh' was supposed to follow, even though no one in this entire universe should even know a thing like that outside of maybe four people.
"You're a mutant!" She added as if she were completing his own introduction. "Another one. Did you recently have a flu-like disease or suffer from a coma last year?" She asked, making an effort to weave around his ankles and try to inspect them as if she were a doctor. "I still haven't figured out what is going on with you strange people and your starseeds."
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 6:24 pm
Babylon scowled at the cat and carefully made his way down to the edge of the roof. "No," he said, peering down at the lawn below. "I think I'd have noticed if I spent my summer unconscious, right?" He remembered reading about that. He hadn't been involved. In fact, a fair bit of his summer had been spent on a USY trip in Israel, and he had the photographs to prove it.
"No major illnesses or injuries," he added, trying to judge the jump. He thought he could make it - he'd fallen out of higher trees in his Page form and walked away fine. "I'm strong as an ox and healthy as a horse."
Said the boy who was 5'7" in socks.
Babylon flexed his grip against the edge of the roof and sank to his knees, judging the best way to drop down. He shot the cat a dark look. "I've got to go rescue my cow thanks to you," he said. "Least you can do is ******** apologize."
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:35 am
"You know, I'm starting to think that's not really your cow," The cat huffed, approaching the edge to peek over at the thing on the ground.
Fake cattle and weird flags aside... Here was another random knight with no connection whatsoever to the other two she'd met. At least she didn't think so. "You haven't met a knight called Valhalla or Niflhel, have you?" She asked, skipping over the whole 'apologizing' thing in another sad attempt at trying to find a common thread.
"Ugh, you people don't make any sense! I'm not even sure you really should be existing right now," She complained. She still couldn't find any reason she wouldn't recognize their special brand of power. There were no knights in the parallel world and they had a fully intact moon kingdom. They also had no negaverse officers but it was easier to understand their existence. Agents of chaos could be anything, but knights were the exact opposite.
She was starting to just subscribe to the theory this universe's cauldron was just on crack.
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:10 pm
"Nope," said Babylon. "Never met 'em. Why, they cute?" Lina had been pretty good looking - even he could say that and his tastes were known to be all over the place. He paced the roof, looking for a way down, and settled on grabbing hold of the gutter, fire pole style.
"I've met one called Lina of Mercury," he said, planting his feet on either side of the gutter. If he had any say in this, it was going to work kind of like rappelling down a cliff. He hoped. It would probably be easier if he had a rope and some carabiners.
He looked at the cat. "She had a nice rack," he said, confident that Lina was nowhere nearby to kill him for saying so. She hadn't seemed like the kind of girl who would do so, but then again you could never be to careful about that kind of thing. "Anyways," he said, as seriously as one could say to a cat, "You coming? I gotta get my cow."
With that, Babylon hopped off the roof and slid haphazardly down the gutter, using his feet to grind to a halt every few yards. He hopped off a few feet from the ground and ran over to the cow.
"How am I gonna get you back up on the roof," he said to it. ******** hell. Ever since this knight stuff started, he couldn't just finish an art project in peace, could he?
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:58 pm
Lina? That was an unfamiliar name. There were even more?! At least there seemed to be multiple ones per main planet. So they weren't some weird, botched reincarnation of senshi. She didn't know if that was more comforting or less.
"No they are not cute," She stated, puffing out her little chest indignantly. Azzo was about as attractive as an annoying sibling, and no one was allowed to think Chris was attractive, in her own personal opinions. "Why are the size of her breasts so important?"
She stayed perched on the roof, watching him retrieve the cow and just looking confused.
"Why do you need the cow on the roof so badly?" She shouted down, and even more curious about why he was powered up to do so. "How is this helping fight the negaverse?"
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:07 pm
Babylon settled for balling the cow up in his arms and jumping up the same set of ledges he'd taken the first time. Now back on the roof, he stalked to the center and resolutely began to inflate the cow once more. "I didn't expect a cat to appreciate art," he said huffily as it took shape. Whether a bunch of counter-cultural flags and a fast food mascot cow was art was open to debate, and most people would probably say it wasn't, though.
He pumped in silence. The cow stood tall and proud. Babylon tied it down, and stood back to admire his work. "Man, they are never going to figure out how I got this up here. Awesome."
He turned to face the cat, still glowing with triumph. "They weren't cute? Aw, I was hoping... Oh well," he said, in mock defeat. He waggled his eyebrows at her. "So, if you meet anyone else and they ask you about Babylon Page of Mercury..."
He grinned at her. His eyebrows waggled some more, if that was even possible. "Will you tell them that I'm devilishly handsome?"
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:55 pm
She scrunched her nose at the implication she couldn't understand. She didn't, but she was also fairly certain an inflatable cow wasn't supposed to qualify. Or maybe it did. Maybe it was some sort of lowbrow White Moon culture.
"I understand art," She snorted. "I come from a culture that your infantile rock that keeps blowing up your own civilizations can't fathom." It probably wasn't a fair insult. The Black Earth had it's share of wars before the king pulled them all under a unified rule, but she still wasn't going to let a chance to look down her nose at this Earth slide.
"Are you just trying to confu-- You! YOU!" She finally put two and two together, maybe a little later than she should've. "You're that kid who keeps making 'art' and disrupting everything!" Insert paw/finger quotes where appropriate. Zia was quite attached to routine, so whenever Finn's art was drawing attention on campus, she wasn't ever really appreciative.
Her eyes bounced up and down with every eyebrow waggle, her own brow furrowing while she wondered what he was getting at until he said the words devilishly handsome. She slapped a paw over her face and groaned. She was so sick of being around hormonal teenage Earth-babies.
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 2:35 pm
At being recognized, Babylon smiled - really, truly smiled. Not a forced rakish grin - a genuine smile. "Yes!" he exclaimed, clapping his hands and doing a little hop. (Here he had to pause to regain his balance.) "That's me! What's a cat know about it?"
In fact, for all the questions she'd been asking, Babylon had spent very little time questioning the fact of a talking cat, and suddenly it occurred to him that this was actually pretty weird. He plopped down on the roof and leaned towards her, eyes wide with fascination.
"So, uh, where are you from?" he asked. "Kingdom that doesn't blow itself up all the time and all that?" Sounded like a pretty good deal, to be honest. Especially to a boy with a burgeoning revolutionary streak.
"Cuz, you know what I think?" Babylon folded his legs under himself, rested his elbows on his knees, and his chin in his palms. "I think if I'm going to answer questions for you about who I am, you'd better tell me some stuff about you."
It seemed a fair trade, but also a risky bet - Babylon didn't know all that much to tell.
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:24 pm
Zirconia had moved to stand on her back paws and reach out to hook her forefeet's claws into his pants leg when he lost his balance, as if her smaller mass could hope to stop him from falling if he tipped over. "Because I go to school here!"
When he started asking questions about her, it vaguely, just vaguely, occurred to her she probably shouldn't be spilling her guts to a mutant who didn't even seem to be tuned in to his purpose. But she wasn't good at keeping information to herself in general, much less when she had the opportunity to ramble on about how her universe was soooo~ much better than yours.
Still, answering where she was from was kind of hard. 'I'm an alien cat, but not like your aliens because I come from a parallel world due to magic mirror crossing'? That was hard to get across even when talking to reincarnated aliens in sailor suits.
"It's hard to explain," She sighed. "Besides, what do you even know, mutant?" Besides the obviously skeptical nature of the question, there was a little bit of hope there too. If he knew something about what he was that would be a welcome tidbit of information for her current side investigation into the knights.
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:37 pm
Babylon narrowed his eyes at her and leaned a bit closer. Went to school here...?! "But you're a cat," he said plainly. A talking cat, but still a cat. Last he heard, cats did not attend fifth period. They didn't sit in desks and take notes about dead poets. They didn't live in dorms or go to football games or drink beer.
"You're a cat," he repeated. His eyes were narrowed to slits. To be truthful, he could barely see out of them at this point. "I mean, an honest to god cat. Are you ******** with me? You go to school here?"
He leaned back and opened his eyes to their usual wide-eyed expressing. "Stop. ********. With. Me," he commanded. He was pretty sure he wasn't high right now. He didn't remember smoking anything before leaving but then maybe that was the point. Wait. No. Definitely sober.
"I know that..."
He trailed off. What did he know?
"I know that my name is Babylon Page of Mercury, and Mercury is a planet, and a long long time ago I was a knight of the Senshi of Mercury." And he knew that because Lina had said all that and Lina seemed like she had her s**t together. Well, she'd said they served the senshi of Mercury, but 'knight of' sounded more badass. "I know that senshi who wear white are on our side, and the ones who wear black fight for the Negaverse. I know that the Negaverse is bad, and they're connected to the murders and the monsters that appear everywhere."
He leaned back in towards the cat. "So stop ******** with me. You're a talking cat. What's up with that? Where are you from?"
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:50 pm
Zirconia opened her mouth to say something and then instantly closed it. Maybe she should've left the attending school bit out. She listened to him go on and scratched at her own neck as she thought. They were definitely sounding cavalier-ish, but they were not cavaliers. She already had the word in her head because their starseeds seemed similar but not, which was making her confusion just multiply.
"I'm from the planet Mau," She answered seriously. "But not the same one in your universe, a different one, from a parallel universe." She stood back up on her haunches, having some minor issues balancing before she held up her front paws and wiggled her toes, "I've come to your world via my moon queen's magical mirror, to serve my parallel world's senshi trapped here on the White Earth. Also I am a shapeshifter and this is just one of my many forms. Plus I shoot lasers out of my head," and while these were all facts, some exaggerated, she was rambling them all off in a voice that clearly said 'I am SO ******** with you right now.'
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 5:09 pm
"Black moon, white moon..." Babylon wiggled a hand. "You keep using those words." He did not add that he wasn't sure what they meant. Also, he didn't like her tone of voice - she was so ******** with him right now.
He flicked his glowstick into his hand and waved it around. "So what you are telling me," he said, in a let-me-get-this-straight well-excuse-me-princess sort of voice, "Is that you are from a parallel universe?"
He punctuated this by pounding the flat end of the glowstick against the roof. Then he pointed it at her. "And you shoot lazers from your head? And you transform?!"
He threw his head back and laughed. It took him almost a minute to get himself back under control. This was just too much! "This is some anime s**t," he said, looking seriously at her. "So put up or shut up."
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