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 Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 10:05 pm
Captain Painite was out alone tonight, looking for something to take out some mounting frustration on. She wasn't quite sure what had her so tense. Maybe it was that new door with the bad attitude that was getting under her skin. Or maybe she was just restless from the lack of satisfying battles or triumphant revenge on her part recently.
There was also the lingering knowledge that she hadn't found any of her targets recently. The senshi she wanted some vengeance on, the knights she wanted to taunt and teach some very good lessons to, nothing. It was like they were all playing on big game of hide and seek, and Painite was the worst seeker in the world. Or they were all cheating.
In whatever case, she needed to let off some steam.
The usual method for this was to set a trap and have some fun. Catch a civilian or two, drain some energy, or use that civilian to set another trap and draw out a senshi. Or a knight.
She would love to find a knight to pick on.
The problem was, the stored frustration was jamming up her brain. The wheels weren't turning: she couldn't think up a good trap or even a half interesting ploy. She was stuck, and just wandered down a street, powered up, just waiting to bump into someone as she pondered things.
Maybe she would be saved the trouble of coming up with an idea if a senshi or knight appeared in the area nearby, and she could just go straight to them and... stab them, or something. That would do very well to get rid of the frustration, anyway.
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:24 pm
It was fortunate for Painite that the first person she ran across while she was lost in thought was another captain. Hematite was about the exact opposite of stealthy and had learned to accept it. Parts of his outfit jangled and others ticked, and when you made that much noise already then it didn't really matter about footsteps on pavement.
He gave the other captain a cursory glance as he passed by, fully intending to keep walking. He was maxed out on 'good samaritan' for the rest of forever thanks to Kaia's help hotline. But something seemed to click and he stopped and turned around.
"Hey, I know you," he said slowly, trying to remember where he recognized her from. "You were at the little party in front of that crazy new door in the Negaverse, weren't you?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:36 pm
Painite actually heard all the clattering before she felt the energy signature, then at last her eyes flashed up at the sound of his voice.
Quite the entrance, though she had to wonder how he was at stealth operations.
"Oh yeah! You were the one that went flying across the room. With the not-buddy that was... very masculine." She chuckled, not sounding like she was judging one way or the other. She was more amused by the whole flying thing. "No permanent damage from that, right?"
A bright smile hit her face instantly and she stuck out her hand. She was a less than impressive five foot two, if she rounded up, and her bright sea green eyes were warm an friendly.
"Painite, if you didn't catch it in all that chaos. Out doing anything fun tonight?"
She hoped so. Now that she was aware of herself, the feeling of restlessness quickly returned. She had run into some hope for entertainment, though not the senshi or knight she was hoping for. Still, if they were lucky, they might still be able to find something.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 9:39 am
"Should have expected it," he sounded a little embarrassed about it now. Truthfully he wouldn't have minded something to take his mind off of how things went with him and Kaia recently. She'd ultimately rejected him, even if their situation was anything but straightforward and he didn't actually remember coming on to her. But the chances of successfully coercing this captain into going out with him at all had dropped to nonexistent as soon as she brought up the incident in detail. Maybe he should have pretended he'd never met her. "That whole place is a big labyrinth of crazy s**t, I'll just let someone else poke around next time I see the place is under renovation. But I'm fine, weird magic doors can't keep me down."
"Hematite," he introduced himself, shaking her hand roughly. He towered over her, just a little over six feet tall. At least the Negaverse made him feel tall most of the time.
"I wish." The captain reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a handful of glowing energy orbs that clacked against one another like marbles as he held them up. He regarded them pretty carelessly. Energy was easier to come by than starseeds. Hematite had much more experience procuring the latter and had to curb his instincts now. "Just making up for lost time tonight. Why, you up to something?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 9:55 am
"I agree. I'm sure the door will do whatever it wants. I mean, it did apparently appear all on its own. So..." She wasn't sure if that was true, but as far as she knew the door had decided to come into being and was now deciding not to open and to be a jerk.
She would wait for more news on it, maybe check in every now and then, but she was now in no hurry to get it open.
Painite was very used to feeling short, at least, to the point where she didn't, in fact, feel short. She just smiled up at him, chuckling at his hearty hand shake.
She looked at the energy orbs, smiling. She delighted in energy gathering, though she liked using plots and traps and that was probably what she really liked about it. In any case, she had never taken a starseed and had never had need to. She wasn't sure she even knew how, though she had heard enough other Nega's speaking about it to figure some basic details out.
Still, pulling the life out of someone, in a very literal sense rather than just some energy they would be able to recover, wasn't something she felt she necessarily had to do.
Elsewhere, Camelot felt the prickle of energy. He looked down from a nearby roof to see something glowing in the darkness of the evening. He knew there was a Nega, though he had not encountered two at once before and didn't yet know that the strange prickling at the back of his neck was warning him that he was feeling more than one, even though there was something distinctly different in the aura. There were so many different kinds of beings with auras, though, he was just learning them all. He assumed that it was just another type he had never met before.
Painite felt the knight's presence, especially after it started to moved toward them. She looked at Hematite with a devious grin.
"Have you ever met a knight before?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 10:17 am
"No kidding," he chimed in. The energy was pocketed again save for one orb which he toyed with as though he cared little for how fragile it was.
Hematite could feel it too, but it was faint and it was different and if he didn't know better he would have just assumed it was yet another senshi too far away to guesstimate where they were by it. Auras were weird s**t and no substitute for just seeing where someone was at and who the hell they were. He met her gaze with one of his own, confusion creeping into his features. He was a pretty easy read, especially when he was clueless, which was way too often for his liking.
"A what now?" That was probably all Painite needed to know.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 10:36 am
Painite grinned at the answer. This looked like it could be fun all around. She hated knights, and she could have a little fun with Hematite. He was another Captain, after all, so it meant he could take some teasing and, of course, learn from it.
She always liked teaching people things, even if her methods were sometimes a bit strange. After all, in her civilian life the only thing she had experience teaching was Improv at the theatre downtown. So that was how she went about most of her efforts to be 'helpful' in the Negaverse.
"You'll see! One's coming this way. You distract him, huh?" Not that he got most of a choice. She darted off, clambering up a short building and powering down as she hauled herself onto the roof, her energy signature disappearing with her.
Camelot rounded a corner and spotted the Nega. Oddly, the guy was dressed more like a knight than he had seen before, and he was momentarily thrown off. His instincts told him, as well as the aura of course, that this was not one of his own.
"I can only assume from those glowing orbs I just saw you with, you've hurt someone?" he asked, his tone serious. Negaverse didn't consider stealing energy to be hurtful in any way, but to scare someone, to knock them out, or even just to make them wake up the next day feeling sick was hurting them in Camelot's book. Even if they survived, they shouldn't be treated like energy banks.
He had his shield in front of him, looking a little nervous.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 2:42 pm
Hematite didn't expect the other captain to take off, and by the time he heard her clicking away he whirled around to try and follow her movement. She was already gone, and far better at hiding than he was, apparently.
"Knight?" he echoed her word faintly. He turned back around just in time to see Painite's so-called knight approach. She really wasn't far off to describe him that way. "Oh. "
Hematite didn't know what to make of what he was looking at. A middle aged guy who was late to his dungeons and dragons games should not have registered on his senses at all. What the hell did Painite know about this? He hoped like hell she had a plan, because he had no idea what to expect. He was somewhat more trusting now that the newer soldiers, playing energy round-up all the time instead of digging ditches in the woods, were less inclined to try and off him.
"What, this?" Hematite tried to take a more casual stance, holding up the energy orb perched between two fingers,. The captain was unarmed, but at a thought he could pull his weapon back into existence. Not that it was going to do him much good against a solid wooden shield, he was realizing. He let the orb shift in his fingers till it was safely back in his grasp and opted for laying the sarcasm on pretty thick in the meantime. "Wow, how did you know I had to hurt someone to get this. Your other costume must be a detective."
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 5:04 pm
Camelot frowned at Hematite, not liking the tone. But what could he do? Suggest the Nega put it back? It wouldn't do much good now, as far as he knew anyway, but he could at least hold his ground and come up with something.
He couldn't let the guy go back out and get more, could he?
It was difficult to find the line between his duties. He wanted to stop the war, to being the two sides to peace and spar as many lives as he could. But that was only one part of it, easy to imagine but near impossible to achieve, let alone actually pursue. But there was also the here and now: this was not a fight between a senshi and a nega. He couldn't step in and stop them from fighting. This wasn't even the usual 'save the civilian' episode, where he could at least defend a fallen or about-to-fall victim from a Nega or Youma attack.
No, here he just had evidence of a crime, the kind of crime he had to stop, having been committed staring him in the face. But he wasn't going to attack first. But maybe he could still get the energy. He had his shield up in front of him, and he was creeping carefully forward.
"Look, I don't know what your motivation is for hurting people, but there's no reason you have to be my enemy. I just want to talk, okay?"
Painite was still no where to be seen, though she was peeking down and watching from her hiding place as Gently on the roof. He couldn't see it, but she was grinning ear to ear.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 9:12 pm
"Alright, you want to talk? Let's talk. See this planet? The planet you're on? Earth?" He tapped a boot against the concrete curb. "Yeah. This is our turf."
"We're earth's army. So this is our planet and this energy is our energy to defend it with. Honestly this would be so much easier if you senshi weren't a bunch of imperialist assholes. Just go back to space. Get your own planet. This one's taken."
Hematite noticed the subtle movement as Camelot moved closer and closer and frowned. His weapon returned to him at a thought. Where at first there was nothing, a U-shaped void in space formed in his free hand, solidifying into metal and spikes. He swung his arm out in a wide arc, sending the jagged boomerang straight for the knight. "Whoah, I don't think so, old man."
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 12:23 pm
"That's not true," Camelot said stubbornly, his instincts flaring. He shook his head, gripping his hands into tight fists as he held his ground. Something about those words always made his pride sting. The idea that there was only one rightful army of Earth, one inhabitant with the true 'rights' to it.
"This planet belongs to those who live here, regardless of where they've come from. Humans, corrupted, aliens, whatever. This planet is home to everyone, and can be. More than that, it is my planet. This Earth, and everyone on it, is mine to defend."
The Page of Earth was steadfast in that belief, at least.
"I am not a Senshi. And I fight for the very thing you think you have some kind of divine right to. I am Camelot, a knight of the Earth. This is my planet. But I, at least, am willing to share it."
"Whoa!" He lifted his shield on instinct when the boomerang came his way, feeling it slam hard into the wood. The old, weak shield splintered with the first impact, though at least it didn't shatter as it had done in previous fights. He grimaced, the arm underneath broken and slowly healing. Though it was having trouble, considering how often Camelot went out with it, and things like this happened.
He charged on instinct, thinking that since he had thrown his boomerang he might be momentarily defenseless. If Camelot could tackle him and pin him, then maybe talking would go a bit better. Or not.
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 1:36 pm
There wasn't much time for a witty retort, just a single step backward and a shift in his positioning. Camelot was bearing down on him, undeterred by the warning throw. Recalling a weapon or teleporting to safety required concentration, something he didn't have when he needed that fraction of a second to twist himself enough to take the brunt of the tackle somewhere he wasn't already bruised all over. Both of them crashed into the asphalt of the empty street.
That was a move he could maybe have expected from a disarmed lieutenant learning to spar, but never from a senshi. They didn't have weapons of their own. To come into close range of a Negaverser was largely suicide for them, or at least a pretty swift defeat. But Camelot didn't call himself a senshi, didn't dress like one. There was no magic to anything he was doing. Hematite couldn't begin to imagine what he might have up his sleeve then, and he couldn't afford to find out the hard way. His life probably depended on it.
The orb of energy Hematite had been holding went rolling a small distance away from both of them, still miraculously intact.
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 2:20 pm
Camelot was intending just to pin Hematite and complain at him for his way of thinking, but the energy hitting the pavement drew his attention. He had never seen an orb of it before, though he knew that it was energy stolen from a civilian. Something about that idea meant he couldn't just let it go rolling away, a little lost marble that no one would value.
It was someone's life force, though they would recover. It was like throwing away a packet of blood.
He had Hematite under him, thankful he was at least tall and heavy. Age was finally paying off for him. He was not, however, as in shape as he would have liked, and his muscles weren't exactly rippling. He had some strength to him, from all the recent fighting and his efforts to stay in reasonable condition at work, but he knew he was not often a match in raw strength for his opponents.
Even with his boost while powered up, it wasn't close to the one a Nega Captain got.
Still, he had the advantage. He pressed his shield, still attached to his arm, to Hematite's neck. It was more a warning then a threat, to keep him down. Then he suddenly collapsed on top of the Nega entirely. A strange tactic, but he hadn't designed it. Painite, her aura now clear once more, was standing behind him, her javelin in her hand, waving at Hematite with a bright, less than innocent smile on her face.
"Having fun?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 2:50 pm
"Oh, yeah," he grunted, just barely humorous. Painite had showed up just in time. The feeling of the rough woodgrain against his neck just reminded him how out of touch he was. The rules of the game would never stay the same for long. He tried to shove the knight away to free himself and put a little distance between himself and the unconscious aggressor. The only thing more awkward than getting pinned down by another guy was having a female audience to it all. "Like a hundred pounds of it. I still prefer the teenage girls in skirts though."
Once he could get up again he moved to stand next to his rescuer, recalling the boomerang just for the sake of safety. In his confusion about Camelot he had to give Painite the benefit of the doubt that whatever she made him do was completely necessary. Even if it was more than a little humiliating, and left him grimacing even after he was free.
"So what the hell is a knight?" he asked, poking at the body with the tip of his boot. The guy claimed he was a defender of earth, but Hematite was a little skeptical of the claim from most people these days. He didn't want to go grabbing the guy's starseed or anything yet. He hardly knew what they were looking at or what would happen if he tried. Even then, if Painite had orders to capture one alive or kill one herself, he'd be interfering.
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 3:06 pm
"Well, that is," she said, pointing to the unconscious man. She kicked him a bit, rolling him over and taking a look at him. She tilted her head, something about him familiar though she had never seen him before.
But there was some voice in her head, reminding her...
Shrugging it off, she grinned again.
"They're like senshi but even more obnoxious. As far as I know, they all have something to do with planets or whatever as well. This one, I guess, is a Page of Earth." She pointed to the mark on his clothes. "They've got weapons like we do, but no magic. This one seems to be a little over the hill."
At that, Camelot groaned, though it became clear that he hadn't actually heard her. He was trying to wake up, blood dripping from where she had struck him on his head to the pavement. He, at least, was wishing he hadn't come over here. As far as he knew, though, it was Hematite that had hit him. He didn't know Painite was there, as dazed as he was.
"They haven't been around very long," Painite continued, "and they don't all seem to be doing the same stuff. I ran into one when he was just awakened and he had no idea what was going on. Two others were just fighting for the sake of being jerks. I guess this guy has an agenda."
Camelot was on his hands and knees now, and looked back to see the two blurry figures standing together. He had to get out of here.
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