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 Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 11:33 am
It wasn't an ideal place for collecting energy, with the possible exception of catching a bunch of kids gorging the watch dog on hotdogs and breaking in to smash windshields and get drunk... but the scrap yard did have some other appeal for the new Lieutenant, though at the moment he was standing across the road from it, the thumb of his glove pinched between his teeth as he gazed thoughtfully at the mountains of metal, glass and machine.
He'd driven here on the bike he was now starting to think of as 'the Day Bike'. A new model Kawasaki Ninja with a custom paint job. The modified play on the familiar 'Radio Flier' logo and colors stood out a bit.
He wanted to have a resource like the bike...
But he didn't want the association hanging out there. It was, in his mind, a little too much like Batman wandering around with the cowl down, or Superman forgetting to take off his Clark Kent glasses.
Of course the bike problem wasn't the only thing on his mind, it was just one of the dominant issues of the moment, more so than noticing that he might have drawn a little attention from someone else. Someone who in this case, he was fortunate enough to have be on the same team.
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Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:26 pm
Though she didn't have much time for it nowadays, she used to go to the scrap yard quite a bit. She would find lots of interesting things to build with, or to deconstruct and remake into some new gadget. It was kind of nostalgic, then, to be there now.
It made her want to power down and go get some stuff, and tinker away until the early hours of the morning.
But no, General Painite had things to do. Tasks she had set down for herself, of course, but tasks nonetheless.
She was there for scrap, but the machine she intended to build was not a flower vase tumbler or an industrial carrot shaver. Rather, she was plotting a new trap for a senshi or a knight, and she needed the supplies to build it and then the chance to put it into action. This was fun, yes, but it was work fun. It was personal, but it was Negaverse personal. There was a line, but not much of one.
"Why hello there," she heard herself saying, strolling toward the energy signature she had felt in the area. It took a moment to teleport to it. A fellow in the Negaverse, she had been able to tell, and she smiled at him as she approached. It was an interesting expression, nice and welcoming but oddly challenging. Despite the fact that there was no challenge between them. She had only just said hello.
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Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:34 pm
He could react quickly, he made that clear enough, half whirling to face her, having summoned a handful of... well it looked like little metal Jacks, though what he would have done with them (thrown them at her face perhaps?) had she proved to be a threat, wasn't clear.
"Christ on a Cracker, don't goddamn sneak up on a guy." He accused, though really he'd just been a little lost in thought, trying to decide where the best place was to dig up a bike frame, where there best place was to store it. He couldn't, after all, build it at the garage. Too obvious. Too traceable.
He certainly hadn't planned to be sized up by a girl in... what the hell did they call that fashion again? Steampunk he was pretty sure.
He frowned, trying to wrack his memory for the limited number of names he was familiar with so far, and wasn't able to summon up her identity.
"I didn't catch your name."
How DID you technically ask another negaverse agent to introduce themselves? Offer to exchange code names? Secret handshake? Ask if they'd been to the Hall of Justice? Sorry 'The Rift'.
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 12:26 pm
Painite looked at his weapon, or what might pass as a weapon in the made up worlds children liked to play in, then looked at his face. She grinned at him, certainly unable to judge weapons of Lieutenants after her start with a hobby horse.
"I didn't throw it," she pointed out.
She smiled at him, not recognizing him, either. Maybe she had seen him before, but she wasn't sure about it. And that meant she needed to introduce herself to get him to introduce himself.
"General Painite is my name, though. That's the official throw. Who are you, Lieutenant?"
She looked around, not seeing any senshi or any people, really, that might prompt a nega to be here on a hunt or for quota related purposes. She wondered, then, why he was powered up and what he was doing out here like this. Besides being a target for any senshi in the area.
"What are you doing here?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 1:02 pm
"Didn't th....haha." It took him half a beat to get it, and when he did the wry smile was only marginally amused, but then, something about him probably suggested he didn't amuse easily.
"Lieutenant Realgar." he offered back. God another General? He was outranked every time he turned around, this was nuts.
"Kids sometimes break in there... stuff the dogs stupid on hot dogs and go get drunk. Drives the owner crazy but it's practically tradition." He explained before adding, and this was the real attraction.
"...Besides I've got something I need parts for. If I go get them now, there's no paper trail. Anyway it's cheaper. In spite of what it sometimes feels like around here we can't all be richer than goddamn Bruce Wayne."
He let a slight sigh escape with this comment. God if he did have that kind of money, if he could have any part he wanted... he could really make something beautiful. Not the Jalopy Scrap Monster he was sure would result from scrounging and stealing parts.
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Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2011 7:14 pm
Painite nodded her head. She liked meeting the new Lieutenants, and liked taking stock of them as soon as she did. Usually that meant just spying on them and seeing what they could do, but sometimes she had them join her in impromptu energy hunts or senshi traps, just to see what they could offer.
She imagined training was a universal concept. Sure, everyone had their own Captains and Generals to follow, but they were all working under the same banner: they had an obligation to help each other. Respect each other. Regardless of their focus, or who they served under directly.
Or if they even liked each other.
"So you're here to get drunk, is that what you're saying?" She grinned at him, though she assumed in the back of her mind that he was there to steal the energy off the teenagers, as any clever Negaverse agent might. She nodded her head.
"I hear you there. I sometimes do the same thing, to be honest. I like building things. Do you? Or is this more a repair job than anything else?" She watched him, head canted slightly to the side. She noted his outfit, wondering about his weapon.
"Of course, business always comes first."
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Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 4:44 am
"Well, if they're in there, and I'll bet they are, we can always help ourselves to their beer once they keel over asleep... but really I'd recommend ponying up a few bucks and getting something that doesn't taste like fermented, carbonated weasel pee."
It was a sort of round about way of inviting her to join him if she was so inclined.
"Otherwise yeah it's a build. I'm trying to put together an bike that can't be tracked down to anyone I know, day to day. Can't teleport yet but that doesn't mean I can't want the tools for fast travel or a fast get away. Besides, might be useful later."
He had ideas about energy collection for when he was actually capable of drawing from multiple people, though that would take time.
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2011 10:49 am
"I think I'll avoid the weasel pee," she confirmed, nodding her head as if he had let her in on a secret. Perhaps one that kept the universe moving, though it was clearly not as important as her posture and tone implied, "but I appreciate the heads up. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing what passes as a good time for teenagers."
Her round about way of accepting his round about way of inviting her.
She liked the idea of building a bike from scratch, something that was completely his. She could never do it, as she did not know much about transportation mechanics. Give her a coffee machine that needed an arm attachment to shake creamer cups while trying to pour them and she could do that. Probably.
If she was given more than one coffee machine so she could blow a few up in the building process.
"You're right. And good, thinking about the escape plan. That part often eludes me, no matter how many times I tell myself it's important." She sighed, but didn't seem too bothered. In fact, her statement was just that: like a fact of life. "Let's go, then, and meet these kiddos."
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Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 6:30 am
"Well hopefully your weapon's a little more impressive." At General he would hope she'd get something better than children's toys, which fit what he'd seen so far, but really he didn't exactly 'know'.
Anyway what he'd learned implied that teleporting burned energy, and he'd be short enough soon enough trying to juggle what was now effectively three different jobs.
"If we find anything worth while I'll buy us a six pack." He offered, starting to head for the fence, since she seemed to be interested in tagging along, which didn't hurt his feelings in the slightest. At least she seemed to be slightly past her teen years, which made him feel like slightly less of the odd man out in all this.
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Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:37 pm
"Oh, it is," she grinned. She was not a lady who could resist the call of showing off. She summoned her weapon to her hand, holding the long javelin-like staff daintily. It was tipped at the top with a large spear head that glowed dimly and was marking with purple runes. The bottom end of it was also pointed, like a sharpened pencil.
Staff Corporal Saddles.
Resting her weapon against her shoulder until she was sure he got a good look, then banishing it to keep a lower profile then their outfits already would draw should they be spotted, she walked with him toward their intended hunting ground.
"That sounds like my kind of deal," she agreed with a nod of her head, "I'll bake cupcakes for you."
She was only learning how to bake them, and she was not very good at them yet. It might not be much of a reward, if she were honest, but she was nothing if not proud. And she would make others suffer for it.
The twenty four year old opted to hop the fence, which was a fairly effortless endeavor for the General. And fun, always fun. That was the main reason she did anything, really.
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2011 3:13 pm
"Christ..." He noted, in admiration of her weapon, and snorted derisively at his own. "And I get the kids toy that most people these days don't even recognize."
Not that he could blame them, he wasn't even entirely sure he was clear on what the -rules- of Jacks were, just that you didn't want to step on them in nothing but your socks. One of his sisters kids had taught him that, inadvertently, but that was before the crash. Now he wasn't sure he could have told you what age the kid was.
"I can definitely deal with some cupcakes." Pizza he could make. Cakes and sweets... while he didn't consume them with the regularity of beer, they were a nice treat, and he didn't make them terribly well. Especially icing them. Never having quite grasped that they would frost better after being... well... frosted for a while in a cold room, he'd always been enormously frustrated by having them collapse into chunks of cake with huge globs of uncooperative, melty frosting.
He followed her over the fence, taking a second to revel in the small burst of adrenaline from the little, animal part of the brain that still insisted that humans had no right performing such gravity defying activities. Not as good as blasting down the street at twice the speed limit, but definitely better than arguing with some punk kid that if he tried to shiv one of his classmates with a screw driver, he was going to find himself with his head trapped in an table vice until the cops arrived. At least in this case, he could actually carry through on threats without worrying about his job. Sometimes he hated that damn job...
On the other side, junk was... well... everywhere. The place smelled like metal and rust and oil, and if you had the right nose for it, smoke and beer. He pushed forward, apparently chivalrously intending to take the lead, heading through the maze of junk toward what slowly resolved into the sound of a stereo with an ground thumping base, not cranked quite as loud as it's listeners would have probably liked, but quite loud enough never the less. Along with the base, the laughter and slurred conversation of the young obscured whatever lyrics could have been made out over the over cranked base notes.
"Hey we're in luck." Realgar added, as quietly as he could without being lost to the thumping music. "The Weasel Pee Court is in Session."
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Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 12:12 pm
Painite laughed. It was true, she was sure. Most kids wouldn't know what Jacks were, besides little pointed metal things that were sometimes fun to throw at siblings. She had never played it too much, after all, and doubted she had ever played it correctly.
Like most kids, she just made the rules up as she went along.
"I had a hobby horse," she said with a grin, "I'm very much a fan of the old school toys, just because of that. Makes us kindred spirits, don't you think? And anyway, if they're starting out so small, then perhaps they'll become something amazing in time. You'll just have to work hard to get there."
That was something she encouraged in every Lieutenant she met: as far as she was concerned, the Negaverse could never have too many Generals.
She looked around the junk yard, hands on her hips. She didn't have time to go 'shopping', as it were, but she could always come back if she saw anything she wanted. She looked at him as he got over the fence after her, nodding her head when he spoke again.
"Well, I think it's time we crashed their party, then," she said, grinning ear to ear. She moved to the sounds. Those poor kids weren't going to know what hit them, though they'd likely just blame it on bad trips and hangovers.
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Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 1:23 pm
"Well at least with a Hobby Horse you could give someone a nice ol' crang across the shins?" Realgar pointed out, pantomiming a swing like a baseball bat. "Guess I'll just be a bit more hands on for a while."
No big... other Lieutenants had survived the frustration. So could he. Out of the corner of his eye, he picked out parts that might be salvageable, noting them for reference to examine more closely on the way back. If they were even luckier, maybe some of these idiots had driven. He could always consider lifting a few bike parts as a further donation to the cause, just like their energy. Some parts would just work better in a newer condition than picked from a scrap yard.
"Party crashing time." He agreed, shrugging awkwardly. "You want first shot or..." He asked, leaving it hang.
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Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:19 am
Painite nodded her head, grinning.
Her hobby horse had become like a partner in crime with her, for her. Mr. Saddles, it had started as. Then it evolved into a javelin, and became The Spirit of Mr. Saddles. Now he had his own promotion, and she called him Staff Corporal Saddles. Mostly for her own amusement, and because she felt the weapon deserved some recognition.
Without it, she would never have survived this long, surely. It was bait in her traps, as well as a weapon that had saved her more than once from senshi. Now she used it to menace her enemies, and deal out pain.
She knew very well what it was like, being attached to their magical weapons rather dearly. It was an extension of herself, and she had trained diligently to use it to its best. Her best, as well.
"I think I'd like to see what you can do," she said, tilting her head at him and flashing him a smile to melt butter, "if you don't mind, of course."
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