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 Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 5:15 pm
Jude was rapidly discovering that he had a thing about octopuses. Of course, when the octopus was ten feet tall and the kind of inky black that swallowed all light, it seemed likely that anyone would have a thing about octopuses. The youma had taken over the shitty neighborhood in which the Harrow house resided, long limbs spread across pitted pavement to haul itself along and giant, glassy eyes flicking back and forth to the rundown cars in driveways, the browning lawns...
It was blocking his path home, the creature shuffling and wriggling its way along, trying to locate the source of a glow of life signatures. Jude knew exactly what it was: not his own dirty, shabby, one-story ranch, but the one three over. Sunday night meant the guys were gathering for the football game, sitting ducks behind open windows, yellow flowered curtains fluttering and halfway obscuring the shout of drunken fans at the television.
On some level, he knew that it meant trouble. He'd read enough r/senshi articles to know that black, horrible creatures meant trouble, death, people in comas. Jude had always thought that they were an exaggeration, but when faced with that many oozing suckers, he had to admit that he felt differently.
Not a hero, but some part of him had to do something. He shifted at the mouth of his street, clutching the laptop bag against his side and chewing on his lip -- then fished out a pencil. Cheap number two.
He threw it. It hit. And he kicked immediately into a panicked run, the soles of his shoes clicking out against the pavement.
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Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2011 3:56 am
The Negaverse was getting pretty ballsy, Foramen thought. Not only were they throwing out more youma than normal and not bothering to try and hide the energy signatures, but they seemed to have a hard-on for larger, more easily noticed ones, lately. Take this one - about twice Foramen's own height, which might not have been such a problem if it wasn't lurking around one-story buildings. It blotted out the damn skyline, for ******** sake. Subtlety, thy name was not giant octopus youma.
He'd noticed it several blocks away. Checking his phone had revealed no one else in the area, so even though it wasn't in his usual patrol route, he'd taken a small detour to investigate. It hadn't been hard to spot the youma as he'd moved closer. Now, Foramen stood atop one of the nearby buildings with his arms crossed over his chest.
"Why is it always tentacles?" Foramen despaired. Sometimes it felt like he was living in the world's worst magical-girl hentai anime flick ever invented. (Total fail due to him not being a girl, and always beating down the tentacles before any porn actually happened - but still, so much Do Not Want.)
So far the youma didn't seem to be doing much, so Foramen was taking the time to form a plan of attack. At least, he was until some kid appeared and decided to attack the youma. With a pencil.
Where was a desk when Foramen needed to bash his head against one? With a sigh, he flipped off the roof, landing in the path of the fleeing kid. "If you die, I'm totally entering this in the Darwin Awards," he said.
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Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:54 pm
Foramen was a hero; his instinct was probably that people would be grateful for his appearance, that they would take comfort in him being there to help out. Unfortunately, in order for people to be grateful they had to know who the hell you were and understand that you were, in fact, a hero.
Jude knew neither of these things. He'd seen some pictures of blurry Senshi on the internet, but mostly they'd been posted in conglomeration with trouble, drained energy, confused civilians -- in short, disaster. When his eyes settled on Foramen, none of the thoughts running through his head were of salvation.
He did, at least, draw to a halt, hauling in a breath with his fingers shaking where they wrapped around the strap of his bag, already running out of steam. Jude was not a natural runner. Brown eyes settled on Foramen with a considerable amount of white showing behind them, wide and surprisingly young.
"...it was...well, I mean, it was heading toward..." He gestured vaguely down the street, shuddering just a bit as his eyes settled on the [fortunately slowly] approaching youma. "Dale's got a thing on Sundays..."
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 1:55 pm
Foramen had no idea who Dale was and he didn't care. Jude was mostly lumped into the same category, except Jude was here and doing stupid things like attacking a tentacle monster. (Which never ended well. Seriously, had the guy never seen porn?)
"So you thought you'd distract a giant octopus with a pencil? Brilliant plan. Why didn't I think of it myself?" The sarcasm in Foramen's voice was palpable. He rolled his eyes at Jude. With a sigh, he moved in the direction of the youma - he had more important things to do than chew civilians out right now.
"Stay or go, I don't care," Foramen said in a bored tone as he eyed the youma. The limbs moved at odd intervals, and Foramen took careful note. He continued speaking, absently. "If I see a video of this on Youtube, though, I'm coming after you next."
Foramen raised his hands, eyes glued to one of the tentacles. He counted down in his head, smirking as the limb in question reached out to the house closest to them right as he hit 'one'. On the count that would have been zero, Foramen opened his mouth and announced, "Vanishing Rift, Sever!"
A flash of blue-and-space above them, and then Foramen was taking a careful step back as a large tentacle plummeted from above. It landed with a splat on the sidewalk. It hadn't seemed to realise it was severed, continuing to writhe and flail madly for a minute or two.
When Foramen looked back up at the youma, it was staring straight back at the two figures in the street. They now had its full attention...
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Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 12:19 pm
They probably had more attention than that, in fact -- inside the house there was a sound, and a face pressed up against the window. A big man with a rough beard and a flannel shirt shot a quick glance out into the dark at the sound. Observant eyes should have easily been able to pick out the fight on the street, should have seen the octopus and Foramen. Dale, however, was in about three beers too far, and after one quick look, he went back to his friends and his nachos and his football game.
Wise. Jude didn't have the same common sense. Instead he gaped after Foramen, his own face hot with a flush, not quite sure what he'd done to get yelled at like that. He was young, and while his mother had done a good job of helping him build up an indifference mindless insults and sharp tones, Jude still fidgeted, torn between embarrassment and annoyance. At least he didn't cry.
"...you weren't...you weren't even here..." But when the magic clicked in, it washed away the rest, and he stammered his way into silence. Jude blinked at the severed tentacle as it fell and sucked in a couple panicked breaths, reaching for another pencil. Boring yellow Number 2s, worn halfway down. Not the best ammo, but better than nothing.
"What do we do now?"
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Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 4:14 pm
Foramen did a double-take when more pencils came out. Seriously? Giant octopus youma had them in its sights and this guy was gonna stab it with art supplies? After a moment of consideration, Foramen shrugged. Might distract the monster from eating Foramen for a while.
"You wanna distract it?" Foramen offered when the guy asked what 'they' were going to do now. He wasn't banking on Jude taking up the offer. "Taking off tentacles one by one sounds like a really slow method."
Not to mention, could Foramen even pull off his attack that many times in a row? Assuming he didn't miss any of them in the first place? He loved his power, but damn if it wasn't sometimes annoying to not be able to just throw a giant fireball or something to take a monster out in one hit.
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Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 12:17 pm
Maybe if he got it through the head, through the brain, it would be an entirely different story. Jude hesitated, looking at the creature and then back to Foramen, his mouth trembling just a little uncertainly before he managed to steel it into a tight line. His fingers tightened around the pencil and he threw again. Brightly flushed ad worried, mostly it just looked petulant, as opposed to the defiant he'd intended.
Add to that the fact that he missed, and it wasn't Jude's finest moment.
"I'm...I'm distracting it. So do whatever it is you do." His tone came out too high, and his eyes flashed with frustration.
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 7:49 pm
"I -" Foramen closed his eyes, pain flashing across his face after seeing the guy throw another pencil. "You - really? You couldn't find a better projectile on the ground?"
Even a rock would be of more use than a pencil. Even if it did hit, what did he think a pencil was going to do? A monster of that size probably wouldn't feel a thing.
Foramen sighed. This was why he was the senshi, and pencil-guy was the civilian. One (reluctant) rescue, coming up. His eye lingered on the rundown cars parked on dried out lawns.
"Got anyone around here you don't particularly like?" he asked Jude. Probably for the best if he didn't use the guy's own car, if one of them was his.
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Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 6:58 pm
His instinctive reaction -- his initial response -- was 'everyone'. In general, people in this area weren't so great to Jude, and he wouldn't mind seeing just about any car flipped, in all honesty. Not like his mother had one. The way it had been phrased, though, made him twitch and bite down on the words, and uncomfortable look flicked toward Foramen. He'd read the 'terrorist' stuff, even more than he'd read any of the posts marking senshi as heroes. He knew what they were saying on Reddit. 'Anyone around here you don't particularly like' was more of a villain line than a hero line, that was for sure. So he stared at Foramen, mouth shifting, uncertain. Then, instead of staying and seeing what would happen, he threw one more pencil and burst into a run in the other direction. He wasn't much of a runner. kalindara Please quote me if you reply!
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Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:11 pm
and be blue I'm so sorry for such a huge delay OTL Okay, Foramen thought as he watched the guy flee, maybe he could have explained that better. Replaying the line in his head, he realised it did kinda make him sound like he was the guy behind the giant monster, about to take out a few houses. Oops. Foramen shrugged. He wasn't about to go running after a kid who should have stayed well away from the fight to begin with. ... Except the movement had caught the octopus-youma's attention. One of the remaining limbs reared up. Foramen cursed. He could see exactly where it was going to come down. Scaredy-civilian just wasn't that fast. A stream of foul language burst from Foramen's mouth as he sprang into action. Senshi form conferred some handy upgrades besides magic powers - (slightly) enhanced speed, for one. So despite his earlier resolution, Foramen sprinted after Jude. He slammed into the civilian's middle. They fell forward, just as a large gust of wind and a shaking of the ground accompanied the slam of a giant tentacle where Jude had just been. Foramen's job wasn't done. Rolling off Jude, he sought out the nearest car. "Vanishing Rift, Sever!" A thin disk of blue under the car, then it (and a thin slice of dirt-encrusted lawn) appeared in the air above the resting tentacle. The car fell with a horrible noise, echoed by the youma. It pulled at the limb but failed to pull it out from under the weight of the wreck. Slowing rising to his feet, Foramen brushed dirt and gravel off his uniform. One forearm and at least one leg burned with the unholy sting of grazed skin. "You're welcome," he told Jude sourly. But no, it wasn't time for picking on civilians. Foramen still had a youma to take care of. Now if only there was something sharp, pointy and decently sized around here to aim at an octopus head...
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:33 am
Foramen had a shocking number of options. This was a part of town where people seemed to gather junk on their lawns, garbage that they'd use 'some day' to patch up long-gone cars. Cinderblocks. Battered fences with the paint more than a little bit worn away. More lawn gnomes than Foramen could count.
The shuddering-thud and screech of metal as the car hit the ground should have caught the attention of the nearby households -- and to some degree, at least, it did. Out of the corner of his eye, Foramen would be able to catch the shudder of a curtain here and there, someone peeking out, spying the senshi and the octopus, and deciding to retreat back into the relative safety of their homes. Ask no questions and you would not become embroiled in the trouble.
Jude should have had that sense. Settled now, flat on his back, the breath knocked wildly out of him, he stared up at Foramen and tried not to worry about if his jacket had been ruined, or the dull throb at the small of his back. He tried to gather up the wits to lever himself up and start running again. And he totally failed.
He just lay there, like a moron, watching the senshi.
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