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 Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 7:54 pm
Zia had grown comfortable with patrolling again. Sometimes with Valhalla, sometimes alone, and her confidence was soaring.
Way, way too high. She had done an in depth analysis on her various forms and which were best for fighting, deciding her powered humanoid form was best for healing and speed where the feline form was best for defense and dodging and her pure human form for stealth and offense, especially with the bat Chris had insisted she take and she subsequently stole permanently.
But there was such a thing as overconfidence. Zia tangled with a youma she couldn't beat back, not in any form, and failed dusting it. Worse, the stupid freak had quills apparently, and as it hobbled away, she dropped, gripping her side which had the spines pinning her layers of hoodie, tank top, and jogging top to her flesh. "s**t," She screeched, frantically looking for a way out. She considered walking to the nearest store and mirrorwalking home or to her research area from a bathroom or something.
But when she tried to stand, she dropped again. Her ankle was tweaked. Hopefully. If it was a sprain or a break she was going to just lose it.
"s**t s**t s**t s**t," She hissed to herself, managing to find her phone in one of her pockets, thankfully unscathed. What was Chris' speed dial trigger? She was getting woozy as hell. She ended up fumbling with the touch screen on her phone, sending out a text before grabbing her sides again and flopping forward on the grass to shout muffled swears into the ground.
Need pick up. Park on 5th. Bring 1st aid kit.
Though, unbeknownst to Zia, she was a bit off with the speed dial button, and it went out to Pascal Lalande instead.
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 9:44 pm
It wasn't like Pascal actually slept or anything. He had been tinkering with a small machine when he heard his phone play a really obnoxious song began playing as his ringtone began to play. Right away he knew it was Zia because she was the only one with that ringtone and would bring a reasonable question: Who ******** put an obnoxious song as their not-girlfriend's ringtone? It was a simple answer: Someone who ignored all other calls and text and wanted to make sure there was no way he'd possibly be able to sit by and ignore it. Who could ignore The Trashmen's Surfin Bird raging out of the tiny speakers on a phone? Certainly not Pascal, he ******** hated the song.
He practically jumped to the phone, more eager to shut the sound off than he was to hear from Zia. There was a loud sigh of relief when the sound was shut off, and then a surprisingly girly wail when he read what the text said. He was thankful Zia was not here to hear it, and almost immediately Pascal slipped on his shoes and ran out of his apartment with a large container hanging in his hand.
He didn't know what had happened but immediately he assumed the worst: he failed to protect her and a youma got her. He was so useless. He had only barely protected her from the youma before, gotten smacked for his incompetency (or what he was now referring to in his delusional thoughts as such) and this time she had been hurt! He was not new fights or new to the scene but the thought of finding Zia somewhere in this park worried the s**t out of him. Not just because he wouldn't get amazing sex anymore but because he'd be losing someone he didn't highly dislike, and stuff.
"Zia!" He called, turning around the area.
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 9:57 pm
"Oh, geez, man, don't yell so loud," Zia muttered, sitting awkwardly on a park bench. Her baggy hoodie hid most of the damage and it's dark color didn't give away much besides just being wet. Also he wasn't Chris. Their names on the speed dial were right next to each other, it didn't take her more than a second to realize what happened.
"Sorry, meant to text a friend," She grumbled. Though there was glimmer of hope. "Isn't your place nearby? Help me up," Well it was just as good as a knight with a car. Unless he freaked out.
"Please don't freak out," She said, extending her arm on her good not-full-of-youma-spines side and then quickly retracted it. The spines hurt like a b***h, but were doing more good in place for now. Her ankle was a bigger problem.
"Can you wrap up my ankle? It's really swollen. I might need to crash at your place," She said, as causally as possible with intermittent attempts to cringe back screams, tears, and curses.
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 10:29 pm
Don't yell so loud? Don't ******** yell so loud? How late was it? Did she even remember what she texted him? She did even remember that she was hurt? Why else would she want him to bring her a first aid kit? She certainly was out here repairing little bunny rabbits. Judgmental eyes fell on Zia, a bad mix of worry and anger falling on his face in the shadows. It was followed by an abrupt sigh wen she told him she meant to text a friend.
"Oh," he replied, his hands at his side almost pointlessly.
"Yeah," he replied, watching and her nodding like a boggle head doll until finally he snapped back and made himself stop. "You know where it is, it's just a couple blocks away." Okay so Pascal loved when Zia spent the night at his place, and when he got that text he was actually really hoping she was telling him she was coming over but this was a different story. She was hiding something for sure, and he didn't like the idea he was second on her list of people to call!
He wasn't freaking out, yet. He was simply mentally smashing his face against a brick wall because this was definitely all his fault.
"What happened?" He asked, looking down at as she retracted her hand. He just need confirmation that this was his fault, you know? The ankle was injured, definitely, and when he knelt down to examine it he groaned. It looked pretty swollen, a sprain perhaps? It didn't look broken and she wasn't hung over in pain over it either.
"It looks sprained, Zia," he replied. "We should take you to the hospital, not my apartment."
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 10:47 pm
"Right, I know where it is," Zia said, trying to talk herself through staying alert. And then he said hospital. "No," She half yelled and grabbed his shirt with as much seriousness as she could muster up. "Your place. No hospital." The last thing she needed was a phone call to her next of kin, here.
"Wrap it and help me walk, it'll be fine," She insisted. Yeah. Super fine. Although a quick self prodding told her the spines weren't in very deep, they just hurt... like bee stings. Really big a** bee stings.
She fought and insisted until she felt secure enough to reach out again, and this time she was pulling hrself up to use him like a crutch whetehr he wanted to be one or not. "Okay, now give me a lift. Watch it," She grit her teeth so hard she felt her jaw pop as she moved her torso. "Mmmmno oh s**t," She hissed, trying her best not to just cry because crying was stupid and girly, and she ended up clinging to Pascal like he was a pillar.
"Okay, walk slow," She said, guiding his hand so it didn't hit anything sticking out of her.
The walk, or more like hobble, back to his apartment felt like eternity. But one at the door, Zia let him go to hit the floor with her knees and rip off her increasingly heavy sweater, revealing the pins jabbing out of her side and the bloody mess they'd created. "You have tweezers in there, right?"
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Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2012 11:36 am
Pascal had wanted to argue the importance of going to the hospital despite how he'd rejected to the same thought after she punched him in the face. She was insistent though, and he knew they would just waste important time here arguing over where she refused to go just to most likely either end up at his place or for her to crawl home because she was so infuriated. Yes, Zia on her hands and knees sounded like a fantastic thought but given the circumstances it was the last thing on his mind.
"Okay, okay," he finally caved, taking her home with him.
It was a short walk but given her condition it was much longer than normal. He hadn't locked his door because he was in such a hurry to leave so at least getting inside was quick and easy, allowing Zia to pretty much drop the floor as soon as they got there. His eyes immediately fell on her, and then onto the sweater that dropped off her. Like a horrible pattern to follow, Pascal's eyes then seeing the bloody mess and the pins.
Oh Lord.
"ZIA," he bellowed, practically growling as he ignored her question about tweezers. "What the ******** did you do? Roll around on a herd of angry porcupines?" He didn't even wait her to give him a response, leaving the room and then into the bathroom to grab the tweezers with a very fat scowl on his face.
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Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2012 11:55 am
"It's just a few, don't be suck a ******** baby," Zia said, hypocritically as she had to fight through several winces and groans to even deride him. She tried to sit upright and gingerly pulled off the pieces of cloth that had been pined to her sides off the spines so she could roll it up and get a look at where they punctured her skin.
Tweezers might've been an understatement. There were only three pins, now, the fourth must've been the shallowest cut because it seemed to have fallen out when she was trying to separate layers of clothes. However, they had roughly the diameter of pencils and hurt like a b***h.
"It was a youma," She explained, since, well, he kept asking for an explanation. She looked up to see he wasn't even in the room, though, and he came back moments later with tweezers.
"You're going to have to tape it up," She warned before doing anything. She figured he was smart enough to know what was coming next, and that he was going to have to move fast. And then she grabbed his shoulder with one hand, while the other gripped the first spine and jerked it out. Her grip on his shoulder tightened and she ended up pulling him closer to bury her face in that same shoulder to muffled a scream as best she could.
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 11:00 am
Youma? Why was she getting mixed up in that sort of behaviour? Who just up and went out at night picking fights with what Pascal roughly understood of as monsters? He couldn't ravel his head around the idea that Zia simply was doing that so it left him with one option: A youma had attacked her... again. It happened so much to her, no wonder she knew them by name and was now making it out to be no big deal. He didn't have anything to say to it without making a huge scene and possibly compromising his other identity so while he didn't like it he simply moved the topic forward, making a large frown when she told him to tape it up.
"You can't just tape it up! It'll scar, it might get infected," and that wasn't all there was to it and Pascal started to ramble on excessively about her injury. He was going to continue on about how it needed to be sutured and that a visit to the hospital would be best but then the b***h went crazy! She pulled it out of herself and then tried to crush his scapula in the progress. ******** crazy b***h Zia! He didn't have time to complain about himself, and instead he literally slapped on a piece of gauze on it and forced it closed with some of the medical tape from the first aid kit.
"At least it should stay sterile with this but I'm telling you Zia, I'm not a doctor. I've sent people to the hospital, and I've been to the hospital but I don't work at one. You really should go get these checked out."
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 11:33 am
"Oh big friggin' whoop," Zia muttered about the scars, trying to keep up a 'I'm tough and can totally handle this facade' and only failing a little as her voice broke. She would heal eventually, she wasn't so concerned about that.
"That was the deepest one, it won't be so bad again," She said, trying to downplay it. But then she grabbed the sides of his face to look him in the eye, mostly because her vision was spotty and she wasn't sure how well she was going to be able to impart how serious she was otherwise. "You have to promise you won't take me to the hospital. You can't! Okay, just promise you're not going to like, call 911 or something." She was suddenly intensely afraid of losing consciousness and having just that happen.
"It's just a few stingers. And if they are dangerous, I doubt monster poison is on the list of things doctors can help with any way."
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 1:35 pm
Despite how much Zia was trying to play the tough girl who could handle it, and trying to downplay the seriousness of the situation, Pascal heard the break in her voice. She may have been capable of handling things life threw her way (and life threw a lot of s**t) but she wasn't invincible. It was the small glimse into her fears when she grabbed onto the side of his face to look him into the eye and make him promise he wouldn't take her to the hospital that proved it.
"I promise," he said, mostly to calm her down. If she suddenly stopped breathing because of poison, it didn't matter about the promise or whether or not the hospital had any antivenom, because he would call 911 without a second guess. He would break a promise to save her life, and given he'd already powered up to save her life he had no doubts on the matter.
"Now," he said, kneeling down where the other stingers were. "It'll be easier if I remove these." He never should have let her rip the other one out the way she did. It could have damaged the skin more than necessary, and he happened to like that skin. He didn't give her any warning than that, carefully sliding the stingers out one at a time and repeating the process with the gauze and medical tape.
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 1:44 pm
Zia wasn't sure how seriously he was taking her request, but she had other things to focus on. She hated this and she wished he'd just take the band aid approach and get it over ********," She muttered and ended up grabbing her sweater to bury her face in and muffled the long string of f-bombs she was spewing for the painfully long seconds it took sliding those bastards out. The pressure eased some of the sting, but the thought of getting up ever again made her exhausted just thinking about it.
The second she felt the last one slide out, she let herself fall forward, bunched up sweater and face still smooshed together on the floor while she muffledly swore to every deity and god she could think of. Was it possible to be over dramatic after a monster attack? Zia didn't think so considering how badly giant youma beestings hurt.
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 1:59 pm
Now that Zia was all bandaged up, there was a sense of relief falling over Pascal's mind. Other than the damage that was already done, Zia wouldn't be able to cause anymore due to the stringers and her body could begin healing. She wasn't going to be able to go home in her condition, and that wasn't really any different than most weekends anyways.
"Here, I'll help you over to my bed. You can lay down and rest," he suggested, offering his body to her as support.
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 2:09 pm
There was a long moment of silence before Zia pushed herself up with a wince. "Couch," She snapped in response and took his hand in assistance in getting to her feet with a few more hisses and wincing. She leaned on him and her good ankle, glancing at the now gauzed up ugliness of the obnoxiously shallow and still somehow hurting like a b***h stings. And she couldn't resist pushing down on one of them as if to test how bad it was.
"Man I ******** hate this city," She bitched like she'd just been mugged or something as she limped within range of the couch and flopped back on it, making a face as the shock rattled through the more hurty parts of her body.
"You got anything to watch?" She asked after conceding she was very stuck until morning when she could call someone for a ride.
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 2:21 pm
The couch was closer than the bed, so it was a logical choice for an injured person. It wasn't very comfy though, or at least not better than his earlier suggestion. He wasn't going to argue about it if that's what she wanted and he only wanted to make her more comfortable in her state. He carefully sat her down at the couch and then sat next to her.
"I have a surplus of illegally downloaded television shows and movies at our fingertips," he laughed. He had a laptop and internet, but that was about the extent of his material belongings. It was surprising if anyone ever really looked deeply into it. He was an eighteen year old young man without CDs, DVDs, or really much of anything that typically found their way from childhood houses into their first apartments.
"Any hankerings?"
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 2:31 pm
Zia grinned, but if there was ever a way to get on her good side it was to not argue with her. "OH! Oh, man, Battlefield Earth. Have you seen that trainwreck? Best. Comedy. Ever."
Of course she could just go on and on about media consumption at any time but right now it was her indulgent subject change. I mean, the book is terrible. L. Ron Hubbard can't write for crap. But the movie... the movie is amazing. John Travolta is an alien villain. And he overacts his dreadlocked head off. And they end the invasion," She ended up leaning on his shoulder with both hands under her chin, "By destroying an entire planet with a single bomb... because the atmosphere was flammable... all... along."
If anyone was going to understand her extreme glee in the ridiculousness of this movie, it had to be Pascal. It had to be.
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