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 Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 10:16 pm
A small sound escaped Elle that was too quiet to really count as a whine or even a sigh. It was a small little pop hinting at the great length of upset that was occurring internally as she sat down at a park bench on her way to the bus stop.
Dressed in full pirate attire, she was coming home from a long event her employer had been hired to plan and after three hours of being dressed as a pirate and entertaining small children, she ended up dehydrated and with birthday cake frosting in her curls.
And this was distressing.
It had already dried in the isolated strand into a crusty and matted mess and although it was a small battle wound that wasn't nearly comparable to the fact she was in full costume, it was still an issue for someone who was exhausted enough to maybe not fully have their priorities in order, and the poor girl's hair was something of a prideful point.
Oblivious civilian, sitting duck.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:00 pm
Obvious civilian, sitting duck. Obvious civilian, youma bait. Maybe she noticed the smell first, for it was foul. And if not the smell, then perhaps the noise, which made the bus shelter around her rattle. And if not the noise, then she must have noticed the commotion when a creature made mostly of construction debris emerged from the bushes behind her, followed by Babylon Knight, who carried his lantern in one hand and a makeshift staff weapon made from rebar in the other. And if she still hadn't noticed that, then hopefully she noticed when Babylon shouted at her to, "GET UP AND RUN," before launching himself at the youma again, landing on its rocky shoulders, and swearing loudly about how he'd ******** that one up. He leapt again, away from the youma, glanced around, and hoped that the girl in the pirate costume had done as he said. Because this was about to get messy.
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Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 3:58 pm
Elle definitely took notice of the smell, which stopped her dainty little efforts to clean herself up so she could sniff at the open air and scrunch her nose in confusion.
Luckily the confusion was brief. At least the confusion about it's source, because once the noise and intimidating creature attention she didn't really care about the way the night smelled anymore.
She didn't even register Babylon's shout to run, she had already screeched at the top of her lungs as she jumped to her feet and moved the hell out of the way.
Not far enough out of the way since by the time he had jumped off the youma, she had found herself frozen there. Elle wasn't really an emotional sort of person but terror brought out indignity in everyone. Even if all she could do was grimace and stare at him with wide eyes.
She wanted to run, desperately, but her brain seemed to have clogged with what the hell is going on.
"What is that?" She had one of those voices that were just sort of quiet by default, but in this situation it came out almost like a whimpering whisper. "A-a... a dog?" A dog stuck in a bunch of not-dog?
She didn't know. Elle was a logical lady who did not have a mind primed for accepting the reality of monsters and knights.
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Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 5:08 pm
Babylon recovered from his leap neatly, spinning on the heels of his feet and leaping back towards the youma again. This time his blow struck true - the rebar sank deep between two concrete plates. The creature beneath his feet howled and writhed, but Babylon held fast, driving the pole deeper.The youma's cries of agony only got louder, until finally, its mass gave way beneath him, crumbling into dust. Babylon hopped off the pile of rubble, dusting his hands together. Oh, he realized. The civilian was still here, and she was gawking. "Uh," he said sheepishly. "Not a dog. Definitely not a dog. Just your friendly neighborhood monster hunter. So, uh, nothing to see here, head on home." On the bright side, no one was dead, which made this a successful youma chase. Even if the sidewalk was a bit torn up. Damn, he thought. Why was she just staring at him?
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Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 9:00 pm
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Passing seconds didn't seem to have any effect on the wide eyed, terrified stare that had frozen on Elle's face as she stood there stiffly with her mouth slightly agape while her cognitive functions tried to reboot and make sense of what happened.
Her hands moved first, before the rest of her found the ability to unlock. And the mostly moved to fiddle anxiously with her gloves before the rest of her came back online and she closed her mouth and averted her eyes.
"I'm sorry, that was rude," She said robotically. Although internally she kicked herself for the automatic reaction, attempting to mentally convince herself that while nine out of ten cases of unabashed staring was bad manners, certain cases like watching a man slay a monster in the street made it appropriately called for.
"You... dress up in costume... and hunt monsters?" She questioned through uneven breathing as she desperately tried to return to more normal functions, like not feeling like her heart was going to drop through her stomach. "I don't understand."
Which was her polite way of saying that was unbelievable and he was crazy, except there had totally been a monster, so there goes that theory.
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Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2014 9:52 am
"Yeah, pretty much," Babylon agreed awkwardly. It was an over-simplification, but it was possible that the girl in the pirate costume had already seen what qualified as too much, so telling her that he also teamed up with other people in costumes to fight an evil army and protect the world from the forces of darkness seemed right out. Just monsters was a lot to take in all at once. "So they just kind of, um, run amok?" he said, vanishing his lantern so he had his right hand free to scratch the back of his head. "And I clean them up? I'm basically a superhero." She looked pretty freaked out, he thought. Maybe trying to tell even a portion of the truth was wrong. "You know what? Don't worry about it. It's all taken care of and it's not going to hurt anyone else. Get on the next bus, go home, do your bedtime thing." He figured it probably involved a shower - was that cake in her hair? "Everything will be back to normal in the morning."
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Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 9:07 pm
Monsters running amok was just a rumor, she wanted to correct. But it clearly wasn't, because otherwise what had just been here? There wasn't even a corpse for evidence, it had simply turned to dust.
Elle glanced to Babylon's boots.
"You mean..." She was trying to piece together some logic to all this. "Like... the terrorist gangs? What did Tag Swagger call them..."
Honestly when it came to things like the differentiation between the warring terrorists in Destiny City Elle hadn't paid much attention to things like their names or their goals, only on how to stay alive and the best way to avoid getting caught up in an attack of some sort.
"Are you with them?"
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Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2014 2:32 pm
Babylon had been out of town for the worst of Tag Swagger's anti-senshi crusade, and he didn't make a habit out of watching the local news. He was familiar with the tendency of news outlets to call senshi terrorists, but seeing as he wasn't a senshi, he was going to distance himself from that as much as possible. "Uh, no," he said. "Definitely not a part of a terrorist gang." Which he hoped sounded believable, seeing as it was true. "I'm just, you know, a freelance monster hunter. Doing it as a civil service," he said nervously. He didn't recall ever dealing with a civilian like this before, and he wasn't sure exactly how to deal with her. "So, uh," he said nervously. "Bus should be here soon. Head on home, get cleaned up, and yeah. That's all there is to this."
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:59 pm
Liar. All Elle could think. But he had saved her life, and the exhaustion of comprehending that he had, from a monster, no less, was too much.
She was already more than willing to write this off as a hallucination of some sort.
"Right," She half whispered, staring at her boots. "...Thank you." And she turned around, hoping that once he was out of sight and out of mind he would have the courtesy to physically leave.
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Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:02 pm
Babylon assumed that her quiet acceptance of his instructions to go home, accompanied by her turning away from him, meant this interaction was over - and he was glad for it! It was better that civilians didn't ever become involved in Order and Chaos matters - experience dictated that such involvement really only ever ended in one of a few very limited outcomes, and if you wanted to stay out of the war yourself then ignorance was your best bet. With the youma defeated, the girl saved, and everything more or less wrapped up, he was ready to get back to patrol. So what if tonight was more or less a wash? He'd done some good. Whistling ever so slightly under his breath, the knight hurried off into the dark. Carneli Sorry I took so long to wrap this!
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