[B] The Cat Burgler (Snowball x Mels)

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Snowball's tail flickered as he walked along the street. His little gems in his tail sparkled as he walked and gave little cat like purrs in tune like he was humming a song. He was trying to seem normal. . . being a guardian cat was something difficult to always seem and act normal. He paused to peer into a window of an art gallery. Tonight he was in the downtown area looking for new senshi or even Knights of Polaris - while Polaris was gone someone needed to keep track of her knights!

He'd left Niflhel to his own devices since the Knight seemed occasionally bothered or sidetracked lately. Snowball sighed, he missed Polaris too but it was no reason to not talk to anyone or be stand offish. The cat's tail flicked as he saw a pretty painting of a fish in the window. He had to stop himself from going oooo when he noticed the food on the plates as well . . . . he was feed well and kept happy but he did . . . occasionally want to taste food from strangers. After all the grass was greener on the other side!

Romeo Wilco

 

[shibrogane]

So, having had a debrief on all the different little Destiny City idiosyncrasies he could expect via Babylon Knight, Irinei was not actually surprised to see a cat exhibiting what he considered an unusual amount of interest in one of the paintings hanging on the wall-facing window. He saw the star on the forehead and the gems in the tail, and his expression went flatter than a three day old can of Diet Coke. "Pardon me for a moment," he said, and on his way to the back entrance he picked up one of the little sashimi variety plates. He wasn't fond of raw fish himself, but... more flies with honey, as Americans said.

(The opposite was actually true; flies were attracted to some of the mineral content of vinegar, so to say that you would catch more flies with honey was actually wrong. It was only that vinegar, being a watery liquid, didn't tend to catch them and hold them.)

By the time he rounded the front of the building, Irinei was gone, and Melanite was in his place. He set the little plastic plate on the ground and, with a gentle kick that seemed too smooth to be unpracticed, sent it over to the white guardian cat.

"Guardian cat," he said, with a curl of his upper lip and a sarcastic quirk of his voice. His Russian accent only made the words seem more mocking. "I'm sorry, you'll find no children to corrupt here. This event is only for those over twenty-one."

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Snowball's ears flickered when he felt a sudden presence. Perhaps someone had been in the gallery and seen him. Of course this wasn't a pleasant seeming aura either as he turned to see Melanite. The Plate was kicked too him.

Snowball stood still when the plate reached his feet. He couldn't really at this point play dumb the other knew what he was. "I wasn't looking for anyone to corrupt." He said with a flick of the tail. "I was merely here to admire the art. Alas they do not let cats past the front door." Snowball's eyes meandered back towards the gallery, "Like the impressive painting of the fishes. The use of color and light is magnificent is it not?"

He was hoping that the other was maybe chatty? Something completely opposite of what he was exhibiting now. Snowball wasn't going to lie he was itching to take a bite from the sashimi plate. However, the cat wasn't sure it was . . . . safe? Well he wasn't sure it was safe for him to eat it. "The fish plate smells wonderful as well. This gallery must have excellent chefs." He was however willing to compliment them.

Romeo Wilco

 

[shibrogane]

What a shame. He had hoped to catch the cat off its guard, and it looked like the cat was not going to bite. Melanite crossed his arms, and glanced to the party inside. No one had noticed his absence yet--but they would by the end of the night, when the gallery would want to settle up its fees. "It's adequate," he said, looking at the fish painting. Of all the things to hang in the window! He had one on the other side of the door, of course, one of the ones less off-putting: a simple back view of a woman, her head turned. Indoors was where they'd stuck all the horrifying ones.

As always, the real horrors were out here.

"I'm sure the catering is excellent," he said. "The cover they charge for the attendees was high enough for it." He hadn't tried the sashimi--he actually hadn't eaten much at all, generally distrustful of food he hadn't personally seen prepared. Paranoid maybe, but why not be that way? There were threats everywhere, including in cats. "I used to like animals like you. Hard to believe. Why do you do it?"

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Snowball finally caved and took a small bite of the fish to taste it. It didn't smell funky surely a small bite would warn him if anything bad was in it. His tail twitched as he kept his eyes on Melanite, while he took a bite.

When he'd fully decided the fish was fine but still opting for small bites in case of being a kicked cat. . . "Define kid." He replied wondering what the other thought children were, obviously if they were chibi. Yeah he was concerned about them fighting but they were safer with powers than without right?

"I mean as far as normal senshi. . . and not chibi. . . though I'm unsure which you refer to when it seems negaverse agents can start out as young as our normal senshi. However, I've only awaken someone in order to save them from harm."

He paused, "I can in some instances not help someone help themselves and thusly it's of needed nature when they're awaken." He watched Mel as he took another small - small bite and chewed, "I mean . . . lets face it there's also a thing called Destiny, not the city but the fate. You sir seem to have been fated to meet the negaverse."

Romeo Wilco

 

[shibrogane]

Melanite's eyes flicked to the tail as it twitched, and he took a slow, deliberate step closer. His feet barely made a song on the concrete sidewalk, an impressive feat if his boots were as heavy as they looked (and they were; oh, they were). "A child," he said, voice deadpan and completely without affect. "A teenager. One who has not graduated secondary school." Destiny City apparently rolled in teenage agents of the Negaverse, but that wasn't so in St. Petersburg. He rather thought his home branch might be more representative than this one.

"What is the English saying," he asked, stopping alongside Snowball. "Two wrongs, no rights?" Something like that. He deliberately pressed a foot on top of the cat's furry tail, shifting his weight onto the limb without a single change in expression.

He reached up to brush his hair back from his face. "You paint a bright red target on their backs and you say it is merciful? The unawakened have no need to die. But those who know what they are, those we are ordered to target." A cat like this had awakened his little sister. Little Jana. She had been eighteen and she had died slowly. In agonies. Right before his eyes. "Knights, we will corrupt. They can be of use. But senshi? The deti? They cannot command youma. They cannot learn the deeper mysteries, cat. Senshi we kill, and you have set them up so!"

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Snowball's fur puffed with each step until the boy had stepped directly on his tail. Snowball let out a yowl and aimed claws for the man's leg to attempt to remove him.

"You my dear sir, are a pot calling the kettle black." Snowball hissed eyes narrowing when he finally managed to free himself, though he hurt his tail worse in the process. He moved away from the food tail curled protectively around him. Sully that, he wouldn't trust another negaverse officer when he was on the ground. "Your kind forces us. Your kind kills civilians with no mercy. How is that saving earth? How is that solving anything. The senshi are corrupted as well, have you not seen them or are you blind, deaf, and dumb?"

He wished he had a way for back up to come, or could use his human form though he was still unable to reach for it. "I have set no one up. Your kind, Chaos of all types calls for them to be awakened. The moment someone innocent is attacked by chaos be it a youma, officer or otherwise. They are in need of help, these innocents are not yours to use, abuse and execute as you please. Unless you and your kind wish to stand upon piles of bodies. Then, then what shall you have achieved?"

The cat moved up onto the window sill at least Melinite would have a harder time reaching his tail with that foot. His face was also turned away from the glass so they'd have a difficult time telling if the cat was talking or just meowing really stupidly. "I can tell you one thing. It won't be the utopia you're dreaming of."

Romeo Wilco

 

[shibrogane]

Forced them? That's rich. No one in this stupid fight made anyone do anything, not by Melanite's rhetoric. Force... that implied that there would be consequences for no one waking up. Force? If there were no senshi, the Negaverse would have nothing to fight. If Jana hadn't been a senshi, she would be alive right now. She would be going to her college in Paris and she would be happy. That ******** cat. That ******** Dione. "A cat like you killed Jana," he said. "She was eighteen years old and your kind made her a target."

He sneered, then. "Destiny City's Negaverse branch is corrupted, just like you are," he said. "They think it's fine to awaken children to this war, and to promote children to the highest ranks." Children! He heard her again, in his head: Irinei, go! He hadn't gone. It'd been too late. It always had been, and always would be, too late. "They are not representative of us."

Utopia was a pipe dream. He was Russian; he knew better than to ever hope for something as high-minded and floaty as utopia. All there was to hope for in this world was... was nothing. Nothing at all and less. "I dream of nothing," he said, reaching out to grab the cat around the throat. "Not anymore."

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"We don't kill." Snowball hissed, "Your kind does, your kind has a twisted sense of justice. Why kill innocent civilians, pull their starseeds out?" He'd heard from Niflhel what they do.

"They've done nothing, we wouldn't awaken if it wasn't for your kind." Snowball watched as he said they were not representative of 'us'. They truly were twisted. "Your sister was likely awakened because she had a star in her heart a pure light. Not the twisted sickness of lies."

Snowball's ears folded down as Mels tried to grab him. Dodging knowing that if the negaverse officer managed to pick him up the cat was done for. "You dream, you do. You must have a dream - or you wouldn't be trying to fight, unless you're a puppet a tool of who you fight for. A shell that's allowed something worse in. Is that you a puppet or shell?" The cat was trying to make him think. Maybe stop him from choking a poor helpless kitty to death.

Actually snowball really didn't want to use his forehead laser. Nor did he want to scratch the snot out of the young man but he would. "There's still hope."

Romeo Wilco

 

[shibrogane]

No one was innocent, but there were still moral lines. Melanite didn't argue for the Destiny City branch, which was--as far as he cared--a perfect example of the Negaverse's problem. "They wouldn't have hurt her if she hadn't been awoken," Melanite said. His voice never rose in volume; it stayed level, though strained. A star in her heart? Oh, indubitably, Jana had been a light to all who knew her, her joie de vivre had been utterly legendary in their social circle. He had protected her her whole life, except for the one time when it had truly, truly mattered.

"If she had not known what she was, they would have let her go," he said, and at those last three words his voice cracked, and he flung what had the potential to be a vicious kick at the cat. "That cat woke her up, she corrupted my Jana--" undoing eighteen years of work, years of trying to make sure Jana was happy, Jana was safe. "I. Dream. Of nothing."

Except a body, small and brunette, curled into his side like when they were children. Dreams so real that, when he woke, he looked for her--looked for patterns that might show where a girl of her height had rested--but it wasn't. It wasn't that kind of body.

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Snowball didn't dodge the kick quick enough and managed to be clipped in the hip. Giving a yelp of pain he twisted and landed sliding backwards a little bit.

He looked at Melanite, he was determined. Snowball frowned heavily as the other continued to insist that he dreamed of nothing. "So you're a puppet, you let chaos do as they please. Your Jana, would she have wanted that?" He asked.

Though the cat limped backwards hoping that maybe he could bolt and lose the other in the alleyway. If not he'd just have to use his laser and hope he could make it out. Snowball hated using his laser to prove a point, the cat sighed it began to look as if he had no choice. Even if he could stun the other long enough to get away - that in itself would be a blessing. Of course Snowball couldn't help but to at least try to talk some sense into the man. "I'm sorry you lost her, but it's not our fault. She was called and she knew her calling, just as you know how dangerous yours can be."

Romeo Wilco

 

[shibrogane]

"If that is what you want to call it," he said. He didn't know what Jana would've wanted; he didn't know that Jana had even known about any of this. Just a baby, Revaillite had said, dismissively. Barely a challenge for people of our caliber. If there had been a war, wouldn't Jana have confided in him? Wouldn't she have made some sort of... decision?

He couldn't stop the rictus scowl that rippled over his face as he stalked after the cat. "<********> her calling," he shouted, finally gaining the volume he'd been lacking. "<******** it! She was a child!" Melanite called his bowl to hand and threw it, as hard as he could, at the cat. They were calling attention to themselves now, and he knew he had less than no hope of being able to kill the cat in full view of the gallery behind them. But he at least wanted the thing gone. "And she was mine."

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Snowball watched as Mels seemed to take into consideration what was being said - maybe? Nope that was just false hope. Snowball ducked as he bowl was thrown at him.

He sighed moving out of view of the humans and aimed a laser for Melinite's leg. Hoping to stop him from following. "She might have been your sister. Things might could haven been different but you can't blame yourself."

Snowball was taking off though his head was hurting from using his laser so he was a little unsteady. "If you change your mind about who's to blame. I'll be happy to talk to you!" He called back as he tried to disappear down an alleyway a few blocks away and hoped that Mel didn't follow him.

romeo wilco

If you didn't want this to end this fast lemme know.

 

[shibrogane]

He didn't expect a ******** laser. That was bullshit, and he was going to--he was so mad he could spit--but he wasn't going to. He was going to go home. He was going leave this ******** place, and...

Jana. Jana.

Jana.

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SHORT WRAP BECAUSE I HAVE DRINK.