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 Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2014 10:10 pm
So let them run, he told himself as he mounted the stairs. It's of no consequence. I will be gone soon enough; if nothing else, I will forever remain a ghost story for this fake apartment complex. Quenton might get a little more attention over the next couple of days, but I suppose his nose will be far too buried in books to take notice of it. Finals maybe, or papers to grade. I don't care.
These stairs have gotten far too steep. The creature groaned as each step was taken with the burden of leaden limbs. Thus far not many lingered outside their apartments this late at night; his casual skulking into the building yielded only a few scares.
Currently, a woman heading down with pastel blue earbuds hidden within blonde and brown ringlets caught sight of the beast. She gasped, stumbling backwards as she let fall the arm load of books she carried. Finally she sank to the ground in an effort to minimize her presence while she struggled to find her voice. She hardly let out a breath as the creature finally met the landing that she shared, offered her nary a second glance, and continued further toward the next floor. For a moment she sat in silence while her body quaked out the adrenaline of fear. And finally, once he pushed open the door exiting the stairs, he heard the scream that he expected upon first discovering the girl.
Another long trudge down the hall offered only a couple of curious students who left their humble chambers to seek out the fuss. One of them eyed him eerily from a threshold to the nearest apartment. "Quenton, right?" After receiving a nod, he retired indoors.
He started to speak shortly before he reached the familiar battered door. "Quenton, I haf' exciting news for you. I'm going on a trip. Open ze door; I'll tell you all about it." And you might want to make it fast, before word travels to security and they fill me full of holes. Or barbecue me. If that filthy cat keeps calling me a turkey, she'll have me thinking that the Negaverse intends to use me for its Christmas dinner.
"You better not be in ze shower," he mumbled as he entrusted the brunt of his weight to the doorframe.
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Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2014 11:09 pm
The scream, muffled as it was by separate floors and doors, came faint but true. In another time he would have assumed it was just residual movie sounds or music from one of the other apartments, but Quenton had been playing soldiers and psychopaths too long now to not recognize it for what it was. It drew his gaze up from his work at the kitchenette table towards the window, and a swift crossing to it to check if the origin was outside. It wasn't. Then there were voices in the hall. Or at least one stronger and toned for his own hearing, and he went to the door to meet the source as the other half-man made to lean. "If I were, I should hope you wise enough to know to just join. Come in." " 'Die Zeit ist da, zu sprechen klar und laut.' " Quenton shifted with the door he opened to leave space to pass by. " Möchten Sie gerne eine Tasse Kaffee?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2014 11:37 pm
The slip into german met with a half-lidded glance and a thin smirk. "Touché," he replied. You're using formal on purpose.
"I hope I'm interrupting something." Alois passed through the doorway more easily than most times, as for once the absence of a wing entailed far less mass to fit through a modest doorframe. He absconded with Quenton's arm, tugging briskly toward the kitchenette before changing his mind at the last moment and approaching the privacy screen instead. "It's never quite as rewarding when you're not studying or grading papers. Or petting that damnable failure of a mouser. I hope you got a better one. Your vermin problem here is inconceivable."
Alois continued to embellish the prior stories of encountering mice in Quenton's apartment until he reached one of the chairs angled toward the window. Finally he relinquished grasp of Quenton's hand to half-collapse, half-sit on the comfortable upholstery. He seemed to relax visibly as though he no longer needed to expend energy to perpetuate his existence. "I have a story to tell you, and it's going to be a long one. Wait... We should lay on the bed instead."
Collecting himself, he again stole away Quenton's hand to navigate the negligible distance between chair and mattress. Again he practically melted into the fabric, this time tugging Quenton along with him. And once he was certain that he was adequately padded with pillows and blankets, Alois proceeded to rest his cheek against Quenton's chest. A taloned hand snaked down the blonde's side, dipping just beneath the waistband to rest fingers comfortably against his hip. A heaved sigh of satisfaction identified the position as suitable. It's always too long before I smell sandalwood again. A shame that half-human monstrosities are regarded as so frightening and rare these days. Surely those still living in Destiny City have become acclimated to the apocalypse.
"I figured out a way to fix my body. For a long time now, I considered wholesale excision as the only viable route to looking human at least, but... Not only did it prove difficult to find someone capable of performing such a surgery, it was impossible to find someone willing. Purification hasn't worked, as you well know. No one has voiced any new and improved method for it either. But this... I think it might be the one means to cure myself of this youma parasite."
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 12:13 am
So it is, my lovely vermin, with you coming about. Or your pet corrupted. Not that they've seemed to make returns. Not that I'm going to let my guard down. Not that one had a great deal of choice as a civilian when a general took hold of limb to drag about a place. No coffee then.Not that he'd expected the other to say yes, given the play of it. Overgrown cat with wings, complete down to indecisiveness of which spot is best and were you interrupting something. It isn't any good if I'm not in the middle of work. Not that it hasn't been as easy to just trundle work along and put bruises into your shoulder for my continued, uninterrupted reading anyway. But Quenton settled easily into the hither and thither, then laying through what amounted to nesting before Alois finally stilled. A way that is no purification? His initial suspicions, even as he buried fingers into the black feathers of Alois' hair to pull in stress excision along his scalp went to some worse or furthering form of chaos' bent to follow the usual self-destructive bends his lover tended to in despair or 'fun'. He offered no voice to those. "Tell me. And what is the price of this solution."
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 12:32 am
"Some time ago, before I met you, I encountered a peculiar woman by the name of Zirconia. She is... a different sort, being that she is not entirely human either. She is a cat, who can also become a woman. It sounds like an anime geek's wet dream, but it is nonetheless true." The kneading of hair prompted Alois to close his eyes during the telling.
"I expect the intricacies of the implications this story provides will be altogether superfluous for my point. While I progress, consider everything I say as truth and try not to focus on the scientific details necessary for a thorough understanding of the topic. Now... There are more cats similar to Zirconia, but she is unique of her kind in that she does not hail from this dimension. I found out that she managed to send her soul across the barrier between our worlds - that is, our dimensions - and that soul settled into a host body. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that host body did not bear the same likeness to her real body - though I couldn't tell you what that might look like. Effectively, she is two people living within the same confines - a bona fide body snatcher.
"I thought about looking into it for a while, and I tried, but I couldn't make any progress so I abandoned the effort entirely. However, just recently I encountered her again on the way to break into a morgue. Well. Visit it." Lids opened only to glance toward Quenton suspiciously.
"I wasn't going to steal any bodies, and I don't think Zirconia was looking for a... Gently used exterior."
Clearing his throat, Alois carried on. "During this time, we raided some of the morgue drawers and she discovered a man that contained within him some kind of strange, golden crystal. She seemed excited about it before she informed us that the crystal promptly drove the man mad, and later added that more fragments of the damnable thing likely existed in other bodies. Mass hysteria implications aside, the crystal held significant power in other aspects - I believe she referred to it as her ticket home. And that... Is where my interest started.
"It wasn't until I met the woman that she had rambled about that I really thought about the extent of what that crystal might do. Apparently the one who lives in the other dimension, Cassandra, wants this golden crystal back. And Zirconia, naturally, wants to give it to her - and to cross the barrier back to her home. However... If I were to abscond with this crystal and trade it to Cassandra, I may be able to bargain my way into a brand new body.
"The price... Is that I will leave this place. Forever."
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