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 Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 5:23 pm
Walking home was a nightmare.
Evan hated it. He hated doing anything after the sun set, and he hated doing anything while the sun was setting, and—actually, no, he hated being outside in general.
It just wasn't safe.
And he'd had enough 'not safe' run ins already this month that when he got the call his sort-of roomate wasn't going to be there to pick him up after he'd already been waiting for an hour and a half, he almost burst into tears.
And then he got mad at himself and managed to linger for another half hour, sniffling and shoving all his emotions as far down as he could. His throat burned and he hoped, desperately, that he'd get another text that there was a change in plans.
Except, there wasn't, and at two thirty in the morning he was trying to go to sleep in the pantry of the kitchen he worked in, and for the first time since he'd been there he was mad it was too full of food. And it was too loud to sleep in the kitchen of the bar anyway, even if there had been room.
By three, he could barely contain his emotions, but he sucked it up and started home.
He was careful, stuck to himself, and walked at a brisk pace. He stayed in safe areas and followed all the rules you were supposed to follow.
And even when he had to move away from the lights and the more populated area of his walk, things seemed like they were going well.
Even if he was blind to the shadow-lurking, snake like-youma slithering behind him.
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Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 10:07 pm
Three in the morning wasn't even all that late for Kerberos - he'd patrolled until four or five, some nights, because he had to be out and about and not just...sit in a dark apartment as Keiran and be sad. So he was jumping idly from roof to roof, until he felt the faint ticking of a youma and headed for that.
He particularly relished crushing them - they hadn't exactly reacted well to him when he was a corrupt, and now he had a chance for revenge. And when he got there, the shadow snake creature was menacing a civilian.
He narrowed his eyes and made a flying leap off the roof, landing just a few feet behind the snake and running forward. "Hey!" He called to the poor civilian. "Look out - behind you!"
Probably alarming, but that was actually kind of useful.
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Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:19 pm
Those were words Evan never wanted to hear, but if he'd been given the chance to consider it he'd probably be grateful that someone had been willing to shout them rather than let something bad happen without even giving him a chance.
Not that he'd had much.
The senshi's appearance was a minor distraction for the youma, who cocked its head to look at the youma and then twisted right back to attack its target and lunged.
Had Kerberos not warned the civilian, it would have bitten him right through the chest; it was probably aiming for his starseed. If youma were smart enough.
But Kerberos had given Evan a chance and with only the slightest glance of some monster behind him, he had started to run.
So, the youma missed any vital organs, but its sharp, black teeth still managed to sink right into the back of his upper thigh.
It hurt, and burned, but Evan didn't scream. He let out a startled grasp, but his leg went out from under him, caught in the maw of the youma, and even if he tried to tug it away, it wasn't letting go.
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Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2015 12:37 am
Kerberos had been hoping that if presented with a Senshi, the youma would divert its attention from the poor civilian. It didn't. "s**t," he said, under his breath, and then he started running - not quickly enough to prevent the creature sinking its teeth into the man's thigh, but he did get his foot on its tail.
He reached down and wrapped his hands around the snake-thing's torso, and his first instinct was to pull - but that might do more damage, with fangs embedded in a human being. So instead he squeezed, as hard as he could.
"Hey," he addressed the poor civilian,w ho had to be terrified as all hell, "do you think you can get your hand behind that thing's head? I think you might be able to make it let you go!" He thought he ght have seen that on something, once.
Maybe.
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Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 4:01 pm
"What?" Evan snapped, as if Kerberos had asked him to jump off a cliff.
…It felt like it was going to result in the same thing. Barely, he managed to piece together the words, and he was desperate to get the youma off of him. Even if now he was just starting to feel tired.
He hadn't hated snakes before, but he did now. Even as the youma kept its teeth sunken into his leg, it watched him with its cold, empty eyes.
Evan had no idea what Kerberos was talking bout with grabbing the back of its neck, so he reached behind it, released immediately (it felt disgusting and made his stomach churn), and then tried again. He couldn’t get a good grip and touching the thing just made his skin crawl.
So Evan tried to pinch and twist and when that didn't work he tried punching the thing in the back of the neck, and chopping at it and the youma twitched in Kerberos' arm but it didn’t let go.
"It's not working. Can't you do something?" he asked desperately; Hyperborea had been able to do make the youma disappear in a way he knew he couldn't, and he knew he was asking a lot from this stranger who was already trying.
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2015 11:15 pm
Okay, obviously this poor kid was too afraid - and probably too in pain - to be much help. Kerberos couldn't say that he would have been any more useful, as a civilian getting mauled by a monster.
The thing was unpleasant as all ******** under his hands, and he wished, not for the first time, for gloves. Or something. Handling gross snakey things was not high on his list of favorite things to do.
"I'm sorry," Kerberos said, honestly. He wasn't a Senshi built for combat - particularly not against youma - but he at least was more powerful than a civilian. He wrapped both hands around the thing, and started squeezing as hard as he could - an effort to strangle it to death.
He wasn't as strong as an officer or a Knight, but it was enough. The thing crumbled to dust, writhing desperately as it did.
With that dispensed of, Kerberos reached for his trailing skirt, starting to tear off a strip of cloth for a makeshift bandage. "Are you okay? Other than where it bit you, I mean?"
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Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2015 10:13 pm
Evan seemed incredibly shaken, and it took him a long few seconds to register both that the youma was gone—and that this stranger was speaking to him. In a split second he snapped out of it and nodded numbly. He was mostly okay, sans that bite which really hurt, but more than anything he just felt tired. Well—no, now he felt pain and numbness.
He wanted to just flop back and lay there, but he was too shaken to think much.
"…Thanks," he said; he was sheet white and did the only thing he could think to; he groped for his bag and pulled it closer, protectively.
Almost as if he were trying to defend himself, he said, "I didn't—I didn't even see it. It was moving so quietly. If it weren't for you, I—"
He faltered and hissed in pain when he tried to move; he could already tell that his leg was going to give him hell on the way home and reached a tentative hand towards where the youma had been biting him.
"—How do I thank you for that?"
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Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2015 10:30 pm
Kerberos finished tearing off a strip of cloth, and held it up. "Do you want me to bandage the wound?" He asked, delicately.
He waved off the thanks, and the beginnings of a defense. "It's my job. It's the least I can do, try and keep people safe." He had spent such a long time being the monster in the darkness himself - a prettier monster than the youma, to be sure, but a monster nonetheless. The smallest thing he could offer back tot he world was to try and save a civilian here or there, especially cute civilians.
('Not the time,' he told himself, because there was a time and a place to flirt - or to make naughty insinuations about appropriate gratitude - and now was not it.)
"Really, you don't need to thank me." The thought of accepting gratitude made him a little uncomfortable. "I didn't even do that much, somebody with better magic would've had that thing off you a lot quicker." Whoops, had he said too much? "Uh, I mean -" he stopped, sighed. "Just. There are better heroes out there than me, I guess?"
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Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2015 11:52 pm
Evan debated for a second if he wanted someone else wrapping things up, but the truth was that it was at too odd of an angle for him to do it himself. He couldn’t see it well enough to know if he'd done a good job, and he really didn't want to get stuck in the ER for three hours waiting for somebody else to look at him and poke and prod and ask questions, like they always did.
"There's always someone better," Evan said, trying to get a better look at his bite. "Doesn't mean you didn't still do a good thing. I don't care about someone with better magic doing something quicker. I'm alive. I mean, I hurt," he said—and he was shaking and just barely reaching the point where he could collect his thoughts. "But I'm going to get home tonight—probably—and that's enough for me. I—is it bad?" he asked, sounding afraid to hear the answer. He crooned his neck, trying to see the bite.
"I'm not going to have to go to the hospital, right? Please? If you can make sure I don't get there, I swear I'll do anything. But I hate that place, I hate it so much."
So much that his voice trembled almost as much as he did, and he looked dead set with the idea of avoiding it if he could.
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Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2015 9:45 pm
Kerberos flashed Evan a fairly warm smile. "You're sweet," he said, "and I told you, it's my job to help. Kinda." his fingers were careful on Evan's leg as he examined the injury, and once he was relatively assured of it, he looked back up at the poor scared civilian. He looked almost as terrified of the hospital as of the youma.
Kerberos could relate.
"I don't think you're gonna have to go to the hospital, but it might be a safe idea to get it checked out at like, an urgent care place or something? I am so not a doctor, at all." He said, and yet when he started wrapping the injury, it was with a casual practiced hand. He'd tended - clumsily, and later better - to a number of his own injuries, and the motions stuck.
"If you don't want to do that, just...make sure it stays clean, and change the bandages regularly." He paused, briefly. "Have you dealt with monsters before?" He'd seemed to pretty casually accept the existence of magic.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 9:03 am
Evan blinked. "Urgent—what? No, that's as bad as a hospital, I'll take care of it myself," he said a bit defensively. "Of course I know how to change bandages and keep a wound clean." He looked like he was ready to defend this further but just clammed up hastily and fumbled to backtrack to a previous topic. Which has hard to do when he was incredibly flustered from being called sweet and having some guys hand all over his leg.
He didn't even know how to thank him for fixing his leg so just sat there and chewed on his cheek for a minute before he cleared his throat and managed to drift back to the guy's question.
"…It's not the first time I've had a youma come after me. Or met one of you, uhm. You powered people. I don't know much, but I had some of it explained to me. I think the first one I met thought I was going into shock," he sort of had been, "so she just sort of told me as much as she could to ground me. It's hard to believe all of it, but. It's hard to say you're dreaming when…"
He looked down at his leg. "…I'm pretty sure I'll wake up with that tomorrow morning."
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Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 8:47 pm
"Okay," Kerberos said, raising his hands in mock-surrender. He stood up slowly and offered Evan a hand, to help him stand back up.
"Sorry you've dealt with them more than once," the Senshi said, "better than officers, though." Moderately. At least youma were stupid, most of the time. Officers had all the wonderful intelligence and malice of a pissed-off human. "At least, in my experience. I'm Kerberos, hi," because he really should have offered his name sooner.
"You're gonna wake up with that tomorrow, yeah." He nodded idly. "It's okay, I didn't really believe it either, at first." And then it had completely wrecked his life. But this poor, scared civilian didn't need to know that.
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Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2016 12:06 am
Evan seemed to appreciate the hand he was offered, and though he did not immediately take it, it took him only a few seconds before he decided that he wanted the help. He reached out and gripped Kerberos' hand with as much strength as he could manage before he heaved himself up.
"Hi," he said after an awkward few seconds of wobbling on his feet as he tried to regain his balance. "I'm Evan. It's nice to meet you. Uhm. And thank you. What's an officer? …Some fancy…youma…monster thing?"
He couldn’t really imagine anything worse, and a part of him really didn't want to know…
But he hated feeling like an absolute idiot and liked to pretend that knowing things made him more prepared to handle said things.
He liked to pretend that knowing would save him from said things.
Usually it just gave him nightmares, though.
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2016 1:34 am
Kerberos nodded. "It's nice to meet you too," he said. "And really, it's not - I'm happy to help." Balancing the scales, and all.
He ran a hand through his hair. "Um. s**t, man." Kerberos laughed faintly. "An officer is a person. Corrupted by the same thing that makes youma, but still a person, so on the one hand, you can maybe talk to them? On the other hand some of them are just, you know, ********, and utterly unreasonable." That seemed a fair enough explanation. "They'll be wearing really fancy military-ish uniforms, in dark colors, and carrying some kind of weapon, and really just if you see one, get yourself somewhere else."
For about fifty different reasons, none of which Kerberos wanted to see happen to some poor sweet kid in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 11:48 pm
Evan didn't seem to know if an Officer being a human was a good or bad thing; he nodded slowly. He already had an aversion to military and uniformed officers, so theoretically staying away from someone in a fancy military uniform shouldn’t be any more difficult than what he was already doing.
"Oh," he said, but seemed to waver on the word.
"I'll try to do that then, thank you."
He was grateful—and while he didn't sound like it, it was obvious to say that he was just still a bit shaken about the actual information. He was tired, and cranky, and was already youma chow once tonight; he just wanted to be home—and safe.
He tested his weight on his leg and decided that it wasn't so unbearable that he couldn’t walk. Carefully, he took a few steps forward and decided that as long as he didn't run into another youma he would probably be okay.
Probably. Maybe.
Honestly, he was probably going to go home and cry, but he didn't want to show this stranger—who was so calm and collected—what a wreck he was.
He was still shaking when he forced himself to articulate a response. "So, uhm, I guess I should head home now, I don't want to take up much more of your time. I'm sure you're busy—and you probably have more people to go save and I don't want to keep you from them. I'll, uhm, you know. Try to stay out of trouble. I might just, ah, you know…stay inside…forever."
His voice had tapered into an uncertain whisper; he looked at Kerberos sheepishly—almost as if he were asking for permission to start heading home.
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