Welcome to Gaia! ::

Axton had been on his way home from his parent's house, left overs in hand and jacket collar turned up against the cold. When he'd headed out that morning it hadn't been this bad. There had been a few light flurries, but it had been fairly mild. Mild enough he hadn't bothered with a heavy coat, and now he was cursing his luck as wind sent swirling snow down across the back of his neck.

The only silver lining was that his new apartment was closer than the one closer to campus had been. What would have taken close to an hour before, now only took about thirty minutes, less if he hurried. Axton was hurrying.

Well, he was, until the sound of something large falling into the dumpster at the end of the alley he was crossing in front of, startling him into a stop. And a Yelp.

Adjusting his grip on the Tupperware he was holding, Axton lingered at the end of the alley, peering down towards the dumpster uneasily. "Ah, hello?" It could have been nothing, it could have been an animal, but he thought he heard an echo-y, muffled curse a second after the impact.

Axton stared at the other man speculatively as he walked slowly down the alley towards the dumpster he was currently trying to extract himself from. "Hi..." Tone implied a certain amount of justifiable wariness.

He kept quiet at the other man pulled himself free and stood, glancing up when a gesture indicated he should, then back again a second later, brows knitting subtly over his nose. "Yeah, it tends to do that when it snows. Why were you on the roof?" Because that just seemed like an incredibly reckless idea. Obviously.

"You could have killed yourself playing around up there." The clothing; fluffy and vaguely scifi, should have been a huge hint. It was, sort of, but this man didn't look like the senshi he had seen, and he didn't look like the captain that had stood watch with Amphitrite at the carnival.

Axton wasn't at all sure how to respond to that. It certainly didn't enhance credibility much. Hadn't that been what the kid had said? The one that had saved him from the bird monster? Something like that. It did help to clarify what he was dealing with here, or rather, clarified that he was dealing with someone with powers. Whether he was on Amphi's team, or with the ones that had been attacking the young woman, he wasn't yet sure of.

It made him a little leery, a little more eager to simply walk away.

He didn't get the chance.

The other man yelled for him to duck, and Axton moved automatically, dropping down into a crouch and edging towards the wall the dumpster was resting against. This wasn't the first time he'd been attacked by something.

It was, however, the first time he'd been attacked by something he couldn't see. "What the ******** is it?" All he could see was snow!

He knew what a youma was, but informing the other man of that was not in any way helpful. Instead, the young man stayed pressed up against the wall, eyes peeled, trying to pick out any movement in the building white around them. The last youma Axton had encountered had been frightening, yes, but more because it had been unexpected. A giant bird, it had been taken out by a kid dressed like a scarecrow.

This one. This one was an all out predator. Or at least what little Axton had seen of it looked like a predator. It slunk through the snow, blending seamlessly with the paleness around them.

The lantern the other man was holding looked, well, under normal circumstances it might have been fascinating, but here and now it just seemed a little useless. The snow leopard that appeared from no where to stalk between them and the snow was a lot more impressive.

Or terrifying.

"What the hell is going on?" Since when did things just appear?!

Knight. That wasn't a title Axton had heard yet. He wasn't sure what lide of the line they fell on, but if this was one was willing to help him get out of this unscathed, then he wasn't about to start passing judgement.

"Yeah, I'm just peachy." A sarcastic response that lacked any bite. Possibly a nervous reaction to a dire situation. His eyes kept tracking the snow leopard as it paced back and forth between them and the youma. Every instinct in his body told him to run, to hide. To get away from the stalking predator he could see, as well as the one he couldn't.

Then the leopard was screeching, jumping at something to one side that Axton couldn't make out, and the knight was took off hot on the thing's heels.

...Well that didn't bode well at all. Axton watched with a sense of dawning horror as the beast and the knight collided and rolled, resulting in the knight pinned on his back, weapon(?) rendered useless, and the youma bearing down on him. "s**t." It didn't look like he was having much luck leveraging the youma off him.

Axton was about to watch someone die. He had to do something. What was he supposed to do? What could he possibly do that wouldn't result in him dying alongside the knight? How would that help?

He got to his feet, leftovers forgotten on the snow covered pavement beside the wall. He should do something. He could just watch, and he couldn't run and leave him. He needed...something. A stick, a rock, something, anything! Anything that could have been used as a projectile. Anything that could have been used to distract the youma to give the knight a window of opportunity.

He was looking around when it appeared, a snowball. Just a snowball, with nothing unusual about it, save that it was...floating. "Come on, why is all the weird s**t happening to me?" Did he have a target on his back?

With a frustrated growl he grabbed the ball out of the hair with every intention of simply hurtling it as hard as he could at the side of the thing's face, and he did, except...

As his arm lowered, as the ball of snow exploded against the youma's head, it wasn't Axton standing in the alley anymore. instead, in his place, someone new.



Gloves covered his hands, foreign clothing covering arms and legs. Axton stared down at himself in a mix of awe and alarm.

Axton, no, Baikal...How do I know that? What the hell did it eve mean?

Baikal stared down at himself, the black and the blue, white fur fringe, the glow. It was quite the understandable shock, and he didn't have a damn clue what to make of the sudden change of attire or magical snowball that seemed to have been the cause of it. It felt like he'd touched a live wire, was still touching it, and it left him feeling charged, energized. It was distracting.

Which meant when the youma lunged, and the knight yelled, Baikal wasn't expecting it in the least. He jerked back and away as the other man wielded his lantern like a mace, back smacking into the alley wall as the thing exploded into a flurry of snow.

Despite having not really contributed much to the fight, the new page was out of breath. He stared down at the knight, Babylon, very obviously puzzled about the state he found himself in.

"Yeah, few more." Understatement. His tone was a little clipped, but that was probably the shock. He didn't comment on the snowball thing. It wasn't exactly like he'd planned it, so much as he'd simply reacted. it could have gone horribly wrong.