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With rain always came the general worry for some of his med packs, Tortuga packed them as water resistantly as he could but there was always that chance. Birds could have gotten into one of them, or rats. Someone could have found one, opened it, and just failed to reseal it properly. Besides plastic actually cracked pretty easily after being exposed to heat and sun for too long, unless its heavy duty stuff and the cheep med packs sure as s**t weren’t made of heavy duty stuff. Not that any of it really mattered since the page liked doing a random check of the various packs he stashed. Checking to see if they were there, if they had been used, if they had been damaged. Replacing them if need be. Simple bags, most no bigger then a small purse, with some bandages, duct tape, gauze, and anti bacterial ointment. All wrapped in, or sealed in, plastic and hidden. Hidden on roofs, alleys, behind power boxes, under trash cans, and there was even a few in the city park’s trees. Mostly scattered in his general stomping ground but there were a few elsewhere.

That's where he found himself that night. On a roof in a part of the city he rarely traversed. His head pressed against the brick stairwell giving the building roof access while his arm was stretched out behind an AC unit. His fingers straining to reach the pack that had slid just beyond reach. The page was muttering curses under his breath, annoyed as hell, wondering how it had made it all the way wedged back in there when he left it out by the edge. Even if he had been focusing on searching for auras he wouldn’t have sensed the negaverse… there were some rather large drawbacks to being a page, one of them was the range his sensing could reach. Everyone else seemed to have a much, much wider range.

Two things seemed to happen almost simultaneously, the first was a rather large clatter as something rattled across the roof. The noise had Tortuga startle in surprise, jerking his shoulder painfully. The second was the apparent appearance of a negaverser’s aura. With a muffled curse the page struggled to get his pinned arm out from between the brick and the ac unit, being unable to really defend oneself was bad as it could possibly be when confronted with a member of chaos. Atleast thats how he was taught since he really hadn’t run into many of the other fighters in a one on one situation. Groups yeah, that dragon lady was scary as ********, but not one on one. He really hadn’t been paying any attention to his surroundings if he missed that aura… a strong aura too.

Leaving some skin behind Tortuga yanked his arm free, hissing at the scrapes, and turned to eye the negaverser who had snuck up on him. A violet gaze wearly took in the other’s uniform, much better than his own fur trimmed vest and simple pants, and didn’t see a weapon. That didn’t mean squat other than maybe, just maybe, the music man… heh... Music Man… didn’t come here to fight. “Um, yeah. Thanks.” His eyes flicked down to the bag the guy was pushing closer then back up. “I just wanted to check on the contents,” he reached out and with a bit more force than was really required, pulled the bag away from the captain… it was a captain. Tortuga had ‘met’ a general before and this guy wasn’t as strong but he was stronger then a lieutenant, stronger than he was at the moment… at least as far as ‘magic’ went.

He kept an eye on the captain as long as it took for him to open the little medical pack. “s**t.” He tisked and muttered as he saw the entire contents soaked. Apparently the plastic didn’t hold and now everything was wet. “Damn it.” Not really paying attention to the negaverser, again, Tortuga dumped the little bag out. Gauze and bandages landed in sopping mess on the roof, a small roll of duct tape decided to go on a trip and rolled off into the darkness leaving behind a damp trail, just about the only thing still immediately usable was the antibacterial tube of ointment. “God, bloody a**, damn it.” He hated supplies going to waste.

Ah well. It is what it is, Tortuga thought as he took in the useless kit and shoved the wet gauze and bandages back into the little black bag. “What?” He glanced back at the captain, mentally wincing at forgetting the soft spoken guy was still there… his cousin would rip him a new one. A smile brightened his face as he chuckled, “No. I’m good, thanks though.” He drew a backpack over to his side and opened it up revealing a dozen little medpacs, all containing the same thing. “I’ve got plenty of supplies. That’s actually what I’m working on now, checking and resupplying these little medical packs I’ve been stashing around the city.” It was rather surprising and kind of funny that this ‘big bad’ man, this chaos tainted fighter, was offering him, Tortuga, an EMT, medical assistance.

“If you mean the scrapes,” He dusted off his arms not really worrying about the cuts, or the little bit of blood he smeared across his skin, “I’ll heal.” Maybe the guy meant his shoulder but Tortuga wasn’t going to bring it up if he wasn’t, besides it was fine. A bit sore but fine overall. Mentally shrugging the redhead grabbed one of the new packs, did a quick check of it, and slipped it behind the ac unit but well within reach. No need to get pinned behind it to fetch the pack. Pulling out the little black booklet he had been writing all the pack locations in, Tortuga made a notation. “So what brings you out Music Man? Gary, Indiana boring?” The page asked absently as he scribbled in the booklet. He didn’t expect the nega to get the references, it was a rather old musical after all, he honestly didn’t realize he had said it. At least not that way. He was just making small talk as he noted the date, time, location, and everything else in the book.

“Nah, I’ve done worse,” the knight absently commented as he finished up his notes just as the nega drove an arrow through fabric of his pants, causing him to glance up in surprise, his mouth opening, “What the hell-” His exclamation cut off suddenly when the snake decided to plunge his hand into Tortuga’s chest. He gasped and absently clutched at the arm sticking out of his chest, his eyes wide and fixated on the other’s blue eyes. Icy blue eyes. Eyes that seemed frozen and glacial. Tortuga’s mind seem to skip a bit, it failed to focus on the situation at hand, pardon the pun, even as pain kept him immobile.

He had seen eyes like that before. Cold eyes. Eyes empty of feeling, well mostly. In the case of his niece she hid behind her inference, using her iciness to keep others at bay. These eyes… these eyes just didn’t seem care. Like an arctic wind. Indifferent. What does he care that he is causing extreme pain in Tortuga. What does he care that with a deft twist of his hand he could kill the redhead. Remove his very soul from his body. The knight had been told about this particular skill of the negaverse. He had been warned about it, told to protect against it. He had sworn he would do so even if a part of him mentally scoffed at the idea.

A promise. He had promised! He couldn’t let it stand as it was. He couldn’t let this little…… music man… just have his way. Not if he was ever to face his cousins again. Mentally growling against the pain Tortuga let go of the guy’s wrist and instead grabbed a fist full of his jacket. In two moves, as fast as he could against the pain quite literally clawing at his chest, he yanked the nega captain closer and ripped his whistle off of his own neck. The chain breaking easily, even the pain from that dwarfing from that of having his starseed ‘tickled’. “Alto… This… b***h…” His words were stilted and broken, growled out between clenched teeth from what was basically kissing distance, but it didn’t stop him from raising the whistle to his lips and blowing. The high pitched sound carrying into the night. It hurt Tortuga’s ears but he bet Gary, Indiana probably hated it even more since it was right in his ear.

((Sounds something like this))

The whistle did its job, it got Gary to loosen his grip. Sadly the nega apparently still wanted to play and Tortuga was still trying to work off the extreme pain the seed fondling caused, his head impacting the roof didn’t help much either. There wasn’t much he could do when the music man shoved him into the roof top and pinned his whistle toting arm with his foot. The tar roofing dug into his bare arm, the nega’s boot digging into his wrist, only the leather wraps his uniform sported gave him a little bit of protection. “********… off!” He tried to shove the guys food off of his wrist but it just wasn’t budging. Apparently they were right, the stronger you become in your magic the stronger you were physically.

Tortuga didn’t get a chance to do much more before the b*****d slammed his foot against his wrist. The redhead yowled in pain, if he got out of this without a broken wrist he would be lucky. As it was the loud crack that the slamming of the foot caused did not bode well for his watch. A civilian addition to his magical gear since without his phone he had no bloody way of telling time.

With more luck than skill the page was able to unbalance the blue b*****d enough to shove the captain off of him. More than just a little pissed off the redhead yanked the arrow from his pants and climbed to his feet, his height putting him damn near six feet tall. The glass from his watch face tinkled softly as it fell to the rooftop even as he held the injured wrist close. He might not have a traditional knightly weapon but he did now have a arrow at least. With a growl the page lunged at the negaverser hoping to stab him with his own arrow. ******** tool needed to realize that Tortuga wasn’t someone he could just play around with. He might not have been gung ho to fight earlier but that was before the starseed groping and the wrist mashing. Now all the redhead wanted was to get his pound of flesh from Gary, Indiana.

Tortuga stumbled slightly when the arrow that had been clutched tightly in his hand suddenly disappeared. He mentally cursed, remembering that negaverse agents were able to summon or desummon their weapons at will. He had forgotten that little part of the ‘chaos for dummies’ lesson. At this point he was too damn close and the best he would get was a punch in but even that was denied when Gary delivered a sucker punch right to his solar plexus. There wasn’t anything Tortuga could do but just try to breath as his very diaphragm refused to work. Pain radiated out from the strike and he barely heard the words the ******** whispered to him over the ringing in his ears.

His body fell limply to the rooftop when the captain let him go and left him like so much trash, Tortuga not even able to do much more than weakly shift to his back where he lay gasping for breath. ******** that hurt. It hurt not only in body but in pride as well. The redheaded page didn’t think he was that much of a damn weakling but that was just disproved quite definitely. He was just laying there, regaining the ability to breath, staring up into the sky as the auras he was actually searching for got closer. Tortuga couldn’t even look at the stars since the city’s light pollution made it impossible except for the brightest ones, not that the intermittent cloud coverage helped any.

By the time his two ‘rescuers’ had arrived Tortuga could breath normally. Hell, he could have gotten up and left but he stayed there laying against the tar papered roof. Wallowing in his anger and annoyance at just how big of a failure he had been. It didn’t help any that his wrist seemed to throb in time to his heartbeat meaning that more damage had been done then just a broken watch. Hopefully just sprained and not broken. It took a bit of convincing and explanation to the duo that he was fine and no further help was necessary before he got the hell off that roof. Unable, and unwilling, to do anything else for the night Tortuga quickly dropped the knight magic and returned home as a normal civilian to ice and wrap his wrist. Thoughts of vengeance dogging his steps even as he made plans to work in some serious training into his already busy schedule. He sure as s**t didn’t want to be caught unaware like that again. ******** Gary, Indian.