Welcome to Gaia! ::

Sleeping most of the daylight hours in whatever hole or roost she'd been near at dawn, left Grieve with the freedom of the evening and ability to stroll the city as herself. The glamour of a human civilian was useful, but even before her world fell, Grieve hated to be outside of power, vulnerable and so much weaker. It was too close to a prey state of existence.

Of course now, as a basic senshi once more, the difference wasn't exactly profound. Feeling something stronger than her that left the crackle of chaos teasing along her tongue, Grieve followed the signature to its source, fully intent on bullying whatever dared to try and be tougher than her.

Finding some sort of broken senshi sitting on a bench, looking small and weak with a sign and a plant next to them, Grieve's aggravated disgust turned to speculation. Within moments she was looming over them, looking like a demonic banana and smelling like a cave.

"What does it say?" She'd never bothered learning to read on her homeworld and wasn't about to start now.

Bending down, Grieve gave the sign an aggressive tap, talking slowly, "The words. On your sign. What do they say?" There were other questions too, like what was a little manikin like this doing with a sign on the side of a street at night? What brought him to this low point? Was the plant very delicious? What was that hole in his chest? Did he store things in there?

But he seemed the slow sort and if she had to ask two questions for every one answer, the urge to turn this into a more violent interrogation would be....well, it'd be very fun, actually. Grieve could use a fight. Was the sign asking for fights?

Ha!

Doubtful. She had it on good authority that signs almost always asked for money, and this one managed too look both underfed and like a soft pile of fresh noodles. But the one word that looked like a little face seemed somewhat more promising. She wanted to know what it meant.

A happy face? Well...that was either very disappointingly obvious, or the key to a new universal language based on pictographs and she had just learned it. Grieve chose the latter, and decided she wouldn't beat up the ******** up little senshi for not asking to fight her.

"Oh,ho! You didn't get a communicator from a ******** cat, huh?" Summoning up her own, she waved it around proudly. "Not everyone can bargain one of those furry little lordlings down to giving out the goods, heh." Grieve gave a croaking laugh, absolutely smug, and tapped aggressively on the screen to show off. "It has a transport button, to take us to space. You want I can I can take you."

Shoving both her face and the phone screen toward Niter, her voice lowered, dripping with imminent threat, "So what are you offering in return?"

Grieve had yet to hear the Earth phrase: cash, grass, or a**. But some things were universal.

"What a cheap little a**-licker," Grieve complained about whatever Mau had ripped the kid off. "My first one was like that too. But I was gonna die, so you know how it is. Sometimes you can get a meal out of life, and sometimes you're the meal."

She waited for him to search himself, and when he failed to remove the comfy top, guessed he wouldn't be paying with either his body or a fancy dance to go along with the feathers. Bit of a shame, but she had to admit it probably safer for him, all things and a thousand years considered.

The longer he took the more an air of shared poverty began to fill the area, which was both irritating and nostalgic. Finally, he offered up the potted plant and Grieve snatched it up without much thought, her fingers already hitting the transport icon. Plant under one arm and, with a scooping motion, the ******** up senshi under the other, Grieve took them all up into space.

Space which was sprawling derelict city, much like any he might've seen in games. The place where the beggars, the thieves, the assassins tended to gather in corners. The place where down and out adventurers, hidden nobility, and scam artists drank and lived. It was a thousand years old but timeless in its universal familiarity.

"Ringed City a shithole too?" Grieve gave a rough huh and began leading the boy down the street.

"What like its whole ******** history?" She gave him a concerned look. Was he one of those? The little book loving types? Then again, she'd been led, time to time, by such. But they were brave and hardworking. People to respect as leaders in their field of knowledge and skill. This one seemed more along the lines of the old group's Vec'an Alor. Soft, pretty, and utterly useless beyond a certain utility.

Still, it was an excuse to talk about the good old days, so she gave him another grin, "I can give you the short story. This world, Grieve, was a ******** of greed, desperation, and where the sweaty combination of the two gets you. This city, Churn, wasn't so much the a*****e of the world as it was the navel, siphoning out its scum and poison to the wretched wombs of the land. Spawning out monsters in the shape of men, as well as monsters in the shape of big ******** monsters."

They passed the wreckage of a stone building and she paused, nudged a piece of rubble with the toe of her boot, and said, "Utobric the Tolerable lived here. Always pretended to play nice in teh daylight, but he had a basement full of little wretches just like me, kept for parts n'pieces. Cut off my hair."

She spat on the building and moved on, "So once I got real power, I started to take his parts n'pieces. Once, maybe twice a month, sometimes only once a year, I'd knock him down and cut something out. A toe. A kidney. A random bit of meat off the bone. It's fun to keep people guessing, right?"

She laughed and reached out to tousle his hair.

"So like most worlds these days," Grieve gave a gruff sigh, for the first time seeming rather unhappy, but at least not dangerously so. "The universe used to be amazing. And fun. New worlds and adventures and people always just waiting for you to get there." She spat again, "Figures the most boring one, Earth, was what survived."

A rock full of dirt colored peoples and small beasts. Its magics all seemed limited to its senshi and thechaos that it hosted.

Seeing him flinch under her touch really restored her mood though, so she went on to muss up with hair with both hands for a moment before letting him off. For now.

"I'm the most useful thing in this shithole," she laughed, pointing at her chest. But after a moment she went on, admitting, "Resources are the only thing this place had going for it. The rare metals in the Sawtooth Mountains, the gems of the Briars, the vesale oils of the deep. But they're out of reach without using up lives like little matches in a storm. This world ain't nice, it don't allow anyone to touch its bits n'grab what may without some high ******** cost."

They came upon the remains of a large building, on the outer walls and in the rubble, it could be see that its exterior had, at one point, been covered in hundreds, maybe thousands of carved faces.

"Well," she began, voice soft and burry, like a massive cat, "...it's a great way to hide a body." It always had been, really. But now, dealing with both the wet work and lawfulness of Earth, it would be particularly handy. She gave Niter a particularly speculative look. But the broken boy wasn't an agent, and those were what the contract called for.

Glancing at the building and its many remains, she picked up one of the stone faces and held it to her own. They weren't alike at all. "The cult of Grieve the Undying. It was a popular one. Some of the cults just centered around one particular Grieve who saved their ******** grandparents or killed a storm or something. This one worshipped all the dead Grieves. Would have fights in our name, spill blood for our honor, take lives for our vengeance." A rasping laugh, "At least that's what they claimed. Most just lit a ******** candle once in awhile by my time."

Not much use for a lazy zealot.

"So tell me about agents."

And the tall senshi, all jagged teeth and broken horns, didn't repeat that this place was a good place to hide a body. Some facts just hung in the air, long after their first utterance.

"Ranks, range of abilities, common weapon types," Grieve listed off, tone and expression going from jovial murder tour to something much more professional. Even if she was still carrying a plant under one arm.

"Don't bother with anyone specific unless you want them dead, and in that case I'll offer you a discount." Her grin returned, all teeth. "Doesn't have to be chaos, even."