Prompt 12 (Cold Blooded): Pearly white snow is a common sight in Destiny City, so seeing, ivory lumps around the city really isn’t so strange. Until they move. The ones the size of an iguana, or the mountains of small, gecko-like lizards that travel together, probably aren’t that intimidating. The ones the size of a komodo dragon? Those are scary.
Though they range in size, they have a few things in common: sharp nails that let them climb up nearly any surface, sharp teeth that feel like being gnawed on by icicles, and scales so cold that it feels like being freezer-burned. All lizards seem to like sleeping in the snow, but the larger they are, the more solitary they travel. It isn’t uncommon to see one very large lizard, a handful of iguana-sized lizards, or two or three dozens (or more!) smaller lizards in a single grouping.
They seem to mind their own business unless they are hungry, or if you get too close. It’s just, it’s hard to avoid them when they look just like snow--or when they fall out of trees on top of you? These lizards love the snow, and they love chewing on people, too. Whether it’s out of hunger or agitation, if you make the mistake of getting too close to one, they will attack–even if unprovoked. They’re fast. They’re vicious. They have a strange habit of disappearing mid battle with a camouflage you just cannot detect.
It’s impossible to kill or capture one, and strangely enough there doesn’t seem to be any reports of these lizards anywhere. They seem like ordinary lizards, just very cold blooded. They don’t have an aura or seem to be magical, but something just isn’t adding up here, anyway.
Note: The lizard is not a youma but can be used as a battle requirement for a character. It can only be used as a battle if there are two powered characters involved; you cannot write a solo and count this as a battle, and your character must be powered to meet battle requirements. You can use the prompt for as many characters as you like and it will count as a battle requirement, however if you repeat the prompt with the same character, only the first time will be usable as a battle.
The winter holiday season in Destiny City constantly left much to be desired, and left Sable feeling distinctly cranky. Even if things were going otherwise well for her, the holiday malaise set in like clockwork, reminding her about how little it mattered to certain people in her life that she had something beautiful and fulfilling as Andesine—it didn’t matter because she couldn’t tell them, because they wouldn’t understand. In the unlikely event that her parents and siblings heard her out, they’d probably disappoint Sable immediately thereafter by asking when she was going to bring some nice girl home for Christmas.
Stupid question, really. Nice girls didn’t like Sable, and anymore, Sable didn’t like nice girls very much, either. Too many of the ones she’d met during her periodic nights off reminded her of Monoceros: one would be chubby and adorable like he’d been, another would have his starry-eyed idealism, and still another would tell jokes that never made Sable laugh because as soon as she heard them, she flared hot and felt like putting her fist through a window, while pretending that it was Monoceros’s face. (The very idea of that didn’t help her feel any better, if she were honest with herself, not least because: A., her extracurricular search for Monoceros had so far proven fruitless, and B., traitor though he was, she didn’t know if she would be able to punch him, if they wound up face-to-face with each other again.)
Better not to think about it.
Better to power up after a round of poking around some shops for a good gift to give her exchange partner (Adonis, a senshi whom she hadn’t met), and go looking to exceed her energy quota once again. Slinking through the alleys eventually brought her to Prospect Park, and as badly as her encounter with those godawful rabbits had gone last year, some part of Andesine hoped to find them again. They’d proven themselves a useful distraction for the sake of draining energy, and she appreciated them for it.
Exceeding her energy quotas would work for now, but she needed to be thinking bigger. She’d earned her promotion to Captain for her gumption in trying to starseed that super senshi outside Augusta Bank, when the other, skankier senshi in the green hair had popped a pair of princess wings. Now that she had more power, Andesine needed to be using it for more innovative ends.… She needed plans, schemes, something to prove that General Ashanite had been right to recommend her for promotion, that the Negaverse was not wrong to entrust her with that kind of responsibility.……
For now, though, distracting hapless idiots and draining their energy would suffice. Andesine hadn’t yet met a quota that didn’t date her to exceed it.
Instead of finding adorable little bunnies, however, Andesine tripped on an overgrown tree-root. As she fumbled and hit the ground, she gritted her teeth. Of course something like this would ******** happen. Of course would. Stumbling about it in a deeply unbecoming way, she managed to dislodge her foot—but as Andesine glanced back at the snowy ground, she couldn’t see the offending branch.
That didn’t track, she thought? If it protruded enough to trip her, then surely, she should have seen it sticking out of the ground?
And then she heard the bellow: low and rumbling, somewhere halfway between a croaking toad and a roll of thunder.
The noise startled her to her feet, and from that vantage point, she saw what she’d really tripped on: a tail, thick and long and obviously reptilian, with rough-looking scales that shone like polished ivory. Tracing her eyes up the curves of the tail, she took in the squat legs with their almost tentacle-looking digits, the full and muscular abdomen, the snout and neck-frills that reminded her of a full-grown iguana only much, much bigger (an image only enhanced by the chubby-looking cheeks and the loose skin dangling from the creature’s neck), and the beady eyes with their unfathomably black pupils surrounded by an ocean of brilliant gold.
Letting loose another bellowing noise, the creature fixed those horrible eyes right on Andesine. As its warning call reverberated through the cold, cold night, it shook its head in a gesture with clear intentions: Get lost before I bite.
genovianprince
Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2023 9:48 am
Stribor loved the winter snow. The cold bit at his nose and ached in his bones, but he loved it all the same. The world was so much softer—and so much prettier—draped in a blanket of soft white that glistened, quieted the sounds of the city, and brought joy to his heart.
His fur had changed for the winter, as it usually did, the grays of his ears and feet shifting to their own soft white color. The shedding had been quite annoying, though, and he felt awful about the hair all over the place in Lianli's home. The deshedding tools he'd purchased advertised as gentle for rabbits had done what they could, but it wasn't enough.
He hummed as he made his way through the city, enjoying the walk and keeping an ear out for trouble.
Good thing, too, because he heard a horrific monstrous noise and scrambled as fast as he could over to—ah, hells, it was an Agent. But she was still being attacked by something. One of those curious lizards that were hanging around these days.
A big one, too.
He rushed in with half a shout, sliding to one knee at the Agent's side and kicking a face full of snow at the lizard with the other in the same motion. He grasped one of the Agent's arms and yanked her upwards and back as he rose back up to his feet.
"Did it get you?" he asked, eyes and ears still trained on the lizard.
The approach of a White Moon aura went entirely unnoticed; Andesine was too fixated on the lizard in front of her. Although its movements indicated that she needed to run—the way it shook its head indicated that it considered itself above sharing the nearby ground, and probably also the entire park if it could get away with that—would any sudden movements set the thing off? Make it attack? Simply breathing felt dangerous, more so than Andesine had words for. Would that be too much motion?
The senshi who came crashing into the scene, it seemed, had no such compunctions. The shout from him startled Andesine enough that, by the time the senshi reached for her, she was already pushing herself up. Good thing he helped, though, and Andesine accepted his hand with a half-breathless, “Thanks.”
Politeness toward White Moon senshi wasn’t necessary. Behaving herself with the White Moon’s Knights likewise wasn’t necessary. Still, the gratitude escaped Andesine’s mouth before she could think to stop herself, more second-nature than anything. It took her another moment to process that the senshi had kicked snow in the lizard’s face—a brilliant use of feet that, with a glance down, Andesine noticed seemed to have fur……seemed to match with the rabbit ears on top of his head. One of the aliens she’d read about in the intelligence database, then.
—But, oh, he’d asked a question, hadn’t he? Shaking her head, Andesine started to say, “I just tripped over his—”
The lizard cut her off with a hack that sounded like it should’ve gone to urgent care. Coughing like a cat with a hairball, the weird reptile shook its head with no concern whatsoever for its own dignity or for continuing to seem threatening. Apparently, the snow wasn’t fun when it got in the thing’s face. Taking advantage of its distraction, Andesine called her meteor hammer to hand—but that made the lizard narrow its terrible, terrible eyes again. Scrambling inelegantly, it whipped itself around. It charged toward them, and more specifically, toward Andesine. Glinting under the light from the nearby streetlamps, the lizard’s claws should’ve made the shink! of audible sharpness as it raised one of its stumpy fore-limbs.
Thankfully, having to turn around made the lizard slower than it seemed to expect. Andesine had no trouble dodging aside. As the lizard collided, face-first, with the tree, she reached for the senshi’s wrist, intending to tug him away before the lizard decided to get a taste for fresh rabbit.
genovianprince
Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2023 1:28 pm
Stribor had barley a moment to be grateful the woman was alright, and then the lizard was attacking them again. Then she was the one pulling him from danger, tugging him from the lizard as it spun around after a moment of dazed confusion and launching itself at the space where Stribor had just been.
He huffed at it, shook his head, and cast his magic. "Gentle Whisper," he whispered, cautiously waiting a moment, and—
The lizard blinked and became briefly docile. Stribor wasn't sure how long that would last, though—such extreme aggression in animals usually coincided with resistance against his magic. Instinct was quite hard to overwrite.
"Best go," he said hurriedly to the Agent, still holding her hand, and geared up to sprint. He suspected if they got far enough away, perhaps several yards, it would settle down and leave them alone.
Quote:
Stribor speaks the name of his attack and a swirl of soft wind picks up around him, spreading a soft whisper into the ears of everyone in range—a quiet urge, a soft plea, in an indistinct voice. The need to be gentle hits them with it, forcing them to pause in any violent actions they may be committing and making them hesitate to commit more. This attack lasts for 25 seconds, has a radius of eight feet, and has three uses.
Andesine was ready to put her meteor hammer to use, fighting the lizard. What was the point of having an upgraded weapon—the sort of weapon befitting of a Negaverse Captain—if she didn’t use it? Granted, beating up on random winter lizard things that had no discernible White Moon or Dark Mirror aura? Might have counted as a waste of time and energy. Sometimes, Destiny City just conjured up strange beings for no reason other than to mess with people. Since there wasn’t a way to prove that the White Moon, Dark Mirror, or some other malcontents had been involved, maybe it was better to leave well enough alone.
In the moment, Andesine only cared about wanting the lizard-thing to make the first move. If it attacked them first, then she could beat the ever-living Hell out of it and nobody would be able to tell her that she’d done something wrong. Self-defense went a long, long way with most people, even people who thought the Negaverse was evil and thought that everyone in the Negaverse deserved no love or help or sympathy……but having her arguments all lined up in her mind ultimately proved useless.
Whatever this rabbit-boy was the senshi of, his magic soothed the beast entirely. Even having encountered some very strange and interesting senshi magic before, Andesine almost couldn’t believe what she was seeing. How much her mind was reeling made it easy for the senshi to tug her away from the giant lizard, and when they finally made it to the other side of the park, Andesine allowed herself a sigh of relief.
……Well. Relief and a little bit of grumpiness about what she knew she needed to say next.
“……Thank you for that,” she told the rabbit senshi, working very hard to keep her breaths even and her tone polite but not too cold. “Your magic seems like a good thing to have in Destiny City. Plenty of strange creatures like that show up all the time, and they aren’t always open to being reasoned with.”
Being polite to Order senshi felt, on a very deep level, So Utterly Wrong to Andesine. Moreover, for all the bunny-boy in front of her was blatantly not Monoceros, his figure and his soft demeanor reminded her of him, which reminded her that Monoceros had run away and abandoned their team—had abandoned General Ashanite, worst of all. Thoughts like that made her want to fight this bunny-boy since she hadn’t gotten to fight the lizard, not really……but she wouldn’t.
No, Andesine would keep taking her deep, even breaths, and maintain a cool head. What Monoceros had done wasn’t the rabbit-boy’s fault. He didn’t deserve to have that taken out on him. Moreover, perhaps treating him politely and decently could go a long way toward convincing him that all of the White Moon propaganda about the Negaverse was wrong and that he could do better for himself by throwing in with them.
genovianprince
Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2023 2:59 pm
Stribor breathed harshly for a long moment, trying to recover from their sprint. Even though he'd been in stasis, it seemed he'd gotten out of shape. He hoped he'd get used to this sort of thing again—war.
Gods, how horribly sad did that sound? Get used to war again!
He looked to Andesine and offered her a sweet smile. "Don't worry about it. I saw someone in need, and I helped. S'what you're supposed to do. Also, that lizard was horrible. Nice to meet you, by the way. I'm Stribor. Senshi of Gentleness."
His left ear bent in half, in an imitation of a bow, or perhaps a cheery greeting wave.
For a moment, Andesine blinked at the strange rabbit-senshi, entirely uncertain what to make of what was happening here. His ear seemed to be giving her a bow, which struck her as odd, but it was infinitely less confusing than the fact that he’d introduced himself to her just like that. Did…… Did normal White Moon senshi do that?
Hopefully, he’d only chalk her confusion up to: 1. some lingering sensation of reeling from the encounter with the lizard; and/or 2. Andesine never having seen a rabbit-boy before (not that she could claim complete ignorance of the space senshi who went around the White Moon’s ranks—definitely not with how many nights she’d spent reviewing others’ updates to the intel database, reading about space senshi because the database seemed so woefully out-of-date about Dark Mirror senshi other than Murikabushi, whom General-King Faustite had staked a claim on and given some degree of “don’t touch that, he’s mine” protection—but rabbit-senshi were new to Andesine regardless).
Still—the precedent that Stribor had set asked for more from Andesine, in order to maintain politeness. “Captain Andesine,” she said, nodding by way of bowing without needing to move too much (her longer skirt didn’t play nicely with curtsies, she’d noticed, and her jacket was often too stiff for bowing; it seemed better suited to salutes). “Horrible as the lizard was, it’s pretty typical of this town at this time of year. Do be careful, getting home and over the holiday. Look out for yourself and your people.”
Good advice for anybody in Destiny City, really, regardless of faction—and hopefully, offering it would keep Stribor open as a potential avenue for securing intel, in case the need ever presented itself.
genovianprince
Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2023 11:16 pm
For the briefest of moments, he was confused—why hadn't she returned the courtesy ear bend? And he refrained from smacking himself in the face, because obviously she wouldn't, she didn't have big bunny ears the way he did. Why that kept startling him, he didn't know.
"Typical, huh? Well, thanks for the tip. I'll keep an ear out for more lizards. Or worse," he added, rotating his ears for emphasis. "Have a good holiday yourself, Captain Andesine."
Perhaps it was insane to act this way towards someone he was clearly meant to be an enemy of, but if she ever wanted to leave the Negaverse, well. He wanted her to have a hand offered to her in friendship.
