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 Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2025 8:46 am
He knew enough, from Heliodor's deposition, to be dangerous. He knew the boy was taken en route from dance practice to his apartment. He knew Aelius was taken at night. He knew, from the phone records that the cats had pulled, the very location where Aelius sent his last text to Waru. And given the boy's testimony, he knew that hardly more than a few moments elapsed before two previously unknwon knights had dropped in on him and spirited him away to that ramshackle shithole.
He'd seen the Cybele knight, but not the Earth knight, when he came to rescue his boy. Seldom was there much to tell them apart when Faustite had only a description to go on, as many Earth knights were covered in the same symbols and the same colors and could truly only be differentiated by their weapons or personal features. Thus, finding this one was a bigger ******** than he would have liked, but he had some ideas for how to ferret her out from the crowds.
It was a rare night when Faustite crowned a youma with the laurels of melted shrapnel. It was likewise a difficult decision to forsake his power as a General-Sovereign to appear in Destiny City as one of their many youma — in this instance, an emaciated black dog with glowing yellow eyes and perpetually slavering jaws that could not shut around its own innumerable teeth. He knew only that this Earth knight had a staff, and a youma was an easy target for drawing out such a weapon. Surely it had more of a chance of enticing an Earth knight near than repulsing them with the aura of an officer.
There was just one small problem: Faustite had never been a dog before. He'd never had to walk with dog anatomy, so the first steps he tried to take ended with the dog youma flopping over into a pile of snow. A scattering of paws slipped and slid around for nearly a solid minute before the creature was back up on its feet, with cords of muscle standing taut as if it might defy gravity by force of will alone. From there, each step it took was as if it walked on a solid sheet of ice and expected to go skidding with the slightest falter.
To onlookers, it may have been funny were it not for the glowing eyes and the crown of burning laurels. But, by Faustite's measure, there wasn't much around in the deserted park. No more than the faint brush of a Page's signature, and that was reason enough to investigate.
Even if it meant grunting and panting while he tried to convince his four canid legs to cooperate.
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Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2025 2:31 pm
From a distance and in the darkness, she at first thought - with enough horror as it was - that she was witnessing some sort of rabid dog. But as soon as the horrific teeth and everything else wrong had registered, her thoughts had flown instead to Todd's warning about magical rabies. This was exactly the sort of thing she'd normally run from, glad for the extra speed that came of being powered up. But it was also exactly the sort of thing that she couldn't in good conscience leave to roam around unsupervised. Not in a park, at least - even at night, this felt like a bridge of duty-shirking too far even for Elaine, let alone for the Joyeuse Garde. The best move, perhaps, would be to try to lure it somewhere more secluded. She reasoned this with a twinge of doubt as to whether this was some sort of youma killdeer, miming its broken wing specifically for the purposes of fooling her. Nothing for it, really. She shadowed it for a time from as far away as she could, and then steeled herself, searching for an ounce of courage. She put herself in a convenient place for flight, half-shrouded in the shadow of a clump of trees - far enough away for a healthy headstart - and made a little whistling sound, waiting to see whether it dropped the act or continued lurching. Had she known what it was looking for, she might have tried harder to conceal the fact that she was all in green and crosses, or at least to make it more obvious that she carried no staff nor even any visible weapon. But she saw only a youma behaving strangely in a place where ideally it wouldn't be, and was - with the usual reluctance - attempting to do the right ring. "Hello, you hideous thing," she crooned softly.
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Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2025 10:38 pm
He knew the symbols on her outfit from anywhere. Knew them for how they hung broken off the remains of the old Knight Academy, lying splintered in the Rift. Knew them for how they adorned one of his most hated Earth knights. Could this have been the one that took Heliodor, then? It wasn't as if Earth knights were in great supply, roaming Destiny City in packs.
She spoke to him — to the youma — in the same manner that Faustite expected half of the White Moon spoke to Albite. Tone over diction, and tone was nothing but saccharine decoy. Faustite tried to speak, tried to see if this creature had the wherewithal known to humanoid youma, but only a rasping growl rattled out of its throat.
Unsurprising, perhaps. What good were lips for enunciation if the damned thing couldn't close its mouth? Better that he choose a different youma if he kept up these outings.
As it growled in stutters and starts, the black dog scramble-limped toward her like some newborn, Bambi-legged creature that might've gotten clipped by a fender on the highway. It stepped on a slightly larger rock, which sent it tumbling into a header, and the creature skidded on its forepaws before its great fangs sank into snow and dirt. Undeterred, however, it rose and shook itself off (nearly to the point of falling again) and tried to start after the beckoning knight.
Maybe those overblown flotation devices strapped to her chest would pull her down to his level and he could simply chew her face off. Then he could bring the face back to Heliodor for positive identification and move on from this sordid little nightmare.
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2025 1:35 pm
Joy had never been one for video games, and had therefore never heard of what it was to kite something. But she began to attempt kiting it, nonetheless, drawing just enough closer to hopefully lure it into following her. She had no real goal established, but her mind was racing to try and think of one. Maybe she could convince it to follow her long enough to fall off the nearby overpass and into the river. In its enfeebled state even getting it to fall into a good ditch might be enough to keep it sequestered from anyone it might want to prey on. A custodian closet on an outbuilding somewhere, if the doors would hold it (and she looked at its powerful shoulders and massive teeth, and doubted). "What's wrong, buddy?" she asked, still in the wheedling voice one might use for an actual stray dog in bad shape. "You eat something you shouldn't have?" She paused. "Or someone?" She did not have a visible staff, but maybe this didn't mean much, as she also didn't seem to have any weapon on her at all, oddly - her habit now being to wind the ribbon up around her hand to tuck it neatly away, where it may as well have been part of her sleeves. She took a hesitant step nearer, and then - entirely an act, herself now the killdeer with the lie of the broken wing - backed up hastily a few steps as if suddenly debating flight, to see whether it made an effort to lunge and follow.
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2025 6:56 pm
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Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2025 2:17 pm
Dodging blows had hitherto not gone well for Joy. But despite her appearance of nonchalance as she attempted to wheedle the youma into following her, Faustite would of course be unaware of the fact that Joy was always convinced - and had been since awakening - that anything that could try and eat her would. This was true of everything from slavering hellhounds with balance issues all the way up to apparently-benevolent yellow-skinned aliens teaching her drinking songs. She was, therefore, more on her guard than she looked. It was a little sad that her dodging was unsuccessful until her attacker was the equivalent of an angry drunk trying to figure out a unicycle for the first time, but a victory was a victory. She neatly and almost impressively side-stepped the lunge as if it had been telegraphed from a mile away. "Bad boy," she said, with a pouting expression. She then made an inexplicable face - Faustite also had no way of knowing that this was an instinctive reaction to scolding misbehavior with a pout on her face in any situation that she wasn't getting paid for, and this was probably for the best - and scuttled back several yards as speed, her skirts gathered in one hand. And then, in the same coaxing, sing-song tone: "Try it again, ********, you can't even pass a field DUI test and I've got four cups of espresso in me."
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Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2025 6:11 pm
If nothing else, this entire experience had taught him that he needed much more practice with quadrupeds (and their locomotion) before he next moonlighted as a youma. If they were built in the same proportions as humans, and had joints like humans, then walking on all fours would be no different than when he was a small child pretending to be a dog. Truly being a dog, in this instance, required an acquaintance with its anatomy that Faustite sorely lacked.
So he wasn't surprised that this knight wasn't caught in his overcrowded jaws. If she did, that would have said more about her total lack of self-preservation skills than it would have about Faustite's prowess with youma piloting.
Still, there was an instinctual crestfallen feeling that accompanied his jaws clamping down on thin air. As was the wont of any youma, this body had expected a snack. It expected energy. Faustite, a General-King half-belonging to youma at large, failed to provide that snack. It was at once mortifying and insulting.
Her taunt earned a snort. Sounded more bark than bite, too, particularly with the lack of obvious weapon on her. Never once did she swat at the dog, even after he tried to bite her, and that all but confirmed his suspicion. Though this one was an Earth knight, she was not the one that captured and held his subordinate.
Go ******** yourself, he tried to say, but it came out as a dog-adjacent series of whining grunts. Then he turned, or tried to turn and ended up falling on his side first, and began to amble-drag himself back toward where he started his search, and most notably, away from her.rejam omg i had a whole reply in mind in my head and then… forgot to respond to the rp orz. but fin!
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Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2025 6:41 pm
She made as if to pursue him, frustrated by this reversal of her progress in luring him away, but paused as she became aware of an approaching Chaos in the air - a literal term, but one that might become figurative if she lingered. She hesitated, torn and indecisive. But while she was prepared to do what was right in the service of a role she hadn't asked for, she was not prepared to simply throw herself into the jaws of certain defeat and danger any more than she'd been willing to throw herself into the youma's. She gathered up her skirts in one hand and got ready to book it. "Maybe if you're lucky they're coming to take you out behind the woodshed, Yeller," she hissed, more for her own satisfaction than anything else. And with that she bolted, notably away from both the stumbling youma and anyone else approaching who might take its side.
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