plot } the creatures descend.

[synergismus]

Who: Everyone!
What: Creatures descend!
Where: All across the city, although attacks will be most fervent at its heart.
When: Friday/Veerdi evening and into the week.
Notes: Slow and back-tagging is, as always, permitted. If you are confused, look at these two posts for more information.
Warnings: Violence, creepiness, swearing knowing these characters.

On Veerdi, the presence of the creatures reaches a fever pitch. Something has provoked them into launching an all-out assault, though it is one that begins slowly. The pipe-crawlers, generally harmless though they may be, are seen across homes in Baedal, sneaking up through the pipes and into bathtub drains or sinks. They come by the dozens, and their keening makes most homeowners nauseated--but it's their appearance that leads to a number of distressed Network calls.

This is just the distraction for the rest.

The call of the crawlers draws in the armored, sickly creatures with the tiny primates carried inside of it. They are inelegantly lumbering, but much faster than one might expect, and certainly hostile. They trudge across the city, barreling over anyone who gets in their path and leaving them half-crushed in the street. They're certainly unsettling in their obvious unhealthiness, and the disease-ridden animals they carry are downright vicious, especially once they escape (messily, bloodily) from their fleshy cage.

It's the birds that are the worst, though; the cleverest, and the cruelest.

These strange black birds are resistant to typical attacks and flying in large groups. They descend on pedestrians, picking at their eyes and faces, ready to rapidly tear flesh from bone until there's nothing left but skeletal remains. They fly out of range when they can, only to divebomb anyone who might think they've escaped.

Comments

[nojudge.livejournal.com]

It takes a lot for a man, soaking wet and so very manhandled naiad-handled, to be able to look completely in order and relaxed when chucked up onto the dirt. Balthier has skill. "This is positively hell on my leathers," he laments, and squeezes water from his sleeves and hair, elegant even now.

"I wouldn't dream of it." Playing, he means. "What's a movie?" The look he gives her is one of casual resignation - Earth mystifies him, and he's sure he doesn't like it, at this point, but he understands it is ever the norm.

(He knows what a movie is. Jack's told him. He's just being a pedantic bastard.)

[rhinemaid]

"Cheap entertainment," she says, shrugging - and given that she's got no way of knowing that he does know, one can safely presume that she's just like this. "As are, coincidentally, most men."

See how that works?

"I haven't seen one in years. Movies, not men. Are you going to make yourself useful?"

[nojudge.livejournal.com]

"So they're a much-loved institution, then? Imagine how pointless we'd be as expensive entertainment."

He knows, with the insight born of the rather mundane knack of merely being a well-traveled man, that this is not a coy act; there are two things about Ilde that are familiar, and they are things very unlike each other. One half picks slightly at the bitter scarring in his insides, beneath which he still sometimes rages about his father's madness.

'Madness', anyway.

"Patience, oh finned one, I am no mage. I just know a bit about everything, aside from movies." But he flexes his arms out anyway, trying to get a feel for what sort of spells he can cast at present. The energy from being hurled through the river replenished quite a bit, he imagines, but he's still feeling a little star-headed from the trip.

[rhinemaid]

'Oh finned one' earns him a fleeting smile, amused - everyone is giving her nicknames today. 'River-daughter' was a bit more respectful, mind you, but Boromir seemed terribly earnest in a way Balthier most assuredly does not. Rather than acknowledging it otherwise, though, she takes the time to clean and inspect her knife (stolen from a ruined museum, if you were curious, and she means to find another like it here), catalogue her injuries (minor, as long as they don't become infected), and keep a weather eye out for any of the likely suspects.

"In the story," she says, while he does that, "there's a princess who sneaks out of the palace into the city. I don't remember what she was doing, exactly, it's probably not important, there was a monkey. She sneaks out, and pretends she isn't a princess, and has an adventure."

[nojudge.livejournal.com]

"Ah, but there you have it. I was never a princess - nor a prince, mind - and I've never been eligible for either status."

Balthier still has his katana strapped to his back (which he isn't bothering checking because fresh water won't cock it up like salt water might, gods was he annoyed on that trip after falling overboard) and his guns (working with gunpowder and wrapped shot, still, nearly flint-lock but charmed against water damage), and he knows he'll likely not get sneaked up on, if only because he cast Libra on himself not long ago. Handy little thing.

"Though I imagine the biggest kink in your theory is that I'm not pretending at all."

He hums a little something, focusing, and reaches out his hand, eyes closed. It glows pale green, then white, and warm, barely-tangible bubbles of white healing magic spread out over the both of them. Balthier's bruises, muscles and ribs alike, melt into his personal biostandard for health, and the remaining energy that's split between them makes him feel alert and well-rested. For Ilde, she'll find at the very least, her physically wounds healed entirely.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde smoothes one hand over her abruptly much smoother skin where the wound on her side was, pleased, but she says, "You're a fucking pedant, Balthier," instead of something more appropriate, like 'thank you'.

[nojudge.livejournal.com]

"And you're a lovely woman," who is sitting naked in front of him and yet he hasn't even commented on it, isn't he nice? "But far be it from me to hold such a thing against you."

[rhinemaid]

In the tone of someone who can occasionally be very difficult when she wishes to, "I'm both lovely and right." He doesn't have to be pretending for the sake of her more general theory, even if she's only invested in it in the interests of always being a little too invested in her own cleverness. (And perhaps because maybe he'd get it-)

She leans forward against her knees, loosely wrapping her arms around them in a gesture that betrays how young she was when she was taken away and half-broken, her eyes still closely watching for the next threat. (There'll be another threat. This isn't over yet.)

After a beat, like she's mentally reviewed what he just said, she pauses and looks at him slightly blankly as she tries to decide what that means, anyway.

[nojudge.livejournal.com]

Recovered, Balthier smiles, and stands up, ready to haul himself up over the side and get back on land - and back into the fray. "I'm afraid being still around you for too long won't do," he tells her, and hops up over a rock. Leaning back, he gives her a bit of a lazy salute. "You'll figure out all my secrets. Thank you for the hand, Ilde."

[rhinemaid]

"I like secrets- fair trade." That's mostly a joke - in that while she does very much like to know other people's secrets, she does not expect to be paid in them for fishing people out of the river. (Although it might make life more interesting if she took up lifeguarding for people she doesn't actually like very much-)

"Don't fall in the river again," she advises, pushing off the rock into the water - her feet are replaced with fins before she's all the way under, but she keeps diving and she's swiftly out of sight.