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]

Oop-well. That's certainly unusual.

... The fact that he zipped by in the water and thought he saw a girl, not that he's being hauled bodily around. The latter bit happens rather often, much to his displeasure.

Anyway.

He coughs and gasps in air when they break the surface, and blinks rapidly - of course he had his eyes open, to further the cause of not dying, and the sudden change to air vs water is a bit uncomfortable. "Ilde," he says, sounding a bit to one side of uncomfortably breathless, "I thought I recognized those eyes."

[rhinemaid]

The disapproving look has not quite dissipated; here in her natural habitat, she's far more at home than Balthier, but upon the opportunity for closer examination, she's certainly already been in a fight or three. With the monkeys, from the looks of the scratches left behind, though she's still sporting the remnants of her gunshot wound from the fog. (Katherine could smell her blood from it, earlier.)

"You have to stop doing this," she tells him, not quite as deadpan as usual, "Sonja and I can't be everywhere."

She nudges him with her tail, illustratively. Feet are useless.

[nojudge.livejournal.com]

"But you're so good at it," he counters, finally beginning to catch his breath properly, and even throwing in a rakish look that's almost a smile, in his typical fashion. "It'd be unmannerly of me to not let you show off, wouldn't you say?"

Ah, yes. Tail. Balthier ends up placing one hand on her shoulder to steady himself in the water - the current isn't quite so vicious, up on the surface, but he hasn't got one of those useful things. It means he's looking closer at her, and not at her inhuman features. "Why don't you let me rest for a moment, and I can take care of those for you."

Her wounds, he means. Perhaps she recalls him remarking, on their journey, that despite his rather impressive injuries, he'd be fine once they were in an area they were sure they could use magic in.

[rhinemaid]

"You're a gentleman," she informs him, "and in my experience, their manners are shit."

Her perspective on the world is lovely, thank you.

Still, she'd rather skip the likely infections, and after a moment she ducks under the water for her landmarks (so to speak) and pops up a second later to say, "Wrap your arms around my waist and take a deep breath."

There's a small dip to one side where the river curves, up ahead, and it'll give them enough shelter to pause safely for a few minutes, but she moves faster under the water than above it if she has a passenger.

[nojudge.livejournal.com]

"How dare you," he says, scandalized, eyes wide in jest, and then when she pops back up: "I'm a pirate."

Yes, he does take a breath.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde is still laughing at him when she dives again, but she doesn't waste time answering that she could be spending getting them out of the river. When they reach her little dip, she rolls sideways and shoves him toward the bank with her tail (was that really necessary - probably not) and shakes herself off in the water (she's not used to dragging other people around, even if she can do it) before she joins him.

The tail melts away into legs as she does, and the indistinct black mark that was high around one side of it becomes clear on her thigh - a tattoo of a ribbon tied like a garter, its knot dangling down the outside of her leg. There are little claw marks on both legs where one of the monkeys made the foolish mistake of attacking her lower half (she batted it out of the water and stabbed it in mid-air, which she's still a little pleased with herself for pulling off), and there are other marks, as well as her gunshot wound sluggishly bleeding again from all the exertion.

"You're like that princess in the movie," she tells him, finally, pushing herself up onto a wet rock. "Don't play with me, I can tell." Ilde, despite having spent most of her childhood in tiaras, is not much of a princess and unlike princesses is remarkably unconcerned with her own nudity.

[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.