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

[tothelastbreath]

It is, very; and Allen's acknowledgement of it is immediate, instinctive, and... Embarrassing. A choked sound of surprise bubbles out of him, right as his thighs tense up in a coiled manner that quite plainly says he means to kick her. Thankfully, his brain catches up a second later to point out how much progress he's making all of a sudden, not to mention how much easier it's getting to breathe.

Oh. In that case.

Other than a quick downward glance, which doesn't show him much beyond a whole lot of water, his only reaction is to relax slightly in acceptance.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde registers the aborted kick, and the flat of her blade presses against the side of his thigh in a very polite warning - that would have been unwise on his part, given where she is and how difficult she is to get at from that angle.

(She may be mad - she is mad - but she's terribly clever.)

When they get near enough to the bank, she gives him a hard shove forwards to get him clear of the river's current (which doesn't seem to give her much trouble, though of course it wouldn't). She lets go in the process, rolling backwards in the water as he's propelled forward to the shore, and she'll surface when he's clear, knife in hand and blue-black eyes gleaming the way the rest of her does when the light catches on her flesh like mother of pearl.

[tothelastbreath]

He would thank her if he had a moment to spare, but with the horde of monkeys already leaping at him, there's barely time to shove himself on his feet and react.

A quick snap of his mantle sends the first few flying back. They crash more than land, each with a bone-deep crunch that leaves them twitching in their final death throes, and with the rest conveniently gathered on the bank, the fight ends swiftly. An oval shield with a cross in its center burns to life amidst the monkeys, disintegrating those unfortunate enough to be in direct contact with it. Others in its immediate vicinity are bisected by perpendicular slashes (again, crosses), before it vanishes with a final flare that takes out most of the mob. Spooked, the survivors turn tail and flee ― only to meet their end at Allen's claws.

Then it's all over, so fast it could almost be brutal if not for the unhappy twist of Allen's mouth when he surveys the bodies. He appears to shake himself out of it soon enough, turning instead to scan the river for whoever helped him earlier―

(Oh, wow.)

Going by the way snowy eyebrows are shooting straight into sopping wet bangs, this is Allen's first good look at Ilde (or any of her kind, for that matter). Dimly, he recalls snatches of stories told by sailors in shady taverns, usually when he's busy emptying someone else's pockets over a game of cards. They were typically long and wild and convoluted and drunken and, well, glorified old wives' tales, mostly.

Inaccurate too, seeing as none of them ever mentioned mermaids were blue.

"Ah... Thank you for earlier, Miss," He manages to say after a heartbeat, then in a display of good manners, falls into a crouch by the water so they're more or less on eye level, looking positively chagrined. "Sorry I tried to kick you. You caught me by surprise."

[rhinemaid]

Swimming closer to the bank - she'd waited to see if he was going to need any assistance, and then after she realized he wouldn't she'd stayed just to watch, taking a savage satisfaction in the lack of survivors - she rises further out of the water, shaking her hair out over her shoulders and shrugging. "And them, too." The monkeys didn't see her, either, and by the time they did, Allen was a little too preoccupying. It's nice to be able to help without making herself a target.

After a beat, she says, "You're welcome. My name is Ilde."

[tothelastbreath]

Even if Allen's childhood hadn't been one that left little room for fiction, no amount of storytelling could have prepared him for this. He tracks the ripple of her hair with something close to wonder, distracted by how the light almost seems to flow in blue-green shimmers over her face, neck, shoulders, and―

Erm. Oh. Well, that's one thing those sailors have always agreed upon.

Cue momentary panic as Allen is seized by the sudden, irrational urge to offer her his cowl. Irrational, not just because he knows it will merely serve to bog her down, but also because it's not something he can simply choose to remove from his person. Instead, he shifts subtly (he thinks) to block her (he hopes) from anyone else's view, gaze fixed very resolutely on her hairline.

"Mine's Allen Walker," He tells a bead of water collecting on her brow, voice even despite the reddening tips of his ears. "Can't say I don't wish circumstances were different, but it's nice to meet you, Miss Ilde. Do you live here?"

Whether he means here as in one of Baedal's "locals" or just the river, it's unclear. Probably both.

[rhinemaid]

Modesty is not really something that ever really took root in Ilde's family, and in retrospect the Featherstonehaugh inability to really grasp the concept probably has more to do with what they are (here, in the water, the light reflecting like she's something precious) than the other posited theory that her father is an idiot and the weakness is hereditary. Whatever the reason, it doesn't immediately occur to her why exactly Allen is moving around and staring at her forehead; she studies him for a moment with a puzzled look that...clears, after a moment, and she bites her lip not to laugh at him.

(Her teeth, now she gives an opportunity to get a look at them, are wickedly sharp. Naiads, like mermaids, are predators.)

After a moment of watching the poor little thing clutch his pearls, Ilde makes a small concession in the form of an illusory white scarf wound loosely around her breasts and tied in a knot behind her; good manners, she thinks, should be encouraged and rewarded. That and if he chokes on his own tongue now, after all that, it'd be some kind of ridiculous.

(This sort of thing is how she gets to qualify for 'the nice one' while lurking in the water, thinking ill of humans.)

"In the river?" she clarifies a beat later, dragging her tail through the water and breaking the surface with her fins, just barely. "No. Sometimes."

[tothelastbreath]

Where and when Allen's from, their definition of modesty's a tad more demanding than most. A scarf only barely begins to salvage it, but Allen's also aware it would be unfair of him, not to mention highly impractical, to hold everyone in Baedal to Victorian standards, least of all (what he still believes to be) a mermaid. So it is with plenty of gratitude when he looks her in the eye again, because he knows she doesn't have to. Don't mind him if he also looks a smidgen mortified, though (Ilde being considerate means Ilde noticed, oh god).

As it was with Alucard, the sight of her teeth surprises him slightly, but only in the 'they never told me this part' sort of way. Happens when you fight in a millenium-old war wherein big teeth are the least of anyone's troubles. If anything, it serves to reassure him. Between those teeth and the way he's seen her hold her knife, he feels he can safely assume she'll be fine on her own, despite the ongoing epidemic of monsters.

"Sometimes?" comes the curious reply, and really, he's doing an excellent job of not openly staring at what he's sure must be her tail under the surface, but it's hard. "Does that mean you can leave the water? I never knew that."

Sirens wail in the distance, making him cast a quick, harried look in their direction.

"Not that land is the best place to be right now."

[rhinemaid]

She laughs now (it gurgles like water - it's a bit of an unusual sound, like happy gargling, or more kindly like the rush of the river itself) more because of his charming grasp of the obvious than his continued mortification at her bare skin, the former seeming less likely to reinforce the desire for the earth to swallow him. "I grew up on an estate in Florence," she tells him, still laughing, "and I'd show you my feet if I weren't afraid you might hurt yourself." How would his Victorian sensibilities cope with naiad butts, etc. Instead, she makes a blithe gesture with one hand, "I'll wear clothes next time we meet."

It isn't actually necessary to wave her tail at him when she dives to go on, it's just funny.

[tothelastbreath]

It is an unusual sound. If asked to describe it later, Allen will be inclined to say it almost tickled. Maybe that's why he finds it oddly contagious, and as Ilde dives, she may hear him starting to laugh along with her, still kind of abashed, but not enough to keep him from making a quip at himself with a light call of, "I'd be much obliged, thank you."

He stays long enough to finally catch a proper look at her tail, then back to work he goes.

...He really will be keeping an eye out for her now, by the way, albeit in her Naiad form. Dressed. And sporting legs.