Unknown Territory (Open)

[Vespyr]

ooc: continued from a thread between Jaq (Vespyr’s NPC) and Saul on the private Rogues board… thought i might bring this thread back from the dead.

Mind if i cut in?

---

The foreigner sat on the roof with his pipe and his thoughts for a few hours, but it didn’t feel like very long at all. Eventually he lowered his pensive gaze back to the cityscape and peered into the few streets that crossed through Rogues territory. He could hear, faintly, footsteps. The man’s hackles rose instinctively and he turned toward the sound, which came from behind him.

And there they were. Two human silhouettes crossed Atlantic Avenue on 27th street, crossing the border into Rogue territory. Jaq immediately tensed and stared with golden eyes of a hawk, as the two individuals made their way toward the Boneyard.

. . .

If Saul had followed him and was able to keep up, he’d track the man for about a block until they reached California Avenue. There, across the street, was the Boneyard; formerly known as Long Beach Cemetery. Jaq waited in the black shadows of the alleyway he’d cut through from Walton Street, the most direct route—literally a straight line—to the cemetery. But he wasn’t waiting for Saul, and he wasn’t paying any attention to the two figures beyond the cemetery gates.

He was listening to the sound of rapidly approaching dogs’ paws thudding heavily on the pavement a block away. Two of Tah’s dogs were barreling hungrily toward the intruders, only reassuring Jaq that the two silhouettes he saw didn’t belong in Rogues territory. Even though it was nighttime and he’d only caught a glimpse of them before, there were several glaring clues that gave them away: first and foremost, Jaq had watched them cross the border from the outside where no one but civilians and Barker’s soldiers inhabited; secondly, Tah’s hunting dogs had caught wind of their foreign scent like bloodthirsty sharks; and third, most significantly, the silhouettes were female. There were only four females in all of Rogues, including Vespyr. One of them was blind, and the other two had drastically different statures than the female figures Jaq observed.

Jaq’s brow furrowed as he watched the intruders murder Tah’s hunting dogs, his yellow eyes glaring at the offense. Despite the boy’s impatience with him he still considered Tah a friend, and made a mental note to bring the dogs’ bodies home to the Puppykeeper when he’d finished taking down the two female trespassers.

The intruding pair had begun to quarrel with each other. Now was the time to move in. Turning to Saul, if he was there, Jaq nodded toward the cemetery and moved out silently into the moonlight. As he approached the cemetery’s open gate, he glanced past the two girls for a moment, other movements catching his eye, and felt an almost foreign sense of pride as he realized that he hadn’t been the only one with keen enough eyes to notice the trespassers within minutes of their arrival. Around the entire perimeter of the Boneyard, crossing the streets like specters, climbing the fences in stealthy silence, crouching in the shadows of the moonlit trees, and closing in for the kill were at least a dozen other Rogues. There was going to be a massacre tonight.

Most of them spotted the hooded man, whose seniority they recognized, as he stalked with grave purpose through the cemetery gates, and they waited at a slight distance from the intruders. Most of them were too concealed in shadow to be noticed by anyone who didn’t already know they’d be there. The trespassers were surrounded, but they probably wouldn’t know it. Seemingly oblivious to whose territory they’d wandered onto and presumably too distracted quarreling with each other to notice the faintly shifting shadows all around them, they would now have nowhere to run.

When he’d come within twenty feet of the girls, Jaq stopped. Without a care he realized that the one facing away from him was shirtless, and the one who might have been able to see him coming had a baseball bat. Neither detail interested him. His palms slid over the handles of the helsara sedai, the twin elemental blades he kept sheathed at his hips at all times. They slid out into the moonlight, glinting unwelcomingly to the trespassers.

[/blockquote]

SPOILER: Click to show

This is a map of Rogues territory with relevant landmarks shown. It seems you’ve paid a visit to Long Beach Cemetery. Around here, we call it the Boneyard. It’s where we leave all the unburied corpses of our meals victims to rot.

[/size]

[Saul Kelly]

Saul shook his head at Jaq. In a low, hushed voice he insisted "No, I am coming with you." The boy followed quickly, leaving no time to pull his ill-fitting shoes back on, though he found it less noticeable to walk over rubble now than the last time he had attempted it barefoot. The nervous and tired boy tread quietly, following the foreigner's lead as they moved with stealth through the streets.

At Jaq's stall across the street from the boneyard, Saul watched curiously as two dogs made their way to the silhouetted figures of two small women. A smile curled at his lips excitedly, eyes alive in anticipation for the ensuing fight. But his victor didn't succeed, and his brow knitted in confusion, smile falling, as the bodies of the dogs hit the floor. Such small things shouldn't have won so quickly, and they certainly shouldn't have killed the beasts. Saul looked down to Jaq for reassurance, but found none. Instead, the other silently informed him of their intentions, and Saul gave a solemn nod in understanding.

While it had been a mere few weeks since he had himself been caught trespassing on Rogues territory, Saul had been made plenty aware that few who stepped onto their turf were recruited, and that most were done away with. Besides, these were women, and while the boy was fairly oblivious, even he had noticed that only Vespyr and three others made up the female population of the gang. He preferred it that way, in any case.

Saul trailed behind Jaq and hunched himself down so as not to be so obvious. While Jaq himself seemed to have abandoned his time as a shadow, Saul knew he was a fairly conspicuous moving object when standing at his full height. Blue eyes darted around as the subtle movement in the darkness surrounding the cemetery came to his attention, and for a moment his heart swelled in anxiety until he remembered that he was not one of the targets.

The boy halted along with Jaq, straightening up to be 6'3", and towering over his companion. Saul's mouth hung open slightly, though only to showcase the tips of his particularly animalistic teeth that lined up on his top and bottom jaw. With that he stared down the red-haired girl who was facing the men, though the look would be fairly unreadable to her.

[Mariska]

Mariska roared out in frustration at Fox's dodging of her attacks, growing more furious and fuming with each passing moment, though with each semi-successful strike a sense of victory sunk its claws into her brain, allowing her validation in her rage-fueled temper tantrum. Entirely self assured as her heavy bat swung down on Fox, her ego - and gut - was severely bruised as the other girl's foot knocked into her.

Falling to the ground, the wind knocked out of her, the yellow-eyed girl sat bewildered for a split second, wondering how her advantage had been turned against her. Scrambling back to her feet, Mariska again raised her bat, taking up her wide, albeit weaker stance once more. Before she could attempt to strike, however, motion a dozen or so yards ahead of her caught the girl's attention. Sighing rather audibly, she shifted her gaze between the men and Fox before shouting out angrily to nobody in particular "And who are THESE Assholes?!" Looking down at Fox, assuming the girl was still on the floor, she asked "More friends of yours?", her voice thick with impatient sarcasm.

Her glance went back up to look at the men, focusing in on the taller one behind the one brandishing his knives. "And what are YOU looking at?" she hissed, obviously not knowing when to shut her mouth, and knowing when she was at a disadvantage.

(The new posting order will be as follows: Fox, Jaq, Saul, Mariska. Cheers, and good luck.)[/i]

[Fox]

Fox winced. She couldn't help it.

They smelt like her.

But that wasn't the first thing that happened, of course.

Fox had been hoping that her strike would land on Mariska. Hoping, of course, that she wouldn't end up with smashed bone. Hope apparently worked, because knocked to her rear was the girl. Not bad. Fox reacted instantly, wincing as she used her bruising right arm to pull herself upright. The left came into play as soon as the weight was off of it, thankfully not too damaged. It made pulling herself upright into a pained crouch easier. She was about to defend herself from the rising girl again..... Then her brain processed a new scent just as the yellow-eyed (and rather violent) nuisance shouted angrily, gaze fixed behind Fox.

"And who are THESE Assholes?!"

Fox spun around without hesitation. Someone was behind her. She'd been less aware, losing herself to the impulses of Vulpine (her style of combat), but her awareness snapped back. With it came the flood of information her senses had been frantically screaming at her. Pain, more acute and more abrupt. Coming from her wounded left arm, the slowly bruising right, the slash on her chest. Common sense, use the damn glass and screw trying to not hurt the idiot girl! Sound, the light footfalls of someone behind her. Scent, the scent of newcomers. The scent of her. That scent was everywhere. Shit, even on the dogs! Of course. Just her luck, the dogs were hers. But worst of all, that sixth sense. That one was infuriating.
They were surrounded.
And the beings around them wanted blood.

Her blood.
That same blood that seeped down her undeniably male chest. That blood that dripped fresh and free from her left arm around the small piece of ironic shattered glass embedded in the wound.
Not a dozen yards in front of her was a killer, his blades gleaming in the moonlight.

"Shut up, girl, don't you see it? They're HERS."

Fox's voice was a low, warning hiss. She didn't take her eye off the killer. That was, until she met his yellow eyes. She immediately lowered her own, the yellowed orb slipping back to hazel as she acknowledged his dominance. Falling back into habit, she picked up the corpse of the small dog, carrying it tenderly until she was about two yards from the man- no, boy holding the blades. Gently, Fox placed the corpse at his feet, ignoring the loose fur sticking to her bloody chest. She knew she had placed herself within easy range of the slender killer. She understood that. But the dog, to some small degree, carried his scent as well. meaning he had a tie to the canine. She had murdered it, it would be disrespectful to attempt to ignore the fact. She didn't lift her gaze, keeping the eye fixed below his chest. She literally had about a 10% chance of getting out of here alive. And that upset her. But she kept her voice level as she spoke.

"Your territory. Your rules. I won't run. And I won't die."

One might ask why Fox was being so submissive. Why she wasn't baring her fangs in defiance and leaping in to the attack. One might also not know or understand a single thing about Fox.
When it came to a pack, your place had to be earned. You couldn't just expect to be listened to or respected, or even allowed to live. In lean times such as these, packs had been known to brutally slaughter any loner who set just one paw in their territory, even going so far as to devour the intruder alive. Fox had seen it happen. If she showed too much weakness, they'd devour her. Too much strength, they'd slaughter her. Walking a fine line had never been her forte, but now it didn't matter how good she was. She had to do it, or she'd die.
She wasn't going to die.

(Go away for 2 days and suddenly this dead thread gets popular. Just when I get too light-headed to even stand. You all are scheming. I know it.)

[Vespyr]

Denied

---

Jaq didn’t speak a word. His eyes glinted faintly with cold moonlight beneath the dark shadow of his hood, leaving only the piercing yellow hues visible in the darkness above his stern, scarred lips. He could plainly see that the female attempted to assuage the situation, perhaps to make peace, but peace was not a word in the vocabulary of the Rogues. Jaq knew the laws of nature as well as any and if it weren’t his blades that killed the girl, it would be someone else’s.

If anything, killing the girl quickly before any of the more ferocious Rogues got their hands on her would be a merciful act. Bringing her to the Commander was out of the question. If there was anything worse in store for the girl, it would be down in the basement where Vespyr did her dirtiest work.

With the female standing about two yards away from him, Jaq still hadn’t moved a muscle or even acknowledged the dead dog she’d placed at his feet. She wouldn’t look him in the eye, he noticed. It made no difference to the man. He made no response directly to her even when she spoke.

“Saul. Kill other one.”

Kicking the dog’s corpse to the side and out of the way with his right foot, Jaq lunged forward toward the shirtless female with his right arm and the curved blade raised over his head. With his weight planted on his left foot, he hacked downward from the intruder’s left shoulder to the right side of her waist. When the blade made contact with the girl’s body—or her arms, if she tried to block the attack—the glinting metal would flash for an instant with otherworldly light and feel unnaturally cold all of a sudden. Along the razor edge, jagged slivers of ice formed and would tear the flesh along the blade’s path, embedding themselves like a thousand shards of glass in the wound. (24 STR*)

As he slashed downward with his right, Jaq had flipped the blade in his left hand so that it emerged from the bottom of his fist, acting like a shield against his forearm which he held defensively, diagonally, in front of his face and neck.

---

Jaq’s stats:
* STR : 19 + 5 bonus from Helsara Sedai’s ‘Zefkstal’ power = 24
DEX : 22
CON : 24
INT : 7
WIS : 10
CHA : 10

Jaq’s stats and weaponry are detailed at the end of this post in the NPC section of Vespyr’s bio.

[Saul Kelly]

Saul held his tongue as the girl started on her rant, obviously irritated by her companion. It didn't matter to Saul, though. The feud between the women would likely be permanently over in a fairly short amount of time, and if it wasn't they would be luckier than they could ever hope to imagine.

The right corner of his mouth twitched upward slightly, waiting for his cue and waiting for the hunt to begin. They were in open space, which was much more fun, and the boy clearly had the advantage, bat or no bat. She was small, weak, and seemingly had no sense. That was fine and well for Saul, but it almost felt like shooting fish in a barrel.

“Saul. Kill other one.”[/color]

Oh well. Immediately after the words left the foreigner's lips, Saul sprung into action. The boy broke into a sprint, long legs thundering on the ground as his steps quickly swallowed the space between himself and the girl. His bare feet absorbed the shock of the contact with the ground and in what felt like a second, he was in front of the girl.

If she attempted to run, he would chase after her, his long steps allowing him to catch up to her nearly immediately.

If she attempted to swing the bat at him, he would catch it in his large right hand, wrapping his long fingers around the cold metal and would make an attempt to wrench it from her hands, throwing it off to the side if it was successful.

If she attempted to use the bat to block, the boy would immediately grab hold of it, simultaneously pulling it towards himself while his left leg would come up and thrust itself toward the girl's gut.

[Mariska]

"And who the fuck is HER?!" she asked, not heeding the warning by Fox, though it was understandable. Fox's foolishness had left them vulnerable to attack twice in the last few minutes, discounting their own attacks on each other. Mariska watched with contempt as Fox tried to appease the man whose eyes were oddly similar to hers. He didn't seem to care, and within seconds of her speaking, a odd accented sentence met the air. She couldn't quite make out what he said, but not a moment after he finished, the tall man behind him began barreling towards her with a disturbing sense of purpose.

For a brief, fleeting moment the hate that had her mind in a vice was replaced with fear as the tall man rocketed towards her. What did I do?! What do I do?! Fight. The moment ended fast, and her anger raged on as she prepared herself for what would ensue. As the man grew ever closer, being mere feet away, she sidestepped to the right slightly, gripping her bat at either end as she thrust up and forward towards the man's ribs. Before it hit its target though, she felt a premature impact as the man's strangely long hands grabbed hold of the weapon. Unable to react in time, the metal was torn from her hands, and thrown out of her vision as it clanked shallowly against any headstones that were in its path.

Mariska balled up her small right fist and sent a poorly formed jab towards Saul's throat before turning to the side and attempting to elbow hard into the man's lower gut.

If this was successful, now would be the first good look she got at the man. Even with the dim light of the moon she could tell something was not quite right about him. Even compared to Fox's, the boy's teeth were abnormally pointed and vaguely reminded her of puppy teeth. His ears, too, were pointed, and the nails on his hands as well as his feet were strange. Though most every abnormal feature on him was subtle [to a degree], she couldn't help but feel confused by it. She wouldn't let it distract her, though.

[Fox]

As the man (man? boy? it was hard to tell) lunged, Fox was already moving backwards. She hadn't just put the dog there as an offering. If something went wrong, she'd have a shield.

Something went wrong.

But she had just enough time to get out of the way, just enough to avoid being-

"SCHEIßE!"

The furious roar ripped from Fox's throat as she toppled backwards, barely keeping herself upright. Her hand pressed against the deep gash on her left forearm. It ran almost vertical, one short mark against the flesh rather than a long wound running up and down her arm. The angle she'd had the limb at to protect her torso had probably saved her life. But Fox didn't feel too grateful.

Her head dipped down to look at the wound, at the blood dripping through her fingers.

"You....... bastard."

Her head snapped back up, having only dipped for a second. Her eye was fixed on Jaq (known to her as "the male"), a feral yellow with fury.

Her arm burned.
There wasn't a way to explain it. Couldn't compare it to shards of glass in a wound, couldn't compare it to molten steel on your flesh. For a moment, Fox was lost in the past, remembering her days in the factory, the way her skin got so thick, like the men's, toughened from the burning metal...... Then strapped on that table, being cut up by that man......
That bastard.

Fox laughed. She couldn't help it. Just barely out of the other's range, more accident than intent, that lucky stumble.... She got a good look at her attacker, and she laughed.

"That's fuckin sadistic, man! You like that white-haired bitch? That why you smell so much like her?"

Nerve tensed, ready for the next attack, she held her left forearm clumsily. The blood made it difficult to get a good grip on the wound, to stop the flow. She didn't move her eyes from the man. She was ready to die. Hell, expecting it. But that didn't quench the unbearable fury that was roaring through her. How the FUCK could she die here? HERE?! She had to kill Loki..... She had to make sure he died slowly and horribly. Another laugh bubbled out of her chest.

"Tell your girl I'll be looking for those violet eyes in Hell."

(Sorry for the delay, I've been having a troop of Jamaican monkeys playing percussion in my head (loudly...) nonstop for almost 4 days now.)

[Vespyr]

Prolonging the inevitable

---

That was odd. Jaq furrowed his brow for a moment at the girl’s comment, undoubtedly referring to Vespyr. The intended insult, if there was one, was lost on him but the man wondered if this girl and Vespyr had met before, and if it would hold any significance in the face of her imminent death. Airing on the side of caution, he waved a beckoning hand at one of the Rogues trailing behind him. Gavin Kent, a tallish twenty-something with short brown hair and excitable blue eyes, stepped out of the shadow of a tree with his walkie-talkie ready.

"Hey, Commander!"
…
“What.”
“Little incident with some trespassers over at the Boneyard! One of ‘em mentioned you—friend of yours, maybe?”

For a long moment, the radio was apathetically silent. Then it clicked on again.

“I don’t keep friends.”
“Still, maybe you should drop by before things get boring!”
“Whatever,” the radio growled. “Hold until I get there.”

“Hey Jaq, wait up!” Gavin called out, his eyes wide and round in the moonlight. He looked about as excited as a kid on Christmas. Some of the shadowy figures behind him seemed to have disappeared, while others drifted nearer in interest.

Still expressionless as stone, Jaq glared down at the bleeding girl. The knife in his right hand steadily dripped a mixture of her blood and melting ice, losing its serrated edge. The man pointed a stern finger at the ground.

“Kneel. Hands and face to the ground.” he ordered, intending to keep the girl subjugated until Vespyr arrived. “Do not move or I do not wait.”

The foreigner flicked his yellow stare up at Saul and the other girl across the cemetery. He wouldn’t address the boy, assuming it didn’t matter what happened to the other one.

[Saul Kelly]

”gAK-“ was one of many air-restricted noises that the boy released as Mariska’s fist connected with his throat. Eyes bulging and watering, he had only a moment to recover before a sharp elbow stabbed into his gut. Doubled over, Saul reached his long left arm forward and would attempt to wrap his fingers around the girl’s ankle before pulling it towards him in the hopes of toppling her to the ground. If this was successful, he would pull her closer towards him.

The bunker in which he lived produced a unique smell, one that only Rogues possessed. Stale sweat and blood clung to the air, and the bodies of the recruits no matter how clean they managed to keep themselves. Of course, the men had become accustomed to the smell, and rarely noticed it. But, in all likelihood the salt-and-iron reek would be extremely noticeable, and probably even unbearable to the girl who was forcibly within the distance that the smell reached.

As the boy puller her closer, Saul reached down, attempting to grab the girl firmly by the bottom of her jaw and lift her to a standing position, and then, shifting the position of his hand so it wrapped along the top of her throat and jaw, he allowed her to dangle a few inches off of the ground. His free left hand guarded at her legs and arms, making sure that she would not lash out at him. Oh, what to do now…

[Mariska]

She had had success, if only briefly. Soon though, a cold, damp hand grabbed hold of her and pulled her leg out from under her. Falling directly onto her back, she tried to flop onto her stomach in a scramble to get away. But alas, the man's hand was going nowhere and through the ash and dirt and grime he pulled Mariska close to him. The stench of sweat, blood, and dirt filled her nostrils as she got even closer. Gagging slightly, she turned her face away, holding her breath.

"Get the fuck OFFA me!" Mariska creeched through a clamped nose, but Saul did not listen, and he didn't seem to care in any case. Soon she found herself being pulled up by her face as the dirty hand gripped her jaw and pulled her painfully to her feet. Mariska tore viciously at the man's hand, panicking and desperate to get away. Her feet quickly met no ground, and she hung there, thrashing and trying to get free.

"Let GO of me! What the fuck ARE you? Some kind of 'roid-raging elf?" she snarled as she focused her kicks towards Saul's stomach. "Weird inbreeding must go on around here" she would punctuate the sentence with a firm punch directed at the man's near face.

[Saul Kelly]

The man’s face began to distort from his previously placid expression into a grimace, and then a snarl as the enraged woman spat and hissed nonsense at him. Saul remained calm, blocking the bulk of her kicks until she made comment on his transformation, reopening the rather fresh wound to his ego. He didn’t shrink away though, and while his face burned red in embarrassment, the normally calm eyes burned with rage to match hers. The distinction between the two beings was that while they both were similarly fueled by hate at that given moment, Saul had no qualms about disposing of her and he also had the means to do it.

The girls hard punch clipped the man on the left side of his face, right on a bruise that had been given only hours prior. Roughly, Saul not only dropped the girl to the floor, but gave her some extra downward momentum and his hand thrust downward with her throat still wrapped in it. Before the girl would likely have time to react the visibly upset man would have dropped down onto his left knee, and also the girl, pinning her legs. With his right arm he would grab at her arms, holding them down as well while his left hand moved to the back of her head, grabbing a handful of hair firmly against the back of her skull.

The man got close to her, and left less than half a foot between their faces. His teeth were bared, and wide-blue eyes stared down into hers, hopefully communicating just how bad her situation had just gotten. Rather than utilize his teeth, they remained gritted. Muffled, quiet, and shakey, he spoke, struggling to control the volume of his voice.

”I…am not…an elf…” he paused, his expression flickering a moment to a wounded and almost childlike one before switching back. Quickly rising from his position, he pulled the girl up with him by her thick, red hair. A tombstone, not five feet from them, sat waiting and expectant, and Saul was not one to knowingly disappoint. The man dragged Mariska over to it before again attempting lift her to his height, by her hair as well as her throat, as his other hand moved to it. Once more he looked her dead in the eyes. Saul’s face twitched in irritation as the bare teeth returned. Getting close to her face again, he croaked out his parting statement to her. ”…I am a PERTHON[/i]”[/color] was all he croaked out, losing his control on the last word, not sure if he believe it himself.

Dropping to his knees at the base of the grave, the man would let go of Mariska’s throat, but continue the hold on her hair at the back of her head. Violent and vengeful, Saul would thrust the woman’s face into the worn cement of the tombstone repeatedly, and with each strike of her head onto the grave marker, he put more power behind the next one, and the next all the while struggling to contain the various screeches that escaped him. Blood spattered and sprayed his face, the grass, and poured down the already illegible headstone covering it in the familiar red. Panting and tired, Saul was satisfied he had done his job. Standing wearily to his feet, he reached down and grabbed the arms of the girl’s body and dragged her over next to Fox, turning the barely recognizable face towards the other girl.

Saul marched to Jaq’s side, though the foreigner might feel the irritation radiating off him as the distracted boy stared off into no where.

[Mariska]

Mariska crumpled to the floor as the man dropped her, and was given no time to rally before she felt his weight on top of her. She wriggled, desperate to get free, but it was no use and soon she was pinned. With nowhere to go, all the girl could do was look at the man and try to read him. And read him she did. Mariska realized that this wasn't going to end the way she had anticipated, and that without a miracle, her game was over. As she studied him, the hate still screaming in her electric-yellow eyes, she tried to pin point the exact moment this particular portion of her journey went wrong. Sure, ultimately Fox was the carrier of the most blame for this, but the other girl was occupied with her own harbinger of death at the moment. So, could she personally have done something different to have won this, to have escaped relatively unscathed? As the boy stammered out a sentence mere inches from her face, she got her answer.

Painfully she was hauled again to his feet, hovering a foot above the ground by her hair and throat. Mariska struggled against him again, but it was no use. The man's grip was strong, and with teeth like that the girl would't allow any more risk while she was so near his face. Her eyes were wide and fearful, unready for the end. She had so much left to do, and so many things left out of order. Indigo!Fuck! What would become of the rat if she died now? How would the Crows know where she went, or if she died? Would they come for her body? It wasn't time, no. No, it couldn't be.

The pressure on her throat was soon relieved as the dropped to the floor, but the pressure was soon replaced with excruciating pain as her face repeatedly met the rough concrete of the tombstone. Too shocked about the suddenness of the final attack, no noise escaped her, and she lost consciousness halfway through his bludgeoning. Rather quickly, she bled out, the majority of her facial features destroyed and her flesh raw. At the final blow to the headstone, she fell to the floor dead. The worries, fear, and pain she had felt only moments prior remained on her face in the yellow eyes that had now seemed to lose their spark, but she felt none of it now. No miracle had come.

As her body fell to the floor next to Fox, blood still pooling beneath her, the lifeless eyes, and one of the only features on her face that had stayed at least slightly in tact, seemed to stare at the other girl with the vague familiarity of hours prior when they had crossed paths in the alleyway, and maybe even a hint of blame. Soon, her body would grow cold as yet another confirmation that she had been forced to leave this place.

(apologies for screwing the posting order briefly. did a 2x thing so that we'd all be lined up at once for Vespyr's appearance :V )

[Fox]

Fox didn't spare a single glance for the dead girl.

Then again, she didn't lift her head, either.

The moment the girl's voice came over the radio, Fox froze. A mixture of apprehension, fear, and shock was racing through her veins, like some sort of unnatural high.

Clutching her bleeding arm, Fox fell to her knees.

She didn't like this position, kowtowing before some random vicious stranger, but her options weren't exactly abundant, and she didn't feel like dying today. Sending a small prayer of thanks up to her personal patron deity, the Trickster, Fox pressed her forehead to the ground. Her right arm still clutched the wounded left, trying to minimize the blood flow. Already the wound was clotting, healing process beginning. The rush Vulpine gave her stuck around a little while after a fight, energizing her cells to move faster, heal quicker. Useful little trick.

The muffled sounds of the nearby battle grew louder, quickly. Fox couldn't see most of it, but she could hear. She could hear the sickening sound of a face crunching under heavy blows. Heavy blows against stone. A tombstone, no doubt. Talk about ironic. The sound went on.

Fox tried to ignore it. She didn't like the memories it brought.

It wasn't the sound of the girl's body hitting the pavement that got her attention. It was the blood, pooling under Fox's battered legs, startling her into realization. She didn't look. She didn't have to. The heavy breathing from the other male, and the sounds of the beating, they made it pretty damn clear.

The girl was dead.

Fox didn't so much as blink. It wasn't a corpse she needed to focus on right now.

It was the white-hair, the panther.

Fox waited silently. There was no room for mistakes.

(I have no complaints. That was impressive. My only question is thus: Posting order remaining the same? Or shall you be dropping out, dead and all?)

[Vespyr]

Speak of the devil

---

"Hey, Commander!" the shrill static voice broke the silence in some dark, candlelit room somewhere deep in the Rogues territory. A single candle on a wooden desk flickered indifferently over the few objects in its wake of dim light, one of which was the radio; beside it, an ashtray. A dying cigarette sighed languid wisps of smoke into the cool air of the dark room, thinly spreading the scent of cloves across a subtly prevalent, warm aroma of fresh blood.

There were other objects lying on the wooden desk, haphazardly, as if recently used. Several hand tools of varying utility were arranged around a glistening organic shape about the size of a human head. Moments after the radio had spoken, a pair of metal forceps was returned quietly to its place on the desk where it rested patiently in its own small pool of sticky red substance. The facilitating hand, pale as death in the lowlight, moved for the walkie-talkie and seized it slowly with ensnaring black talons, depressing the talk button under its thumb.

“What.”
“Little incident with some trespassers over at the Boneyard! One of ‘em mentioned you—friend of yours, maybe?”

Vespyr stared into the darkest corner of the room, emotionless visage all but invisible beneath the black shadows cast by her hood, all except for the double-glint of red candlelight that pin-pointed where her dark violet eyes lay. The flickering points of demonic light narrowed slightly.

“I don’t keep friends.”
“Still, maybe you should drop by before things get boring!”
“Whatever,” Vespyr growled, uninterested. “Hold until I get there.”

She set the radio on the desk but remained otherwise rather still.

”The Boneyard,” she thought to herself, perhaps mumbling the words in near-silence.

”How convenient for the reapers.”

. . .

Once the girl had dropped to her knees and kept still, Jaq allowed his yellow gaze to shift past her, into the background where Saul was hastily making a mess of the other girl. No hint of emotion passed over the man’s scarred face when his protégé returned with the kill and dropped it beside the less bloody, still breathing female intruder. Silence ensued. The foreigner fixed his eyes on Saul and gave the boy a subtle nod, approving or simply acknowledging. No one spoke after that.

Minutes passed. Crickets hummed at their leisure and maggots burrowed in the bloated flesh of the festering, unburied corpses that littered the cemetery. A cool late-evening wind swept across the dead fields and carried the scent of blood and decay and left an ominous chill on the bare skin of every human standing motionless in the moonlight. It ran like gentle fingers through the thick mane of the dead girl on the ground, tugging curiously at a few strands of her hair. Slow-moving insects on tiny stilt-legs crept through the grass, and found the girl’s broken-open face like a ripe fruit freshly smashed on the ground.

The breeze stopped for a moment, and stopped playing with Mariska’s hair. Jaq had been staring past the girl, watching the silhouette of a wild deer picking its way indifferently through the grass at the far end of the cemetery, when suddenly the animal froze and lifted its antlered head high above its tense-muscled shoulders. The wind picked up again after that. The deer turned and trotted away somewhat hastily, as if it was unsure what exactly it was running from.

Jaq took the animal’s cue and panned his yellow gaze across the expanse of the dead fields, opposite of the direction in which the deer had absconded. Sure enough, some slender animal was moving toward them under the moonlight, its ears perked, tail high in the air. As it approached weaving through the headstones, Jaq could see the coy glint in the animal’s single amber eye, fixed on the two prisoners. The beast stalked onto the scene—a rather large russet-furred feline with an eye patch over its right eye—and stepped up to Jaq’s side. Fleesh flicked his gaze up to the man knowingly, and then returned eye to the single surviving intruder, sizing her up.

”Remind me why you couldn’t kill her yourself.”

The voice came from behind the kneeling girl, seemingly out of nowhere. She would feel the sole of a boot pressing into her spine, kicking her onto her side so Vespyr could get a better look, albeit a disinterested one. If the girl fell onto her side and looked up, she’d find a slender hooded silhouette looming above her, eclipsing the moonlight, faceless in the dark except for the faint glint of violet where her eyes should have been. The spectre’s arms were raised up, claws loosely gripping the long handle of a scythe that rested across her bony shoulders.

Vespyr simply stared, but she wasn't waiting for an answer, either from Gavin or the girl at her feet; the cold violet stare didn't even bother demanding a reason from the trespasser to let her live.