Topic: The Verdict

Blep

Date: 2015-07-12 11:27 EST
Geiseric Valk's Domain, 5 July 2015

"Wiidabaddabatt!!! Bddrabbutt!" They looked like Squishables made from horrible albino bug-wolves. Round of body, fat of limb, the compound eyes of the Moggip glittered unblinking as they hounded after their quarry, a horde of eleven alternating between running, swinging from branches and bouncing between the trees like rubber balls, chattering in their strange baby-rasp voices. "Aiii haaate yooooooooh! Ddrrabbabap!"

Maika huffed as she ran, growling loudly through her teeth as she held the cramp that screamed from her side after hours of attempting to avoid the fat, yet speedy and persistent creatures dead set on tearing her to pieces with their square palms and thick, powerful fingers. The trees around her glowed internally, fluttering between a serene blue and aggressive flashes of orange, yellow and violet, as if attempting to distract her, slow her down for the Moggip to set upon her.

Ahead of her, a stream of clear, silvery water ran shallow in a deep creek bed, cutting a swath through the forest. Taking as deep of breaths as her aching body could manage, she squared herself off with one of the narrower parts of the bed, secured her starting stance, and took off in a sprint, focused almost entirely on that far patch of land. The trees around her flashed, making loud pops and bangs as she passed, yet too often fired a fraction of a second too late to meet with her eyes, leaving her view unobstructed. Her boots dug unto the black substrate beneath her as she kicked off her jump, limbs scrambling in the air until he made landfall at the ditch's edge and rolling herself up to stumble into something that resembled an upright position, one hand clutching at her side as she panted.

The Moggip as a mass stopped, save for two individuals, tumbling down the incline and into the stream, where their bodies seemed to inflate like balloons on hitting the fluid's surface. Left scrambling on their backs, they rolled down the stream, followed by their comrades and gargling out little pleas. "Noooh! Helpmeeeeh!" Their words were a bit desperate for how innocuous their situation was.

Free from pursuit, Maika stumbled around to look at where she had wound up, spying the first glimpse of civilization in the way of a blue stone staircase that ran in zig-zag along a cliff, towards a good sized door carved into the cliff's face. With her arms above her head, mousey brown hair stuck to her cheeks and uniform a wreck, she trudged toward the stairs; blearily blinking her murky green eyes and drawing upon her determination to start her climb, peppered as it was with the occasional collapse at the landings. The shrieks and growls of far-off creatures, however, made sure those rests were short.

Blep

Date: 2015-07-13 03:38 EST
Scatterman's Field, Southern Glen, 5 July 2015

Zofie wasn't exactly sure what to expect at the wrap party. She had spent the first part of her journey toward the Southern Glen affixed to the top of passing cars, then later through slow tumbles through the air in long leaps. Each upward pass bringing a hard strain of her eyes toward the blurry lights in the distance, and each landing brought the pulse of all the shapes and densities of the land around her, bringing her slowly, but surely, toward its site. She pinned her glasses to her nose with one finger during each hop as her acceleration changed, noting each moment whence they might fly off of her face. Her brain seemed to hum behind the input from her senses, leaving her to take a moment's stillness to shake the willies out of her limbs and begin her trek once more. A spiderweb-like tangle of cords and marbles fitted around her ankles and instep, glowing in acidic green atop the phosphorescent body paint that dipped here and there on her skin to give her a phantasmagorical outline in the dark. She had naught but two X's of nipple tape between her waist and her nose ring and glasses, yet from her waist splayed and swished a long, fluttering black skirt made from uneven strips and swaths of a various monochrome fabrics buckled into place beneath her navel, and a snug, strappy pair of bikini briefs beneath that. While tossing herself through the air, she had restrained her hair into a set of Princess Leia buns, leaving herself free from its tangle and whip.

As she stumbled upon the intricate geometry of the Geomantically-Engineered parking lot and the touch of more than the awkwardly reflected light of the twin moons, she took a deep, slow breath, phosphorescent-nailed fingers scrunching nervously while bare soles gripped at the grit and disruptive hum of the magic-infused rock. As she strolled, she let down one side of her hair, then the other, collecting it as one and fluffing it a firm, yet deliberate circle of her arms from behind her head and around toward her front. With a few more strums and shakes, she let the cascade of bright pink hair to settle around her shoulders, the strands nearest her skin gaining little stars of glow-paint from where they landed.

As Zofie drifted past the parking lot, she slowed her stride upon reaching the flamboyantly-dressed door security, all neon and metal as if the early-90s had been weaponized. They seemed to clash perfectly with the idyllic thickets of trees and rolling grassland, a jarring outer rim to the festivities, if not rituals held within their purview. One of the security team approached her; he was a reptilian fellow bearing charcoal-and-alabaster scales mixed with patches of orange and hot pink feathers on his forearms, the tip of his tail, around his upper legs and jutting back in a crest where his "hair" might have been. Slitted pupils ticked over to Zofie, who smiled a bit tensely as she fumbled in one of the pouches hidden in her skirt. "I uh... I have it in here, dude, hand to God." The reptilian lurched in a winding tilt, canting his head toward Zofie in silent communication, if some interest in seeing just how she might muck up the interaction. She gave his more aggressive impulses no satisfaction, however, as she produced both the holographic sigil on card stock that provided her image and information, as well as the gossamer invitation that seemed written in dragonfly wing. The former remained intact during its interactions, yet the invitation fizzled in the reptilian's hand, leading him to release a quiet whirr and nod in the affirmative for Zofie to pass. Not far from her, carriages, cars and mounts alike queued up in a bottleneck on reaching the security team, each one passing through the perimeter leading the invitations to float out of their hands and into the team member's before dissipating.

The distant huffs an sobs of a severe ass-kicking reached Zofie's ears as he walked, and a careful tilt of her head led her vision to a well-beaten, wine-soaked Rhenn through the horrible scraggle of beard and the swollen-shut left eye. As he turned and swung at the security officer, Zofie simply closed her eyes and let the cold turn of her shoulders leave whatever went through his mind for his own edification, at least until he landed head-first into an oak tree at 125 mph. The thump brought a tremble through Zofie's shoulders as she took a deep breath in, held, and exhaled as she continued forward.

From the entrance, Zofie padded into a grass field tamped down in the same method used to make crop circles back on Earth. In the center of each rested a circular platform whence cast-iron basins formed the braziers for hot coals and bonfires, raised and removed from the proximity of the grasses. The roofs above each rested on a rotating canopy, helping slow and disperse the heat and flame in the event that dry seeds wafting overhead might catch alight. Spread as tributaries between the fire pits were an interconnecting web of little landings and huts, some with little mini bars, some with prepared food, and others with seating around entertainers, illusionists and acrobats, storytellers and musicians alike.

She paused for a moment as she reached the steps to the platform, catching sight of a few of her coworkers and walking, with her head high and shoulders back to appear for all intents and purposes as the epitome of confidence, straight to the nearest single-stall women's bathroom and lock herself inside, her palms at her temples and eyes wide toward a wood-panel wall that bore only shelving and nothing reflective for her to catch sight of herself as she let out a high, frantic gunt-honk-low-key-scream. "Whooooa I can't do this ****! Hoo naw! Hoooooooo..." She stepped in place and shook out her hands, tilting and stretching her neck while taking slow, deep breaths. With her arms stretched high and balanced on the tips of her toes, she brought herself down in a near straight line to touch the floor, then finally stand with a twist at her waist and a shimmy of her shoulders. "Awright... ****. I got this. Hoooly **** this is all real."

With her nerves as settled as they were going to get, Zofie unlocked the restroom door, dipping out into the quiet din of the party.

Blep

Date: 2015-07-23 01:23 EST
Geiseric Valk's Domain, 5 July 2015

The cavern that Maika had stumbled into had debris everywhere, from bits of glowing blue rock to mangled laboratory equipment. She took slow, deep breaths as she pressed onwards, stretching here and there to work out the cramps and assess the bruises and cuts that her five-mile scramble through Glowing Wilderness Hell had inflicted on her. Expecting to be met with stale, stagnant air, she found it still crisp, if touched faintly with smog and a few other pollutants of spotty urban development. "... Okay... that's weird..."

As the ambient light behind her faded during her press onward, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back, the crackle and whirr behind her eyelids still making her tense up until her phosphenes sorted into precise, circular display menus that hovered in place on opening. The darkness ahead of her gained substance and depth, displaying the outline of the messy terrain ahead of her. The murky green had given way to filaments of silver, arranged around cat-slit irises that trembled between widths as she looked from one dark corner to another, crunching broken Erlenmeyer flasks and vials under the heavy tread of her boot.

Gradually, bits of color started to filter into Maika's vision as the tunnel tilted sharply upward, through the crumbled wreck of a stairwell. Faint moonlight trickled through the tangle of rocks, wood and steel, and the sounds of rumbling motors and the din of commerce filtered in from above, yet with no clear point of origin. She flexed her hands within the black, servo-lined gloves, the right one lagging just slightly and inspiring a dissatisfied curl to her lips. One at a time, she set her palms to the detritus, the slight twitch of her fingers pulverizing large chunks at a time to dig herself out. Little red flares in the corners of her vision alerted her to necessary structural pieces, letting her smash her way out deftly to crawl forth into the dual-mooned night sky of Rhy'Din's West End.

As Maika pulled herself up, she came face-to-face with what looked to be a particularly large, particularly mangy cross between a Maine Coon cat and a leopard, roughly the size of a small bear. It stood five yards away from her, its back arched, ears back, and stance slowly circling around her, spiraling closer to the hole where she had emerged. The support beams and spray of wood seemed to indicate that the spot was, at one point in time, a building or two that had been leveled, and in a manner that seemed far too perfect for the rough, Third World Slum-like character of her surroundings. She waited for the cat-beast to close in, snarling with broken teeth and razor-sharp fangs in assertion of its territory, paired with a tail-quaking, noxious spray not far from her. She stared it straight in the eye, unblinking, as she relaxed her shoulders and sank her weight down, coiling in readiness.

The Great Cat leaped, its claws outstretched and its eyes wild as it started to swat toward Maika's face, with enough speed and strength to tear it from its moorings. Maika waited... watched... and then, with a fluid swing of the butt of her left fist to the cat's nose, a short jump out, and a slap to the rim of the entrance, the Cat fell, stunned by the strike, and soon brought to silence as the rest of the cavern collapsed around it, crushing the great beast under twisted metal and heavy rock.

Maika closed her eyes and placed the first two fingers of her right hand to her forehead before closing her fist, enacting a prayer for the beast before turning her eyes toward the horizon. In the distance, a Buoyant Air Turbine spun, connected to a flat warehouse roof covered in greenery. The little spinning flares in her eyes flashed, relaying the warbling quantum signals of her long-since disappeared comrades. Her stomach wrenched as she brushed a hand through her still sweat-dampened hair, a quivering breath stumbling out as she started toward the signal.

Blep

Date: 2015-07-29 23:59 EST
Scatterman's Field, 5 July 2015

Zofie fluttered from one spot to another atop the little archipelago of attractions at the party like a caffeinated firefly, plucking up fistfuls of hors d'oeurves and scuttling into the shadows to bring out the eerie glow of her body paint. Every so often, either to turn her attention to something, to redirect her scamper with a bit of flair, or merely while idling, Zofie would pirouette, sending her hot pink hair flying out like vast, pink tendrils of deep-trench sea creature, flecked with its own glowing spots at the underside.

What little self-consciousness she had about her conspicuous dearth of clothing assuaged as she noticed just how many party-goers had either paired off or arrived with their own canoodling posses, and just how similarly provocative the general dress code seemed to be. However, no outfit seemed to catch her attention as much as "Marquis Vennaqui," primary benefactor of Shinebox and public persona of Khan Tariq al-Madeen. He himself seemed much as she, a vague phantom of deliberately-applied body paint. However, rather than a long, fairy like skirt, the Marquis wore an ornate black breechcloth, and rather than pink hair reaching halfway to the thigh, his own jet black mane and beard had been tightly braided with little phosphorescent beads interwoven. Lastly, while Zofie made frequent forays into lit areas, he himself stayed in half-light at best, yet mostly lurked in the shadows. Not a tall man by any means, he hid behind the animator during a brief interchange between she, Sammie from the writer's room, and Sammie's cat-girl date who seemed ever-so-slightly verging on overwhelmed. As Zofie settled onto a split log formed into a bench, the Marquis cleared his throat, letting his deceptively low voice rumble through her ears. "I should've called you so we could coordinate outfits."

Zofie was about halfway to getting her little metal pipe to her lips before catching the Marquis' voice rumbling out from behind her, bringing her heart to her throat and her body to float up, then invert to an upside-down sit in the air, still scrambling to catch the pipe as it seemed uncertain whether to fall to the ground or amble up toward one of the moons. "Waagh Holy ****!" She finally caught hold of her pipe with one hand as the other took hold of the bench, easing herself into a one-armed hand-stand as she caught her breath. "Dude!! Whoa!! I jus' thought you were some kinda after-image, man! How long y'been tailin' me??"

The Marquis chuckled as he shrugged, slowly dropping down bit by bit into a crouch in the shadows. "Only for a few moments before the writer showed off his date for you." He extended his hand toward the bench with the palm up, as if giving her permission to take a seat once again, or perhaps making a request that she do so.

One leg unfolded, then the other, splaying wide and turning like a wing corkscrew as Zofie alighted upon the bench. Her brow stayed just a hint furrowed, yet all the same she fetched her lighter from her skirt and sparked up the contents of her pipe before passing them to the benefactor, exhaling the gray-blue smoke from her nose. "Long enough, then, huh?"

The Marquis raised his hand in abeyance before twisting it congenially, denying himself the smoke while obliging her to continue. "... Long enough. Yes." Though his eyes were dark, his stare penetrated the shade around him as he wrapped one palm around the other fist and rested his chin atop his knuckles. "... to say nothing of the rather unusual series of automotive parts that had found their way into the materials about mid-way through principal filming."

Zofie managed at least one more long drag from her pipe between the Marquis' sentences, yet the second one had her coughing wildly, silently cursing the rush of the cannabis' vapors into her capillaries and hitting her like a brick at the same time that all of the blood rushed from her head. She managed to get out at least one quiet "Oh no" in the midst of her coughs, knees together and heels splayed as her toes grabbed for dear life at the floor.

The Marquis' expression remained unreadable, yet his tone of voice was one of genuine, understated curiosity instead of admonition. "How did the driver taste?"

Zofie's breath went shallow as her head went light, leaving her to teeter for a moment until she steadied herself with her elbows on her knees and the pipe in her fingers, cradling it carefully in her palm before tucking it away in her skirt's pocket. She kept her eyes down, unfocused, and certainly away from the Marquis as she spoke in her elfin, smoke-graveled tones. "Uh... He um... He died angry. I--I didn't kill 'im, but I'd come across him and the car at the Docks. Ennyway, that amount of adrenaline does the meat poorly, but I got it in before the heat got to it." She sat up a bit more as she gnawed on her lower lip, sighing through her nose. "I ended up gettin' a ****-ton of salt after I cut up the meat, so I could try out some Cambodian-style fermented meat recipes. Uhm... they turned out okay. I figured he'd already be sour from bein' angry, so that kinda helped the flavor." Suddenly, the bare-ness of her torso felt very keen, leading her to cross her arms across her breasts as her shoulders hunched nervously. "Uhm... between you, me, n' this bench, I used his bones in the Behemoth puppet... please don't fire me..."

The Marquis remained still, his eyes glued to Zofie in her fidgeting through her story. He rose from a seat to a crouch, letting his forearms rest atop his knees as his fingers remained loose. The hint of a smile shone through the eerie body paint marking his form, and in the light playing off of his beard. "You are a magnificent being, Zofie. You have ensured that, while we have no inkling of how he lived, or how he died, that his death has fueled the art of our work. Yours is the holiest necromancy." He rose slowly, as if pulled by a string that came out of his back, before resting in his stance, chin high and chest open for a deep, cleansing breath. "I beseech you that you kill none for the purpose of our work, but by all means..." He extended both hands emphatically, shaking them as his chin dipped. "Keep doing what you do!"

As the Marquis spoke, Zofie's toes curled in, leaving ten scrapes on the floorboards that ended in fiddlehead curls. Her shoulders relaxed first, then her elbows, and finally her wrists as she let go of her bosom, dimples in her cheeks in a relieved, yet still bashful smile touched with a quiet laugh. She folded her hands then into her lap and tipped her head, letting the Marquis stand before she herself rose. "I will, your Lordship. Thank you."

The Marquis turned, voicing no farewell as he slipped into the rushes that towered over him like a ghost drifting through a wall. For her troubles, Zofie simply splayed on her bench, reveling in the moment, at least until some mark of civilization stumbled drunkenly her way.

Blep

Date: 2015-08-03 02:14 EST
Zofie's Warehouse, Dockside, 6 July 2015

The sun had only a few hours before it was due to rise when Zofie arrived via the top of a passing truck's trailer at the warehouse which she had converted into a workspace/living quarters for herself. The roof and walls all bore sturdy rushes and hearty shrubs for better insulation and drainage, and a Buoyant Air Turbine with cartoon eyes painted at either side to make it resemble a filter-feeding shark. One wall, left broken from cannon fire, had a reservoir and rain collection system jutting out of it, sealing off the open bricks with machinery and mortar. The building was a masterpiece of efficiency and economy, turning it from a nigh-condemned bit of wreckage into one of the most innovative work spaces in Dockside.

As Zofie trudged up the ramp to the vestibule and let herself inside, she turned on the light to the sets, the figures, the little buildings and huge monstrosities that she and the rest of Shinebox's slowly growing collection of set designers and sculptors had all created, drained of their necessity, hanging like the weight of a child's old toys after growing up and moving out. Weighty with pot smoke and social exhaustion, she looked across the accumulated bits and bobs of her weird little brainchild with Sammie made manifest, and now ready to put to pasture with a sorrowful sigh as she plucked off the glowing barefoot sandals, dumped the contents of her skirt's secret pockets onto a couch, and tossed the garment onto an armchair, leaving her to amble toward the bathroom in her strappy black bikini briefs, gradually failing nipple tape, and dull, smeared body paint that had since lost its glow over the hours. As she crossed the floor, however, a single, resounding creak brought her spine straight and her eyes wide behind the black, cat-eye glasses that proved her only means of seeing close to properly. She slid her back foot along the floor, keeping contact to pick up any rumbles or vibrations, and turned in a clockwork motion to face the origin point of the noise, her breath shaky, yet slow. After clearing her throat, she leaned around, hoping in vain to see what, or whom, had made the clatter while pushing the tangled cascade of pink hair behind her shoulder. "Uh... Hel-lo?"

Maika emerged with her knuckle raised, to give Zofie a visual reference that the noise made was a deliberate act instead of mere sloppiness. Her wheat-brown hair frizzed from the humidity, yet the bluntness of her bangs and the angle of her bob were absolutely precise. Even in the light, her eyes remained activated, silver irises shimmering around narrow slits of pupils that tracked a mite too smoothly from one detail to the next before settling on Zofie. Though she let her eyes go soft, yet remained glaringly aware of each of the Cavalier's points of strain, turning clearly to face her. Her uniform was torn in spots at her outer thigh and the cuffs of her sleeves, the holster at her hip was empty, and a few errant strings seemed to indicate missing patches, yet the stark, deep blue was unmistakably the same as the Makara's crew. In one gloved hand, she raised a series of pendants bearing the calcite-like, nigh-unbreakable dog tags of fifteen of her comrades, her brows knitting together as she watched for Zofie's reaction. Her tone of voice was hardly inviting, hitting like a perfect crystal hammer. "Why do you have these?"

"****! Uh..." Zofie continued to breathe slowly as she took her stock of Maika, her toes spreading on the floor to keep herself tethered as one finger did its best to pin one of her nipple tape 'X's back into place. Her lips, still bearing their black stain, warped into a tender wince as she felt the shake in Maika's wrist, and her hands drifted down to clasp in front of herself, elbows relaxed and back. She bowed her head as she spoke, just enough to quell the idea that she was an active threat, but still able to catch sight of any movements coming from the reasonably-outraged intruder. "I stowed away on the Makara when it made a pit stop at some little floaty-oasis thing in what my folks call the Deep Occult. 'm sure y'all have some other cooler science name for it, but ennyway..."

Maika tightened her grip around the filamentary cords from which the dog tags dangled while her other hand curled, just slightly, into a loose tiger-claw. Her nostril twitched as her upper lip stiffened, aggression held at bay with a tight leash. In spite of her hardening demeanor, she kept her voice smooth, soft, yet still every bit as commanding. "Go on."

The aggression seemed to give Zofie a foothold in the conversation, an insinuation of violence that, strangely, made her feel more than a little bit at home. She raised her chin as she unclasped her hands, letting them hang loose at her sides, yet still with her hands as active as the subtle shifts in her feet, legs and hips to something a bit more responsive. She collected her hair from its spot over one shoulder and eased it all over her back as she spoke, simply making herself more at ease in response to Maika's subtle, yet deeply-burning rage. "Well, there was a prison break... I don't know all the details aside from gittin' found and thrown into a cargo bay for a few months after bein' found uncooperative and too much bother t'kill." She squished her upper lip with her stiff lower one as she shrugged, swallowed a mouthful of nervous spit.

"What happened in the cargo bay?" Maika's thick, magnificent eyebrows lowered in a glower as she dropped the question, seamlessly transferring the dog tags to one of the pouch pockets on her un-ruined trouser leg while keeping an arm between her and Zofie.

For once, Zofie felt some semblance of 'home' in the workshop, not from any sort of creature comfort, but from having the space violated by someone dead set on dredging up the very reason for her greatest perfidy. Her jaw set hard and her eyes went wide, yet a slow breath released the pressure from her own stewing temper. She looked Maika directly in the eye, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose to maintain that contact. "That was where the uh... I guess mutineers? Ennyway, that's where they tossed people who started trouble for 'em, and who might git people agitated if they made dyin' a big, public display. There wasn't a way out, and they barely had enny real food goin' down that way." It was then that Zofie turned her eyes away, just her eyes, toward a spot on the floor where the prop carts had left a divot.

Maika flexed and rubbed her fingertips against the palm that had just recently held the dog tags, keenly aware of their absence on hearing the story. Her face softened as she clicked her heels together, taking a deep inhale through her nose and straightening herself up. "... and you took these dog tags while you were in there. Correct?"

Zofie's hands went to her hips as she kept watching the divot on the floor, her toes fanning, then flattening on the floor, as some cursory measure to keep track of Maika in case things went south again. "... They uh... most of 'em died at peace. That place had a lot 'f horrible, a lotta chaos, and--Well, they got spared that in their last moments." She crossed her arms over her middle, tucking her wrists under the swell of her breasts just to feel something warm and soft during the discussions of cold, hard times. "I collected what tags I could find so that there'd be some kinda closure. It's sometimes all y'kin do when dealin' with that ****."

Maika made a fist out of one hand, scrunched her face, and turned on her heel in a slow trudge toward the door, running her fingers through her hair before teetering and leaning against the frame, her back turned to the pink-haired animator in resignation. "... I'm tired. I'm so... incredibly tired. I thought... maybe I'd have to neutralize someone." Her head thumped as it hit the frame. "It'd have just made this all easier." Maika's hand clutched one dog tag which she had neglected to put away, rubbing the tip of her thumb against the name engraved upon it. "I just wanted this to be done."

Zofie had already crossed the room to the couch before Maika had finished speaking, rifling through her wallet to pull out a series of bills and coins. She rolled her eyes and groaned as the soldier finished speaking, slinking up to her side. She took the money in hand and slapped it into Maika's palm, pressing it with a firmness that made the glove's servos whine just slightly. "Then for ****'s sake, it's done. Here. This should cover ya for a hotel or inn and some breakfast. I bet y'kin git a hold of your people if y'head to Star's End spaceport and ask around."

Maika's hand closed around the money slowly, her breath a soft flutter as a quiet, understated smile tilted up her lips and betrayed the depth of emotion that she kept so tightly under wraps. "I... I don't know what to--"

"Well, for starters..." Zofie gestured toward the door with her chin, giving the soldier a single pat on the back between the shoulder blades. Though her eyes kept stern, their corners, and the slight pucker to her lips, betrayed her own good humor. "Git the **** outta my house."