lady killer

“Hey, watch where you’re-”

Smart boy.

“Being neighbors makes everything all right, doesn’t it? I’m pleased to meet you, neighbor.”

Her tone was perfectly polite, if somewhat unsettling, and she offered a hand for a shake at his introduction. The claws on her finger-tips resembled a bear trap, all set to snap down in a moment’s notice.

“Aw, jeez… I’m sorry, homeslice! I didn’t depress you with that, did I?” 

“It’ll be okay! We just gotta find those dudes and beat their brains in, and then we can go home! To Kurotsun! And we can stop her from…” Right. No birds. Got it. “…I mean, we can play Othello and Jenga with Bis and Reina again, even though Bis is a dog and always loses! And we can smash up Maekami’s bar again! Just gotta get our hands on those guys… And you can use me as a human shield when we get there, yeah? It’ll be easy! Easy peasy lemon squeezy! With extra peas!! So don’t feel down, okay? Smile!”

With that, Met finally reaches back for the pipe, her concern veiled under a heavy wall of black glass. She knows Hanten will be fine — nothing ever keeps that girl down, ever. Maybe the purpose of that little tirade was half to convince herself that it would be okay…

How irksome.

Hanten shut one eye in a display of irritation, but Met’s five(six) second grace period before she enacted her “punishment” came and went without incident. The demon allowed her servant to ramble on in an attempt to lift up the spirits that weren’t that low to start with, her expression mostly unreadable.

Hands folded inside her sleeves, she smirked after Met finally stopped to take in a psuedo-breath.

“Man, what a tirade you just went on...” She lifted one clawed finger and waved it in reproach. “Hard to believe you just went and told me everything I already knew for myself.”

She looked forward again, tail waving from side to side, the very picture of nonchalance; absolutely not someone in search of victims to possibly eat raw. Absolutely not.

“Nah! Kurotsun’ll be fiiine, homegurl.                 We should be the worried ones! What’ll she do without us?”

…Wait. That’s a good point. 

“I mean, without us around, who’ll save the birds from her?”

“Those poor, innocent birdies… Doomed to suffer a fate of death and despair at her treacherous hands… Their wives and children slowly sinking into depression… Losing their homes without any source of income… Going bankrupt… Committing ritual suicide, tearing apart the community and plunging it into darkness… Ah…!”

Calm down, Met. Don’t overthink this. Stop hyperventilating. She won’t… actually kill the birds, right? Why would she? Why? But it’s Kurotsun, so she doesn’t need a reason—

But still. The ghost was right partially.

What are we going to do about this...?

One..two...three...

Challenges were...interesting, but she hated ones forced on her and not something she initiated. Clearly if anyone was to do the thinking here, it’d be her.

Four...five...six...

Six seconds. One sec longer than usual. Wasn’t her restraint grand? Hanten snatched the tie on Met’s shirt and yanked her over, smirking at her own reflection in the helmet.

“A weirdo, huh?”

                         Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow. 

Without a helmet and with Hanten’s strength, combined with Met’s lack of weight, Met’s unprotected head slams into the concrete pretty dang hard. Stars explode behind her eyes and her vision spins, a nauseating wave of white-hot pain spreading out from the point of impact. She waits the seconds it usually takes for the damage to disappear, but… Nope. Nothing. Still there, still hurts, still makes the world all spinny and blurry. She groans and rolls over, pushing herself up to her knees, and crawls over to her helmet. 

“Homegurl, y’know I love ya and all, but geez… Treating your bestie like that after fate just brought us back together again? Too harsh!” 

“Ouchies…”

Very, very brief. Hanten’s expression flickered with something resembling concern, but she only started examining her nails by the time the world probably stopped spinning for her loyal-to-a-fault servant. Hmm, fine, fine.

“Sorry,” she said softly, grinning, her words dragging out as if she was sleep-deprived. “My hand slipped! Ghosts are slippery little things...hee hee.”

Hands back to nest in her pockets, she turned on a heel and flicked her tail for Met to follow. She walked a bit slowly.

It flies away from them both and goes rolling off. Incredible.

Met spares a moment to rub her now-sore neck, but Hanten’s question waylays her train of thought and she forgets it, grinning like she’s recalling the rather gruesome incident in her mind. “You know it! They touched my helmet, so I had to make ‘em pay. ♪ Didja know that the people here go poof right after you kill them? Didja? Didja didja?!” 

“’Poof’? Are you killing other test subjects?”

And down Met went as Hanten slammed her into the concrete, indifferent toward what damage it could cause, her tail flicking behind her.

"Only the test subjects respawn; the regular people in this city just die and stay dead.” She put her hands inside her pockets, tilting her head a bit, smiling, smiling...”It’s interesting in its own way. If only this situation wasn’t so damn annoying...”

She studied the sky idly, apparently calm. “Heh, I think you lucked out. I burned my anger off days ago, you know...?”

Having beauty,

And being smart enough to use it.

‘Yeah? Get in line,’ she mutters, complete with a roll of the eyes that says I’m not scared of you. There’s other ways of living, she guesses — looking creepy and playing on people’s fear is one of them. ‘Or go tear up your friend, first. She’s got more than me, right?’

A princess. Ugh.

How ironic.

She twitches her tail like a bored house-cat. “Potentially? No...not unless you’re about to tell me that you hide some kind of scaaary power.” Her tone’s still bizarrely amiable, as if she’s not thinking about tearing into her skin and eating her. She has more control than that.

Just who Hanten never wanted to see, eh? In contrast to everyone else’s usual reaction to being kidnapped, Met doesn’t seem bothered at all by the change in events; she’s just as oblivious and obnoxious as always. In the place of her usual bloodstained pipe is a… white plastic tube…? Still strapped to her back, still stained with blood. Looks pretty fresh, too.

And now she’s running towards Hanten, looking as if she’s going to tackle the other girl.

She figured someone from her world would show up sooner or later. (Un)fortunately it had to be her, of course it was her, and she didn’t have the patience for heartwarming theatrics. Not unless Met wanted to test the respawn system already.

Hanten slid a step to the side and hauled Met up by the collar of her shirt as she hurtled past, holding her at arm’s length.

     “WH0 7H3 FUGCK 4R3 Y0U?”

Another time. The guy finally spoke up after all.

Bat-like wings, pointed ears, eyes of crimson - were it not for Remilia’s absence of horns, the possibility that the two might have been mistaken as being part of the same race would have been extremely high. But vampires didn’t possess horns, which left the possibility that her guest was a different sort of youkai.

But at least this one isn’t the boring type.

‘So she’s your “princess?”’ the girl assumes, bold in the way she comes to step forward. She reaches out a hand to Hanten’s wings and stops, right before she brushes one. ‘How’s she supposed to be your friend then? Do you like getting bossed around?’

(She could recall how Met’s had once looked, and Kurotsuno’s, back in the day. Humans were always interesting.)

She let the other girl touch her wings; fair’s fair, the conversation was initiated by Hanten after all, so a trade-off was acceptable.

               "People are just quick to judge and in a city like this. It would be bad if someone attacked you because of your horns." The mage shook his head before responding to her. "Wrong. I’m nether one of them or the type to believe you are good. My opinion on you remains neutral."

If anything she was dreadfully neutral toward most things. Which only meant, hey, she could be unpredictable.

Or a clown, one with the kind of sick sense of humour it takes to wear a Halloween costume in spring. Hiyori’s attention is drawn to her immediately, gaze blank in the face of her assuredly-creepy grin. She’s got a spiel, and it starts out with a hit and a miss.

It’s only the mention of someone that keeps Hiyori’s interest piqued. Reminds her of someone.

Is that right?

‘Who? An angel?’ she says flatly, not hostile but definitively not impressed.

Her style’s not so bad, but that attitude…

‘Sorry, but that’s boring. Can you try somebody else?’

“This city’s a tough crowd. Don’t worry, I don’t know any angels with eyes like those, hee hee...” 

“Nah. You remind me of a friend. Acts a bit like the princess of all demons.” She might as well be the lord of their manor in the woods, considering how she whipped the others around like that. Ah, memories.

“I don’t understand! Did they tamper with my cybernetics?!”

     And as a voice arose, she paused— sparking slightly as she looked up to the silhouetted figure above, squinting her green eyes.

“Who said I wanted anything? Just curious about the situation, you know, stuff like that...These power restrictions really put a damper on things, don’t they?”

               –– » ⊰ ❖ ⊱ « –– It was impolite to judge others by their appearance, and Jellal was not the kind of individual who would suspect someone of being foul based on their physical features. However, there were exceptions and this situation was one of them. The horns resting on her head was a red flag, prompting him to frown and gaze at her through the eyes of a wary man. Even though he was in a completely different city, he was still a Crime Sorciere member and it was his duty to erase people he considered to be threats.

“...Really? Just by appearance alone? I don’t know if I should be shocked or honored.”

“Those Evil Kings halved my strength! I’m still super strong though, i’m just a bit annoyed that they would do something like that! I’m gonna work hard to get to those guys and make them fix whatever they did to me!”