05-15-2017, 12:06 AM
Traces of river beds and crusty roads of snow cast shadows that paled in the midday sun, not one of them larger or more impressive than the lean, oddly-shaped shadow of the white tower in the distance.
Sitting on the crest of a hill steeped in frosty white, toes curled up snugly inside her shoes and breath misting from the cold, Jade Harley pouted and tucked her arms closer around herself. Despite the snowflakes perched on her eyelashes and the chill biting at her nose, her eyes and ears remained fixated on the slope of a knoll about three hundred yards out.
It was mostly a flat, level stretch of ground that lay before her, spotted with clutches of tiny blue grapes and shallow pools, the steam misting over them betraying the hot springs hidden beneath the innocuous piles of snow. Gargantuan boulders and a broad-spectrum jumble of stones of varying sizes seemed to have spilled down the hillside in the wake of a clumsy giant, the smell of pond water and soggy, green plants lifting the ashen pastiness cast over the sky. It was a picture-perfect, gorgeous day… something that made it tricky for her to keep her guard up, but totally possible for an expert sharpshooter such as herself!
Still, she counted herself lucky that the snowfall had ceased for a bit— it provided good visibility and, like Grandpa always said, stealth and recon should always be the first priority on a hunt!— but the downside of that was she was pretty dang visible, too. And, well, that was a problem. A pretty huge one, at that! All she could do was sit and frown, hoping for a sign, totally in stomach-churning suspense, staying quiet as a mouse—
Jade almost leapt out of her skin when a voice rudely slashed through the silence. It came from Brennon Yadrisson, the red-bearded dwarf settled beside her on the hill, her prisoner and (temporary) lieutenant in the battle against Team BecBecca. But, it was awkward referring to him as her prisoner, even in her own head, so Jade had settled on the lieutenant title for now. He hadn’t seemed amused when she had first told him of this and, come to think of it, he hadn’t seemed very amused by anything she did to try and lighten the mood the entire time. And, from what he was yattering on about, he still wasn’t particularly pleased with this turn of events.
“Why are we doing this,” asked her dwarven comrade-in-arms. His voice was so flat that it was pretty damn near impossible to assign any interrogatory inflection to his words, even if Jade knew for a fact that it was in there. “You know they’re over that hill, just take your little blue cannon and—“
“Sssshhhh!” Jade hissed, mashing her finger onto his face and very nearly gouging his eye out in the process. Whoops! She drew her finger back and mouthed a silent apology, still trying to exude an aura of super-seriousness despite her smiling lips. On the other hand, before she could really argue his grave incursion here, there was the matter of the enemy to consider.
Heart racing, Jade raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun and the blinding glare of the snow. Her back straightened as she glanced back to check on their target, trigger finger itching and her tongue poking out in concentration. Slowly but surely, her gaze traced along the boulders lining the slope, the flowers, the misty ground springs, but all was deathly quiet and still. Almost too quiet and still, if you asked her. Hmmm.
Your entire bearing reeks of deceit, Mother Nature! Jade mentally cried, but felt herself relaxing by degrees, anyhow. The final verdict? No movement. She breathed a sigh of relief, shoulders slumping.
Turning to face the dwarf, Jade’s eyes took on a frenzied gleam that the assassin was tempted to shy away from. “Because, silly, that’s not how the game is played! You have to break out your entire skillset… stealth, sneakiness, guile…”
“Those are all the same things, I’ll have you know,” Brennon informed her, clearly uninspired.
Jade stuck her tongue out at him, not even breaking her stride. “… and ninja skills! Now, shoosh, lieutenant dwarf-guy. I think they’re onto us after your little outburst.”
Brennon sighed and looked down at his bound hands, the manacles courtesy of the Kingdom’s soldiers. If only he could break these bonds, bash the silly dog-child over the head with them, possibly fix whatever problem made her so mental in the process, and make off with the star piece in the aftermath… yes, yes, good thinking…
“What does “Quarry-digger” mean, anyway? How did you even get that as your middle name? It’s kind of… weird that your parents might pass that one on to you. I mean, it seems to me that you didn’t turn out to be someone digging quarries for a living, considering where we are now. It’s sorta presumptuous, don’tcha think?”
Brennon’s face became reminiscent of a constipated puffer fish. All it would take was one good clobbering, that was all. All in good time, he supposed. All in good time.
The dwarf was drawn from his homicidal musings when the girl latched onto his arm with a vice-like grip. Before he could whirl around and spit in her ridiculously sunny face, she’d already begun talking excitedly, tugging on his arm and pointing while bouncing like a young miner who’d just discovered her first rare crystal.
“Look, Brennon! A scout!”
Mystified, her companion squinted against the brisk winds in the direction she was indicating. As they both watched from a distance, a white hare flumphed through the snow on the hill opposite to them, black-tipped ears trembling and dark eyes large. The dog-eared girl hardly breathed as the creature hopped along. It paused at the base, tiny pink sniffer twitching and snuffling, and then shot off like a bolt of lightning as it caught sight of something they could not see.
This was, apparently, of some importance to Jade, as she immediately yanked Brennon into a short, bone-crushing hug that was thankfully over as soon as it began. Unluckily, this was not the end of Brennon’s ordeal, as she quickly shoved a whole heap of freezing-cold snowballs into his arms.
“The signal!” the Witch roared at the highest volume her vocal chords would allow, surging to her feet and bodily dragging him along with her, one arm upraised to brandish an imaginary sabre. “Chaaaaaaaarge!”
Despite the fact that a signal had never been mentioned before now, they were suddenly clomping at drunk Clydesdale speed towards the enemy’s base. Jade grinned madly, her buckteeth bared and hair whipping in the wind, hand clamped firmly on Brennon’s shoulder as they half-ran, half-hobbled up the hill.
Is this what Purgatory is like? Brennon wondered, trying not to trip over his own feet as their Clydesdale formation nearly snapped its ankles and ended up at the glue factory.
It was a mighty struggle, powder flying everywhere and the soles of their shoes slipping deep into the slush, but with much focus and determination they finally reached the apex of the rise. There was a lot of yelling and waving their arms around (Jade) and giving the enemy their best death stare (Brennon), only to find that the enemy base had been abandoned some time ago. A few half-shaped snowballs were mashed pathetically onto the ground, the defenses of ice and rock were hardly stacked against an assault, and there were no imaginary twig, plant, and rock rations to speak of, but most importantly, there was not a soul in sight.
Jade let her own ammo drop from her slack fingers at the sight, listening as they did little more than plop uselessly into the snow.
“What…? Where…?” she asked no one in particular, her fluffy white ears drooping over the top of her head. She stomped over the refuse and glanced around, hands on her hips and a perplexed frown on her face. Brennon stood idly by and watched, secretly relieved that no snowball fight was to take place.
A peal of laughter jingled like the cheeriest of bells from somewhere to their left, just out of sight and circling around the slope they were standing upon. Tromping down the hill was much easier than climbing up it despite the clouds of midges whizzing and diving in the air, so it wasn’t long before they discovered the source of the laughter: Rebecca.
The Little Sister was seated beside a mishmash of puddles formed from melted frost and warm spring water, vibrant blossoms and other plant life flush with the shallow banks and an assortment of shiny stones placed in mysterious patterns around her. To Jade and Rebecca’s glowing delight, Becquerel scouted around the boiling springs and cool pools to bring Rebecca new objects to investigate— usually a stone of some kind, that was surefire, but other times a particularly lovely flower, what looked to be the head of a spear, the hipbone of some small creature, and on one occasion, a bright blue feather with black streaks lining its frills. The barkbeast would seat himself before her as the gifts underwent Rebecca’s inspection, all of them joining her pile of treasures whether they were pretty or not, and then set out to find more in short order.
Jade held her hands over her heart and beamed, cheeks glowing and ruddy, while Brennon just stared at her. He hadn’t been able to figure out the girl’s connection to the yellow-eyed child with greasy hair. They definitely weren’t related, at least not by blood, which left only a few other alternatives, one of which was very interesting. He had only heard of the Little Sisters by word-of-mouth, of course, but he knew enough to know that they weren’t supposed to be found outside of the Vasty Deep, and what’s more, only within a certain zone. To remove one was likely a bounty-worthy offense, to boot! Could Jade Harley have kidnapped this little girl, earning a bounty in the process?
Brennon squinted at the side of the Witch’s head as she bounded down the slope to reach Rebecca’s side, chattering excitedly at the grim-colored girl and receiving a brilliant smile in return. With a heavy flounce, she seated herself right smack-dab in the middle of the wet grass and mud, the galaxies in her skirts fluttering between green and blue and hardly seeming to contract any stains. Strange.
Shaking his head, the stout dwarf sat atop a nearby boulder and settled in to watch his captors go about their silly business, manacles pinching at the soft skin of his wrists. Little white flowers with sunny yellow centers stirred all around on their short stalks, sheltered from the alpine winds by rocks speckled with moss and thick mats of blue mountain flowers growing in the shallow paddies on the ground. His mindset was that he might as well make himself comfortable before settling in to die of boredom, but something caught his eye. Something green, glowing, and blinking like a firefly on a muggy summer night.
The star piece was right there on the ground, slightly stuck into the mud and directly within his reach. The dwarf’s eyes surreptitiously slid back to Jade whose head was thrown back in a laugh, hair spilling out from her hood in boisterous waves. She must have dropped it. That was pretty unfortunate. It would be a crying shame if someone were to...
He could just…
Take…
The star piece...
Picking himself up and nearly rolling like a barrel over onto his stomach, Brennon was able to drop low to the ground, deftly latch onto the star piece with his mouth, and then take off at a hurried run with the celestial artefact clenched between his teeth. Even when a barked shout came from behind him, he just kept on kicking up snow in his wake. He just couldn’t stop grinning.
Jade shouted something that wasn’t really words at all but more of a mixture between sheer frustration and disbelief, nearly tearing the hair from her scalp as she clutched at her head and gaped after Brennon. Her limbs began to flash with an electrical energy that steadily increased in frequency as she prepared to give chase, temper simmering and a solar flare crackling beneath her skin.
She turned to look at Rebecca and Bec right before she zapped away, fists clenched and canine teeth bared in a grimace. “Be back in a jiffy, you guys!”
In a split-second blaze of green fire, she hurtled through Space after a person with stubby little legs and an object of immense power fit into his mouth like a hamburger.
Sitting on the crest of a hill steeped in frosty white, toes curled up snugly inside her shoes and breath misting from the cold, Jade Harley pouted and tucked her arms closer around herself. Despite the snowflakes perched on her eyelashes and the chill biting at her nose, her eyes and ears remained fixated on the slope of a knoll about three hundred yards out.
It was mostly a flat, level stretch of ground that lay before her, spotted with clutches of tiny blue grapes and shallow pools, the steam misting over them betraying the hot springs hidden beneath the innocuous piles of snow. Gargantuan boulders and a broad-spectrum jumble of stones of varying sizes seemed to have spilled down the hillside in the wake of a clumsy giant, the smell of pond water and soggy, green plants lifting the ashen pastiness cast over the sky. It was a picture-perfect, gorgeous day… something that made it tricky for her to keep her guard up, but totally possible for an expert sharpshooter such as herself!
Still, she counted herself lucky that the snowfall had ceased for a bit— it provided good visibility and, like Grandpa always said, stealth and recon should always be the first priority on a hunt!— but the downside of that was she was pretty dang visible, too. And, well, that was a problem. A pretty huge one, at that! All she could do was sit and frown, hoping for a sign, totally in stomach-churning suspense, staying quiet as a mouse—
Jade almost leapt out of her skin when a voice rudely slashed through the silence. It came from Brennon Yadrisson, the red-bearded dwarf settled beside her on the hill, her prisoner and (temporary) lieutenant in the battle against Team BecBecca. But, it was awkward referring to him as her prisoner, even in her own head, so Jade had settled on the lieutenant title for now. He hadn’t seemed amused when she had first told him of this and, come to think of it, he hadn’t seemed very amused by anything she did to try and lighten the mood the entire time. And, from what he was yattering on about, he still wasn’t particularly pleased with this turn of events.
“Why are we doing this,” asked her dwarven comrade-in-arms. His voice was so flat that it was pretty damn near impossible to assign any interrogatory inflection to his words, even if Jade knew for a fact that it was in there. “You know they’re over that hill, just take your little blue cannon and—“
“Sssshhhh!” Jade hissed, mashing her finger onto his face and very nearly gouging his eye out in the process. Whoops! She drew her finger back and mouthed a silent apology, still trying to exude an aura of super-seriousness despite her smiling lips. On the other hand, before she could really argue his grave incursion here, there was the matter of the enemy to consider.
Heart racing, Jade raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun and the blinding glare of the snow. Her back straightened as she glanced back to check on their target, trigger finger itching and her tongue poking out in concentration. Slowly but surely, her gaze traced along the boulders lining the slope, the flowers, the misty ground springs, but all was deathly quiet and still. Almost too quiet and still, if you asked her. Hmmm.
Your entire bearing reeks of deceit, Mother Nature! Jade mentally cried, but felt herself relaxing by degrees, anyhow. The final verdict? No movement. She breathed a sigh of relief, shoulders slumping.
Turning to face the dwarf, Jade’s eyes took on a frenzied gleam that the assassin was tempted to shy away from. “Because, silly, that’s not how the game is played! You have to break out your entire skillset… stealth, sneakiness, guile…”
“Those are all the same things, I’ll have you know,” Brennon informed her, clearly uninspired.
Jade stuck her tongue out at him, not even breaking her stride. “… and ninja skills! Now, shoosh, lieutenant dwarf-guy. I think they’re onto us after your little outburst.”
Brennon sighed and looked down at his bound hands, the manacles courtesy of the Kingdom’s soldiers. If only he could break these bonds, bash the silly dog-child over the head with them, possibly fix whatever problem made her so mental in the process, and make off with the star piece in the aftermath… yes, yes, good thinking…
“What does “Quarry-digger” mean, anyway? How did you even get that as your middle name? It’s kind of… weird that your parents might pass that one on to you. I mean, it seems to me that you didn’t turn out to be someone digging quarries for a living, considering where we are now. It’s sorta presumptuous, don’tcha think?”
Brennon’s face became reminiscent of a constipated puffer fish. All it would take was one good clobbering, that was all. All in good time, he supposed. All in good time.
The dwarf was drawn from his homicidal musings when the girl latched onto his arm with a vice-like grip. Before he could whirl around and spit in her ridiculously sunny face, she’d already begun talking excitedly, tugging on his arm and pointing while bouncing like a young miner who’d just discovered her first rare crystal.
“Look, Brennon! A scout!”
Mystified, her companion squinted against the brisk winds in the direction she was indicating. As they both watched from a distance, a white hare flumphed through the snow on the hill opposite to them, black-tipped ears trembling and dark eyes large. The dog-eared girl hardly breathed as the creature hopped along. It paused at the base, tiny pink sniffer twitching and snuffling, and then shot off like a bolt of lightning as it caught sight of something they could not see.
This was, apparently, of some importance to Jade, as she immediately yanked Brennon into a short, bone-crushing hug that was thankfully over as soon as it began. Unluckily, this was not the end of Brennon’s ordeal, as she quickly shoved a whole heap of freezing-cold snowballs into his arms.
“The signal!” the Witch roared at the highest volume her vocal chords would allow, surging to her feet and bodily dragging him along with her, one arm upraised to brandish an imaginary sabre. “Chaaaaaaaarge!”
Despite the fact that a signal had never been mentioned before now, they were suddenly clomping at drunk Clydesdale speed towards the enemy’s base. Jade grinned madly, her buckteeth bared and hair whipping in the wind, hand clamped firmly on Brennon’s shoulder as they half-ran, half-hobbled up the hill.
Is this what Purgatory is like? Brennon wondered, trying not to trip over his own feet as their Clydesdale formation nearly snapped its ankles and ended up at the glue factory.
It was a mighty struggle, powder flying everywhere and the soles of their shoes slipping deep into the slush, but with much focus and determination they finally reached the apex of the rise. There was a lot of yelling and waving their arms around (Jade) and giving the enemy their best death stare (Brennon), only to find that the enemy base had been abandoned some time ago. A few half-shaped snowballs were mashed pathetically onto the ground, the defenses of ice and rock were hardly stacked against an assault, and there were no imaginary twig, plant, and rock rations to speak of, but most importantly, there was not a soul in sight.
Jade let her own ammo drop from her slack fingers at the sight, listening as they did little more than plop uselessly into the snow.
“What…? Where…?” she asked no one in particular, her fluffy white ears drooping over the top of her head. She stomped over the refuse and glanced around, hands on her hips and a perplexed frown on her face. Brennon stood idly by and watched, secretly relieved that no snowball fight was to take place.
A peal of laughter jingled like the cheeriest of bells from somewhere to their left, just out of sight and circling around the slope they were standing upon. Tromping down the hill was much easier than climbing up it despite the clouds of midges whizzing and diving in the air, so it wasn’t long before they discovered the source of the laughter: Rebecca.
The Little Sister was seated beside a mishmash of puddles formed from melted frost and warm spring water, vibrant blossoms and other plant life flush with the shallow banks and an assortment of shiny stones placed in mysterious patterns around her. To Jade and Rebecca’s glowing delight, Becquerel scouted around the boiling springs and cool pools to bring Rebecca new objects to investigate— usually a stone of some kind, that was surefire, but other times a particularly lovely flower, what looked to be the head of a spear, the hipbone of some small creature, and on one occasion, a bright blue feather with black streaks lining its frills. The barkbeast would seat himself before her as the gifts underwent Rebecca’s inspection, all of them joining her pile of treasures whether they were pretty or not, and then set out to find more in short order.
Jade held her hands over her heart and beamed, cheeks glowing and ruddy, while Brennon just stared at her. He hadn’t been able to figure out the girl’s connection to the yellow-eyed child with greasy hair. They definitely weren’t related, at least not by blood, which left only a few other alternatives, one of which was very interesting. He had only heard of the Little Sisters by word-of-mouth, of course, but he knew enough to know that they weren’t supposed to be found outside of the Vasty Deep, and what’s more, only within a certain zone. To remove one was likely a bounty-worthy offense, to boot! Could Jade Harley have kidnapped this little girl, earning a bounty in the process?
Brennon squinted at the side of the Witch’s head as she bounded down the slope to reach Rebecca’s side, chattering excitedly at the grim-colored girl and receiving a brilliant smile in return. With a heavy flounce, she seated herself right smack-dab in the middle of the wet grass and mud, the galaxies in her skirts fluttering between green and blue and hardly seeming to contract any stains. Strange.
Shaking his head, the stout dwarf sat atop a nearby boulder and settled in to watch his captors go about their silly business, manacles pinching at the soft skin of his wrists. Little white flowers with sunny yellow centers stirred all around on their short stalks, sheltered from the alpine winds by rocks speckled with moss and thick mats of blue mountain flowers growing in the shallow paddies on the ground. His mindset was that he might as well make himself comfortable before settling in to die of boredom, but something caught his eye. Something green, glowing, and blinking like a firefly on a muggy summer night.
The star piece was right there on the ground, slightly stuck into the mud and directly within his reach. The dwarf’s eyes surreptitiously slid back to Jade whose head was thrown back in a laugh, hair spilling out from her hood in boisterous waves. She must have dropped it. That was pretty unfortunate. It would be a crying shame if someone were to...
He could just…
Take…
The star piece...
Picking himself up and nearly rolling like a barrel over onto his stomach, Brennon was able to drop low to the ground, deftly latch onto the star piece with his mouth, and then take off at a hurried run with the celestial artefact clenched between his teeth. Even when a barked shout came from behind him, he just kept on kicking up snow in his wake. He just couldn’t stop grinning.
Jade shouted something that wasn’t really words at all but more of a mixture between sheer frustration and disbelief, nearly tearing the hair from her scalp as she clutched at her head and gaped after Brennon. Her limbs began to flash with an electrical energy that steadily increased in frequency as she prepared to give chase, temper simmering and a solar flare crackling beneath her skin.
She turned to look at Rebecca and Bec right before she zapped away, fists clenched and canine teeth bared in a grimace. “Be back in a jiffy, you guys!”
In a split-second blaze of green fire, she hurtled through Space after a person with stubby little legs and an object of immense power fit into his mouth like a hamburger.
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Gamzee Makara Wrote:S’aight. After all, dogs have a tendency to motherfuckin’ bite.