| Jumping at Shadows | ||
|---|---|---|
| |
Serenity looks both ways before sliding out of the apartment building, cautiously sliding over to join her. "Hello..." Ren hisses uncertainly, rippling to a 'standing' posture close to Rayne. "You are still out here?" Rayne actually seems to almost jump slightly at the sound of the door opening, but relaxes as much as she was before soon enough. "Yeah, I'm still here. I doubt I'll sleep tonight either, frankly." She certainly has looked better. "How are you doing?" "I'm doing fairly well, all things considered," Ren replies, motioning across the street. "It seems that I'm more emotionally affected by almost being blown up when it happens in full view than when it happens across town." Ren adds with a frown, "And it is rather disturbing that I have enough experience with almost being blown up that I can conclude this." Ren looks back up at Rayne and extends a pair of fin edges to offer a damp pat on the back. "I think it would be fine for you to lie in bed, if nothing else. You'll certainly be needed tomorrow." Whoosh! That's the sound of something whizzing through the air. It's not something small like a bullet. It's something large, like a human body. And sure enough, to anybody who cares to look, there above an adjacent building, there's a human figure. Well, almost human. It's humanoid, but it has pointed ears like a cat on its head and a long tail in the appropriate place. It pauses on an adjacent building to the ruins, landing in a crouch on the roof up there, and then stands straight. Yup, there is somebody up there. Rayne responds "Mrrph," to the pat on the back. "I know I'm better with sleep. I'd like to sleep, really. But I still feel like my adrenaline is going. Or that it SHOULD be going. I don't know, I just-" She stops suddenly, noticing the movement on the nearby rooftop. "Hold that thought... I think we're being watched." She stands up properly and pulls her swords out - more sloppily than the practiced, graceful motion that she typically draws her weapons - and quickly combines them into the bow. Taking it into her left hand, she reaches into her quiver to pull an arrow. Nocking the arrow, but not pulling back just yet, she calls out upwards, "Who's up there?!" Serenity frowns at Rayne's change in posture, twisting quickly (as people with a spine should not) to follow her gaze. Ren doesn't seem to spot the source of her concern, but doesn't wait to find out what it is. Ren drops lower and more horizontal (below bow height) to cross in front of Rayne and 'stand' on the side of her nearer the apartment building door. The human figure crouches again at Rayne's shout. Depending how much details Rayne can see (Serenity apparently cannot see the figure up there, or hasn't looked, one of the two), she may be able to catch sight of a swishing cat's tail, and the laying back of those cat-like ears. The figure leaps away to another building, one further away from the ruins of the DMC building. It's a leap that no human should be able to make normally. So that's one bit of information-- it's not human. Rayne growls audibly and starts off after the catboy. She mutters as she goes, the word 'sidran' perhaps heard among it while doing her best to avoid actually running into other pedestrians. She stays to the ground at the base of the building she chases him to, figuring if he jumped again, she'd be unable to follow further. She doesn't seem to realize at the moment that she's nowhere near a match to him in speed, however, leaving him plenty of time to escape to a third building long before she arrives at the second. Serenity does not take off after the mysterious figure, remaining close to the apartment building rather than go out into darkened streets. Curiosity does seem to win over self-preservation in one respect, though- Ren doesn't go inside after Rayne leaves but sticks by the door to peer after her. That humanoid figure with feline traits does indeed disappear. But just as Rayne turns the corner, she comes face to face with... a young boy leaning against the wall, arms crossed. He looks barely into his late teens. Japanese. Pale-skinned. There's a couple of odd things about him-- he's got blue hair and blue eye, and he's almost abnormally thin. He also distinctly does NOT have cat ears or a tail. And he looks a little displeased, what with the frown on his face. "...Why are you following me?" he asks, in a heavily accented baritone. His voice shouldn't be that low for his age. At his age his voice should still be cracking! He might not have noticed Serenity yet, as he doesn't look in her direction just yet. Or he might just be more concerned about the woman who pulled a weapon. Oh, there's one more odd thing about him. There's a tiny catboy fairy hanging onto his right shoulder, held onto his black shirt with its large blue hand-paws. It's odd, he does look a little like the catboy fairy. But that tiny catboy fairy couldn't have been the one Rayne had seen. He's too small. The catboy fairy is only about the size of a hand. Rayne skids to a halt at the man on the ground. The blue hair of course doesn't faze the rainbow haired pursuer at all. She keeps the bow pointed at the ground and un-nocks the arrow from it as he seems to be less of a threat at the moment. No, what's fazing her is the fact that he seems to want to actually be reasonable and talk rather than be a threat. She actually looks slightly confused at his demand, utterly failing to be intimidating as she's attempting to be. "Uh, I'd ask what you were doing on the rooftop!" she demands in return. The young-looking woman is clearly stressed out and overreacting. Serenity continues to keep out of the questioning, 'standing' in the mass of water suspended above the black disc of the forcefield generator. Ren does lean out from the building a bit to look down the street. "It's faster," the blue-haired boy notes evenly, quietly. The catboy fairy speaks up then, in a young-sounding, boisterous voice, "Yeah! The more ground we can cover, the faster we can can explore this weird place-nya!" And then he happens to catch Serenity looking around the building. He turns his blue gaze in her direction. Pauses. Blink. Then raises a hand in greeting. "Yo." Once again, Rayne seems flummoxed. "Oh, uh... Yeah, that's a good point, actually." Her face reddening, she puts the arrow back into her quiver before pulling apart the blades of her bow into twin swords again. "Um, just be careful out there, there's a lot of trouble going on right now, and-" She glances back towards where he looks.... Seeing Serenity there, she tries to continue herself. "And, uh, sorry about that." She sheathes the twin swords, though the second actually takes her two tries to get into the sheath. She's trying to look like an authority figure and just failing at the task miserably. Serenity ripples a little farther from the building as Rayne puts her weapons away, but still doesn't go down the street to join Rayne. In reply to the wave, Ren raises a pair of fins, folding the muscular sheets of the 'wing' to vaguely resemble a hand and arm draped with a loose sleeve. "So that building destruction... that was recent?" the blue-haired boy inquires. Then he gives a 'hnf' that sounds amused almost. "You know whoever's responsible wouldn't still be there, right?" And again the catboy fairy speaks up, "But they might have left you a present-nya! One that might go, BOOM!" As he says the last word, he floats up into the air above the blue-haired boy's shoulder and flings his arms and his legs to the side, his face doing a >o< expression. It all indicates a large explosion. Rayne says, "Yes, it just happened last night. And by what was told to me, the perpetrator is completely insane, so no, we don't know where he would or would not be at any time. I can't make an assumption based on what a sane person would do." Not that she's 100% sane at the moment, but she's leagues ahead of this particular bomber. As the fairy speaks up, she winces. "That's kind of why I'm on a bit of high alert here."" Serenity, not being privy to the conversation, seems confused by the gestures of the cat-fairy (or perhaps just the appearance of an animate children's toy floating near the teen). Still, Ren looks on attentively, since something emphatic is obviously being communicated there. "Don't worry yourself too much about it," Ikuto replies. "If he's that insane, you'll probably only catch him when he next does something, or he slips up. And you'll need to be in top shape then." Smirk. "But you probably know that." There is a sound then, a cross between a pop and a twinkle. Just an instant, and the ears and tail appear again. "Want me to let you know if I see anything weird?" Pause. "That kind of weird." And the catboy fairy nods! "Yeah, I don't wanna get blown up-nya! And we're not cops either, so better leave that to somebody else." Floating back down to the blue-haired boy's shoulder, "Ikuto, I can ask any cats we find about it too-nya." The blue-haired boy doesn't appear to be threatening, and the catboy fairy is just far too adorable to mean any harm. Rayne almost seems to backtalk at the smirk, but then realizes that his point was pretty much what Ren had just told her. "Yes, we at TASK would always be appreciative of any information you might be able to uncover... we, uh, we're kind of the cops here." She brings a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose as she closes her eyes. "Sorry for bothering you, sir." With that, she starts to turn back towards the apartment building and Serenity. Serenity waves again to Ikuto and Rayne as she takes her leave from him, then starts into the building, leaving behind a damp door-handle. TASK... he'd have to remember that. He nods again to Serenity. And then a look to the catboy fairy at his side. It takes little more than that, Ikuto leaps into the air-- WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY into the air-- and ends up on a nearby roof. Rayne (and possibly Serenity too, if she looks up) can probably see him leaping over buildings, from rooftop to rooftop, with those incredibly high leaps. It doesn't take long before he's out of sight. Rayne sees him leap up onto the roof and mumbles to herself, "I've got to find some way of getting my gear to transform along with me." | |
Enable comment auto-refresher