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Props & Mayhem [Private]

Started by glorilyss, April 28, 2017, 12:58:16 PM

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glorilyss

No matter how many times she got punched in the gut, the girl thought, she would never get used to it.

This hypothesis was not merely scientific musing; in fact, it was the round, hard ball of a fist in her stomach that had prompted such thoughts. Unfortunately, since this was a paying job and the pixie-like shape was nothing if not in possession of a fearsome work ethic, she couldn't just curl up on the ground and make cute fish-gasping noises. Well, that and the fact that doing so would most likely get her killed, but that was an observation for another night, as it wasn't an option anyways.

Despite the shadows that clustered thickly along the walls of the alleyway, the faint gleam of starlight reflected in a pair of eyes directly in front of her face. Those eyes were half-narrowed in what was most likely a leer, or maybe a grin; it was hard to tell, with the dimness, but Birdie was decently familiar with most of the less savory expressions to be found on the faces of her targets, and doubted she needed sufficient lighting to pick up on the subtle nuances. She had to admit that the man had a bit of a reason for such an expression; after all, he had been minding his own business when she'd come upon him, and she could imagine that being randomly set upon in the middle of one's evening wasn't exactly the best sort of circumstances in which to make friends with strangers.

She'd had nothing against the man, of course, but a paying job was a paying job, and she'd been feeling particularly jittery tonight. Her fault; rum always gave her too much energy, and a contract that she normally would have laughed at had seemed like a fun exercise. She'd taken it, a straight-forward enough assassination gig: one merchant who didn't like his competition, yadda yadda. If she'd seen one, she'd seen them all, and she had.

Things had been going quite swimmingly, in fact; not wanting to spill too much blood (she'd learned that lesson the hard way), she'd tried to go in for a quick upward jab into the kidneys. It was a bit rude to go for someone when they'd been stopped to relieve themselves of the night's drink, but then, she supposed it was a bit rude to have accepted the contract that would pay her for taking his life in the first place. Ah, well, Birdie's mother had always ruminated that she'd never raise a lady; she'd apparently been right.

The man had been surprisingly alert for someone she'd seen quaffing ale with the best of them; a foolish assumption on her part, but that was probably due in part to the fact that she'd been, ah, blending in with the tavern's other patrons, so as to avoid suspicion. Her blade had glanced off of his ribs, leaving a nice gash, but jarring her arm when she struck bone, so that her fingers went faintly numb. She'd drawn her hand back for an improvised strike, but the man was nearly twice her size; he'd seized her wrist in one hand and jerked, nearly breaking the bloody thing, but giving her the sufficient impetus to strike once more, this time fueled by rage.

Things had been going quite swimmingly then, and she would have done in for the target and been on her way, but apparently his friend had gotten a bit worried with the length of time he was taking, and come out to investigate. Birdie didn't particularly remember much of the following few minutes, but she could assume, based on the body a foot or so away, that it hadn't been much fun for her target's mate. Oh, well - lie down with dogs...

Which brought her to the present: grappling with a man who was six-foot-five if he was an inch, though admittedly a bit the worse for drink. Well, to be fair, so was she. However, she was at something of a disadvantage presently, and for some reason didn't particularly think he would be inclined to allow her to regain the upper hand - one of which was pinned fiercely (and bone-grindingly) to the wall, while the other engaged in thudding meatily into her erstwhile assailant's cheekbone. Despite the progress she was making, she knew she didn't have much time left to get him good and properly dead. At this rate, her strength would fail before his (a fact that she was bitterly embarrassed about), and that didn't bode well for her at all.

Lion

Two against one, now that was hardly fair.

Attila generally minded his own business. And even on the rare trips he made it to Ketra to report in for his patrols over the Thunderblacks, he wasn't going to do much more than what he set out to do. But even Hylea needed a vacation once in a while, and she wasn't fond of the city. Ketra was manageable and she was content to hunt around in the wilds of the Draconi Forest.

Which left him very much in a position similar to what he was in now. He had no idea what to do with himself. Reports had been made, and his armor and gear had been returned to him after being checked for repairs. There had been nothing wrong with them of course. Atilla took excellent care of his gear, and his weapons as he was meant to. The same couldn't exactly be said of other Dragonriders.

They all their own jobs to do of course. Some rode off in pairs, others were given rather boring tasks. Atilla, well, he was content to be alone, and Hylea was all the company he needed.

But when Hylea was on a vacation, that also meant he was on vacation. Atilla growled quietly to himself when he heard the scuffle in the alleyway. He wasn't in the best part of town, closer to brothels and pubs than away from them, and when he heard the sounds of fighting he knew he'd kick himself later for being nosy. It wasn't that he wanted to intervene, but if someone was getting hurt and he didn't do anything to stop it, he'd be one right asshole.

And when he turned into the alleyway, his eyes shot wide and his body shot into action just as he saw two men beating on a woman in that dank filthy place. Atilla rushed forward and jabbed his fist hard into that six foot five giant's fat fucking face and hit him squarely in the jaw.  The hit, admittedly, wasn't his best one, but it made the man stop what he was doing long enough to question what the hell just happened.

Atilla yanked the spear from the holster on his back and held it forward. "Fuck off, meatbag," he growled. "Go back to wherever you came from. That's your only warning."

"She started it."

"And I'm the Queen of Serendipity," he hissed and twisted his body with that lance to draw the haft underneath the man's knees to throw his feet out from under him.




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"Go into battle determined to die and you will survive.  Go into battle hoping to live and surely you shall not." -Bushido proverb
"Life is a series of dogs." -George Carlin
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glorilyss

In Birdie's profession - well, if one was looking to be thorough, in her life in general - things tended toward extremes, and usually in the most negative way possible. If things started to go badly, they often decided to exceed expectations and turn absolutely terrible. After all, shit ran downhill, and Birdie most usually found herself standing at the very bottom.

However, there was one other thing to be said about the elf girl, and that was that she seemed to have the absolute luck of the devil. Case in point.

The crushing pain that had been grinding her wrist against the stone wall suddenly vanished, leaving her to half-stagger to the side, cradling the roughly-bruised bone in her hand. Spitting curses under her breath, she half-turned, eyes raking roughly over the two people in the alleyway - well, the two standing. Of course she was already familiar with her target, but the man - for she saw that it was, in fact, another man - that had jerked her assailant off of her was a stranger to her. With dark magenta hair - 'Magenta?' - and a form that was nearly the height of their combined enemy, he cut the kind of figure that she was sure she would have remembered.

Still, whether she knew him or not, he was doing a fabulous job of keeping the man distracted. Birdie leaned down, scooped up the dagger that she had dropped earlier, and straightened up, all with the same swift grace of a panther. It was effortless to take the single step that would bring her right behind the man, and next to nothing at all to bring the knife up from her hip and punch slightly upwards, the blade sliding neatly up and under the ribs. She felt only the faintest scrape of bone and then one deep, shuddering jerk as the man half-turned, face going gray with surprise as she flicked her wrist, twisting the blade and then pulling it out again neatly. A fine spray of blood coated her bare arm, followed a moment later by the gush that she had come to associate with arterial bleeding.

The man had barely any time to even register the fact that he was about to die; he raised his hand, loosely clenching as his blood pressure dropped and light-headedness swept him. Birdie stepped delicately to the side, mouth twisting faintly with distaste as her target sagged, clutching at the wall and borne to earth by gravity's inexorable pull. A puddle of blood was collecting under him, dull red trickles branching out like fingers grasping desperately at her moccasins. Her nose scrunched up again, looking dispassionately at the man bleeding out at her feet, making absolutely no move to save the life she'd snatched away.

"Asshole," she pronounced succinctly, refraining from kicking the corpse by some miracle. She turned more fully towards the stranger from before, a crooked smirk on her face as she extended a hand, then seemed to think better of it. Birdie moved to wipe her hands on her pants, then swore under her breath. "You'd think I'd have learned to wear black by now." Looking faintly frustrated as she brushed her palms over the deerskin of her breeches, she peeped up at the taller stranger, gunmetal eyes wide in the pale moon of her face, half-marred by a thin spray of blood over her cheek, then grinned sheepishly. "Uh, thanks. For helping me out."

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