| From Ragnor to Riches; Learning To Fly . . . From Recoome | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 15 2014, 04:03 AM (144 Views) | |
| Detective Wesson | Jan 15 2014, 04:03 AM Post #1 |
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Afrit trudged through the thick mud in the 3rd circle of hell, sinking deeper as time went on.The wait in King Yema’s line had been a long one, but it was at least done in relative comfort. Now mud sank deep into his robes, and filled his boots. somewhere within this realm, there was rumored to be a general of great power. Ragnor the Red. Afrit could think of no better teacher, hellish pilgrimage be damned The populace of this realm was miserable, but compliant. Each time the Djinn stopped for directions, they rose from the deep mud, and pointed towards the distant horizon. Their eyes were dull and lifeless, and they quickly resumed their mud-farming. Afrit offered a nod and a half smile each time he stopped. The general who had instilled this kind of loyalty into his underlings was amazing in his utter subjugation. Though Afrit had grown weak, he struggled onwards. The prize was too vital. Afrit Imagined the grand fortress that might meet him at the end of this voyage. Cruel gargoyles lined its thick stone walls. Acid served as it’s moat, and ravenous hellhounds stood guard in the putrid grounds. Truly, it would be a castle unrivaled. The thought filled his tired limbs with energy. The wind fought against him as the muddied hills gave way to sandy dunes. Afrit took time to rub himself clean of the mud. He couldn’t look unwashed when he arrived to his future teacher. While the excess slurry sloughed off with little effort, he still looked as though he had bathed in a tar pit. It would have to do. Mir was sunbathing in her front yard when she saw a filthy red man cresting the hill. She squinted and sat up, staring at him through her garish shades. The slim blue woman threw a robe on over her gold bikini and grabbed her beer, walked by the pink christmas lights decorating the front of the beach house, and banged on the door. “Zizi! ZIZI! I think your red friend is here!” she called. Her blonde hair fell out of its messy bun. An older Kaizoku-Jin stuck her head out of one of the upper windows, blowing cigarette smoke out of it. She dislodged several windchimes when she moved the shutters and knocked christmas lights loose. “Your brother is in back!” she called down. “There’s a filthy red man! I think it’s his friend, Hexklack or whathisname!” “Hexak?” Another Kaizoku-Jin, this one a young blonde man, popped out a window to hang swim trunks on a clothes line. “Zizi said he hooked up with some guy named Virgil and joined another cult.” “What’s all this shouting!” an old blue man burst out the sliding glass doors holding a barbeque fork. “Can’t anyone in this house keep it down for one goddamn minute!” “Zizi’s friend is here, Uncle Cosmos!” Mir yelled. “Hexak joined a new cult!” the young man yelled down. “The other one then!” “Which other one?” “The other red one!” “Keep it down!” “Go back to grilling, Uncle Cosmos!” “Get a job!” “What is going on?” Soyuz, the blue Kaizoku-Jin formerly known as Casimir the red Vanitian Diplomat, walked around the corner of the house in his yellow track jacket, holding a beer and a cigarette. Mir pointed to the Djinn who had finally reached the broken down spaceship on the front lawn. “You have a visitor.” Afrit squinted. In the distance he could make out a grand building. It was no castle, but judging by its size, its inhabitant was very important. Brushing off several blocks of dried mud, Afrit steeled himself for the encounter. “Hello I am Afrit, leader of the Band of Beggars and Terror of the Jewel. No, Not like that.” Shaking his head, he picked up his pace, getting closer to the home. “I’m Afrit, General of the Brass Armies, and Reaver of Worlds. No, no, he’s heard that before!” It was clear now. A spaceship sat in the home’s front yard. Sliding glass doors lead out onto a huge back deck. The smell of Barbeque filled the air. Everywhere, blue slaves milled about. Motioning towards some of the help, Afrit growled in his most menacing voice. “I am Afrit, leader of Team Red, subjugator of V’anitii, and destroyer of worlds! I wish to see your master!” Soyuz raised an eyebrow and blew a few smoke rings. Of course Afrit hadn’t changed a bit. “Good afternoon to you as well, Captain Afrit.” “Ah, so you have heard of me.” Afrit offered a smile. It was nice to know that even this deep in hell, his name meant something. “I need to see General Ragnor, quickly!” The Djinn’s stomach growled loudly. “And if he will allow it, I could use a meal.” Soyuz sat down in Mir’s vacated beach chair, sipping his beer. “I don’t know any General Ragnor. Nikki! Do you know any Ragnor?” The young man stuck his head out the window again. “Nope! Is he the guy in all of the photograph albums?” “Ragnor?” Uncle Cosmos flung the sliding doors open, waving tongs. “Tell that son-of-a-bitch this is our house! My great-nephew traded it for a badass cape and nothing he can do will get it back! I will not be giving up lavafront property for any scheming red general!” “Calm down, Uncle Cosmos!” Mir yelled. “You are letting the food burn!” Afrit leaned his head against the cool metal of the crashed spaceship, muttering incoherently. “Ragnor is the man in the photograph albums!” the young man, Nikki, yelled to Soyuz. Soyuz shrugged and turned back to Afrit. “General Ragnor must have lived here before, but I have never met him.” Turning away from the grounded ship, Afrit stared Soyuz right in the eyes. He bore a striking resemblance to Casimir. He could use an engineer right now. The red wonder had always been able to solve his problems. “You mean to say this hive of blue villains has stolen Ragnor the Righteous’ home?” The rusty gears began to turn in Afrit’s head, and a inkling of a plan formed. He rose a hand, leveling it toward Soyuz’s head. “You will leave here. I will recover this place for the great Ragnor.” The moment the words left Afrit’s mouth the entire beach house erupted. Uncle Cosmos nearly broke the sliding doors with the force of his anger. Blue heads popped out of windows. A mix of understandable language and the fast flowing native Kaizoku-Jin tongue flowed together into a torrent of indecipherable indignation. Suddenly, a hush descended. The front door opened, and a small blue woman stood there. Her long ears popped above her messy blonde bun, giving her the illusion of height. Every bit of her was sharp and lean, from her jagged cheekbones to her tired wrinkled eyes. In one hand she held a cigarette, in the other, a wooden spoon. Her yellow apron was tied over pink trackpants, and she wore only a tank top to show off strong muscles. “You,” she pointed her spoon at Afrit. Her voice was very thickly accented, more so than Soyuz’s. “Will do no such thing.” “You cannot tell Afrit what to-” His face froze. A single eye twitched. The gears in Afrit’s head began turning full tilt, as the voices, smells, and family resemblance all hit him at once. The force of the revelation nearly split his head asunder. “Casimir?” - - - “He will come to terms with it eventually,” Soyuz and Sputnik watched Afrit carefully. He sat on the loveseat, wrapped in several blankets. One of the girls had put a cold beer in his hand. Mama occasionally stopped to look in on him with a suspicious eye. She had left a plate of her home cooking in front of him. Sooner or later the smell would tempt him out of his stupor. In the meantime, Uncle Cosmos had taken the opportunity to talk at the semi-comatose Djinn. With no ability to defend himself, the red genie was helpless against the old Kaizoku-Jin’s verbal onslaught. He was forced to listen to senile ramblings about the good old days, before the world went to the dog wizards. When men were men and girls were girls and men didn’t fuse with other men. When space was bigger and everyone took the space bus and liked it. When days had twenty four hours in them and young people didn’t complain about how challenging it was. When people died and they stayed dead for more than a day. When everyone knew how to steal a zenni from the day they were born and Yema and his desk stayed where they belonged. Afrit’s features began to unfreeze, like like a frozen landscape giving way to spring. As his hand thawed, the once tightly clasped beer plummeted towards the floor. Fear filled Nikki’s eyes as the glistening bottle fell closer to oblivion. Diving towards it, he caught it mid air, popped it open, and took a long swig. “Never waste a beer.” he said, as Soyuz solemnly noded. Life trickled into Afrit’s eyes. His neck audibly creaked as he turned to face Soyuz. “How long.” Afrit looked down. “How long have you been blue!” He screamed into the ground. Tears threatened to pour down his rigid face. Sputnik and Uncle Cosmos, sensing the impending drama, mumbled something about the hot tub and disappeared. “Captain…” Soyuz reached a hand out. “I was going to tell you eventually. It was just never the right moment. You understand.” “Did Team Red mean nothing to you?” Afrit began to sob into a throw pillow, his face turning a deep shade of red. “I bet you’re not even an Engineer!” He shouted, throwing the now soaked pillow at Soyuz. Soyuz ducked the pillow. “Captain, Afrit, genie. It was just a little blue. That’s all, just a bit of color. You know Team Red always meant the world to me. You know a little bit of blue could never come between us.” Afrit looked up at the familiar face of Casimir. No. Soyuz now. “Then who are they?” Afrit jabbed his finger at the Kaizoku-jins, some of whom were straining to listen in. “Were we your little side Team?” “Now you are being ridiculous!” Soyuz threw his hands up. “They are my family! Like you never had a team on the side? What about that dragon? The one that killed you in the end? You want to talk about teams on the side, let’s talk about him!” Afrit gasped. “How could you!? You could never understand the evil machinations of two Djinn! It was beautiful!” Afrit stood up in a huff, pointing out the window. “And that ship? I suppose you called this three ring circus Team Blue?” “At least if I did, I’d know they were all the right color,” Soyuz snapped. “It doesn’t matter anyway.” The red drained from Afrit’s face as he collapsed back onto the couch, his weight threatening to snap it in half. Tears began streaming down his face, as he softly sobbed into the last pillow. “The ship. Soyuz. I had to sell The Killhouse. It’s over.” “There, there,” Soyuz sat next to him, patting him on the shoulder. “Every ship has its day. And maybe it is not as over as you think.” He disappeared for a moment and returned with the last relic of The Killhouse: a Hexak Sexy Body Pillow. Once the pillows had been the only solace of the crew, and now this one had somehow made its way to Hell. He gave it to Afrit to hug. Afrit squeezed it. A smile threatened to break across his miserable face. “See? We’ve got a little bit of the ship still. And it will always live on in our memories, and in the destroyed mountains of Konos. And in the many lives it has destroyed, especially Vanitian lives. The Killhouse may be gone, but its legacy will impact those it has touched and destroyed forever. Cheer up, Captain,” Soyuz gave Afrit’s shoulder a final pat. “Let us get some fresh air.” - - - As they walked across the desolate plains of Hell, Afrit and Soyuz passed by a long line. It appeared to lead to Dabura, the absolute monarch of Hell. Lines seemed to be popular in the afterlife. Two businessmen were having a heated argument over how the line worked. One of the men was so angry he was red in the face. Upon further inspection, he was actually red all over, and had small horns. He shouted up at the second man, waving his arms. Finally, the second man had had enough. A nicely bound leather briefcase swung up and clocked the red man. “You ignorant bastard!” the red man yelled, holding a bleeding nose. “Go fuck yourself!” Immediately a swarm of demons descended upon the man. “Ahem.” The largest of the demons wore hulking armor with shoulder pads bigger than his head. Skulls adorned his giant epaulets, each the size of a watermelon. In fact, skulls seemed to be the only decoration on the armor, from the ones on his oversized helmet down to the small ones on the laces of his giant cleated boots. The demon, whose face was painted like a skull, cleared his throat again and pointed to a sign labeled RULES. “You two are in clear violation of the Line Rules. Every member of this line must adhere to the clearly posted Line Rules. Rule number three: no name calling! This may be Hell, but here we demand civilized discourse. Since you appear to be incapable of that, you must settle your argument in the Blood Arena!” Two demon guards handed gore crusted mauls to the fighting men and hauled them out of line. A ripple of excitement moved through the onlookers. It began as a whisper, “blood. blood. blood.” The crowd pressed closer to the men, showing fangs. Gradually the chanting grew louder and more raucous. “Blood! Blood! Blood!” Claws came out, arms went up, a frothing frantic frenzy overtook the mob. “BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD!” “NO SHOUTING!” the demon guard roared. - - - The clatter and bloodbath was soon left behind as Afrit and Soyuz continued through the desolate plane of Hell. The horizon seemed to stretch for hundreds of miles, and there was no sign of civilization. Every muscle in Afrit’s body tensed as the crowd’s roars still rang in his ears. “What a spectacle. I didn’t know there were such strict rules in Hell.” He clambered on, growing weak from lack of nourishment. Soyuz counted his zenni, some spattered with flecks of blood. No amount of protective glass between the audience and the arena could keep the mess contained. “I only go by one rule: always bet on the Mor-Cats.” He pocketed his zenni and looked up just in time. She was walking out of the arena, on the arm of some hulking red general. She moved like sunlight through the crowd, ethereal, as though the ground could not hope to hold her down. Even in the company of a great man she looked bored. He was clearly beneath her attention. The world was beneath her attention. She was beauty incarnate, the very essence of perfection. Soyuz felt his heart skip - or he would have, if it was still beating. The world fell out from underneath him, and nothing mattered but this woman. He was floating, borne up on a cloud. He was actually floating. Overhead, birds flew in a red sky. The blistering heat flares were brighter and more cheerful. A flying man did ballet. “Afrit,” Soyuz pulled the Djinn up into the air to look at the woman. “Look.” Afrit squinted, then grinned as he spotted a true sight for sore eyes. “General Ragnor!” In the sky, the ballet man was attacked by a flock of harpies and driven into a pool of lava, where he landed and caught on fire. His body burned as brightly as Zizi’s newfound love. [2677/2400 words, 3 days] [Afrit and Casimir Joint Quest] Edited by Detective Wesson, Jan 15 2014, 05:24 AM.
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| Detective Smith | Jan 16 2014, 02:29 AM Post #2 |
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[Rewards: Bukujutsu/100 zenni] [750 EXP/300 zenni] |
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3:27 AM Jul 11