thebastion | Day 157 :: Either or format [Closed beginning, Open later]

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Day 157 :: Either or format [Closed beginning, Open later]

Who: Raimundo and Gohan on the Skyway, Open for when Rai reaches the Bastion.
Open: BOTH! I'm magic like that.
When: Day 157
Where: Skyway at first, followed by the Bastion
What: A wild Raimuno appears!
Format: Either or, I'll follow
Warnings: Snark. Snark is so a warning.

The splitting headache was the first thing he noticed. It was kind of hard to miss. Everything hurt but the headache was the worst part. The next thing he noticed was the pain right in the middle of his back. It was a familiar pain. The dull ache of sleeping on a hard floor but a hundred times worse. Every bit of him felt like it was screaming but all he wanted to do was to go back to sleep. Everything didn't hurt when he was asleep.

It wasn't the pain that really brought him to his senses. It was the cold wind. He shivered as he blew over him and seemed to cut right though his clothes. His eyes snapped open but he forced them closed when all he could see was sky. Staring straight up always did hurt. He forced himself to roll over and opened his eyes again. Of course doing that wasn't a smart idea. He saw a cliff and quickly jumped to his feet. Raimundo was standing on a piece of black rock suspended in the air by nothing. He looked around but all he could see was nothingness and fog.

"Wuya? WUYA?!" He cried out. This had to be her doing, right? She was a super powerful Heylin witch. Th question was why. Why would she do this to him? Was it a test or something? Last thing he remembered was asking him how to play air-hockey.

"...This can't be happening..."

It had taken some time but Raimundo and Gohan had reached the Bastion. The place looked fine for the last city in all the destroyed world but it wasn't the palace. He kicked a rock over the edge of the floating island and stared out at the distance. This wasn't fair. He had finally gotten his due and what happened? The world exploded. He shoved his hands into his pockets and headed over toward that monument thing. So this thing was supposed to help them, right? It didn't look like much. He reached out and poked the spiky green structure.

"Well...at least you seem less talkative than the gecko..."

((OOC: As the cut things say, the first part is for Gohan finding Rai out on the Skyway and the second is for people coming up to greet the newcomer. If you have any ideas or questions, feel free to tell me or ask.))

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"It doesn't really talk at all."

A girl's voice came from behind it, her head poking around the monument a second later. Messy black hair hanging loose to the side with her head tilted, big blue eyes and, oh... that would be a tail behind her back.

"Some'a the monsters do. But only to certain people. Y'new here?"

Raimundo jumped and stepped away from the monument when he thought it spoke for just a second. Then came the girl with the long black hair and a...tail. His eyes instantly fixated on it. He rubbed a finger under his chin as he listened to her speak.

"Uh...yeah. I'm new. Talking monsters huh? And girls with tails?" He asked. He looked her up and down finally. No monkey staff. That wasn't a monkey tail anyway. This was getting weirder and weirder.

"Guess stuff just doesn't make sense when the world ends, huh?"

"Mm... no. Not really. We live with dragons and cat girls and a lotta other weird shit, too. Honestly I've kinda learned to ignore it."

Besides, she's met demons that were plenty strange in her own world.

She moved out from behind the monument, giving it an affectionate pat.

"I'm sure if it could talk, it wouldn't have much to say."

"Been there done that with a dragon." Rai said with a dismissive wave of his hand. He could deal without the dragon rides and all the talks about Shen Gong Wu rashes. He looked back to the monument and shrugged.

"Fine that it doesn't talk to me. I'm Raimundo. What's your name?" Introductions. Learning the tail-girl's name was probably a smart idea. "Or should I just call you tail-girl?"

"Rin. I've got enough nicknames here, I don't need another one, thanks. Rin will be fine."

"Rin huh? My friends call me Rai all the time. So is Rin short for something else?"

"... what would Rin even be short for?"

Seriously, she's been wondering that. Between Viola wondering why she didn't have a musical name and Colin insisting she be called RinRin, she's starting to wondering if there's something wrong with her name.

"How about something like Rinna? I could see that." Rai said. He slipped his hands into his hoodie pockets. "So girl, what kind of things are there to do around here for fun?"

"Ri-n-n-a... ?"

Rin echoed the name as one would when sounding out kanji, but it just didn't seem right to her. She shook her head.

"No. It's just Ri-n. Like the kanji for phosphorus."

And that's how she'd like to keep it. She really had more nicknames here than she could stomach. Why couldn't people just call her what she'd been named?

She let out a huff, air puffing at her messy bangs.

"You just missed the big festival. "Fun" isn't really our first thought 'round here."

"I said could be. You asked." Rai said. So her name was Kanji? He remembered something about that from Kimiko. So she was probably japanese. Not hard to guess from her looks but you never knew with Asians. There were a lot more countries than just China, Japan, and Korea after all.

"No fun? What else are you going to do at the end of the world? All work and no play makes Raimundo a dull boy."

Blue eyes, pointed ears and a tail weren't exactly common Asian traits either. But she hadn't gotten in to that whole explanation yet.

She made a face at his comment, but he was technically right.

"Well it's not that we don't have fun at all. We just have work to do. This whole place takes a lotta hands to run, y'know."

She pauses, actually looking sympathetic.

"I get it, though. I don't really like it, either. I hated workin' back home and I lost jobs constantly. I never wanted to go to school, either. I'd rather just have fun all the time, too, but... well, people gotta eat, and cookin' is the one thing I'm good at. I ain't gonna let people starve just so I can go fuck off and enjoy myself."

"Cook?" Cook was one of Raimundo's favorite words. Cooking led to food. And food was up there with sleep on Rai's top three things to do. He grinned and flashed her a thumbs up. He didn't care what weird things she had going on. If she could cook, she was okay in his book.

"Sounds like you're one of the more awesome people here then. Ever need help in the kitchen, just ask. I'm great at peeling potatoes." Thanks to the monk lifestyle and having to peel mountains of them. But who was complaining if it got him food, right?

Wow Rai, doesn't take much to make you happy.

"Eheh... well, I ain't gonna brag but..."

Oh please, Rin.

"The only person better'n me is Mirelle and she's got a new baby to take care of so I pretty much got free reign of the kitchen. Zulf has been helpin' me out, but I could always use more hands with all the people we're startin' to get here."

"Well count on me." You know, unless he was busy with something else. Like playing, sleeping, eating, or playing a prank on someone. Or just feeling lazy. Actually, Rin probably shouldn't count of Rai but he said she should. Not that she knew that.

"So what do we all got in this place? I mean, it's not bad. Bigger than the temple. Not as big as the palace or Rio but not bad."

If he's sleeping when he's supposed to be helping, he can expect a combat boot to his backside until he wakes up.

Clearly that's the best way to rely on some one.

"It used to be a lot smaller. There's the two apartments - the tower is the nice one, by the way - the Dragonfield, the Onsen, Distillery and Kitchen, Armory, Forge, Memorial, Lost and Found, Shrine... we just got a nice out door gazebo a little while ago, Seimei has his own huge estate..."

Seimei had a huge estate all to himself? Whoever this Seimei was, Rai needed to meet. He'd love to have a giant plush bed all to himself. The Tower was the nicer apartments though. He'd hit that place up first. None of the other things sounded all that interesting to Rai except maybe the Distillery and the Lost and Found. Though he did have one question.

"So...what's the Onsen? It a club or something?"

He spent a lot of shards to get it. Good luck, Rai.

"Oh, it's a hot spring bath. We didn't have proper showers here for the first month and I got sick of pretty damn fast. Bathin' in a river sucks, y'know? So yeah it's just a real nice bath, and there's a divider so guys and girls can go in at the same time if they want and need like privacy or whatever."

"At least there's warm water." Rai said and ran his hand through his hair. So if he needed a nice hot bath, he knew where to go. Though now that he was thinking about it, more questions were coming to mind.

"So what exactly is this place? No one's really told me yet."

"Mhm!"

Warm water made so many things easier to deal with.

"Oh. Uhm. It's called The Bastion. It's... basically the last safe place in this world followin' an event they call the Calamity. It... ruined this world. And a lotta others."

"The Calamity? That's what it was called? We called it Ten Thousand Years of Darkness back home. So what caused it?" If it was something here that caused it, it would put that nasty thought in the back of his head to rest. "And what kind of name is The Bastion? Was the maker a fan of The Neverending Story or somethin'?"

"Pretty sure they're different things..."

Because there were plenty of "end of the world" predictions from Rin's world, but none of them included a weapon of mass destruction coming from another world.

"Uh. No. Bastion means a safe place, or somethin' like that. And it was-- ... well. Two sides of a war, one side got stupid and... shit happened. It was a weapon. Or so we've been told."

"So two sides got crazy and someone nuked the world and broke all our worlds too? That's how it went down?" Rai was paraphrasing to a huge degree but it sounded all about right to him.

"Doesn't seem like anyone really won, does it?"

"Basically. And no. But the ones that are left... know that."

At least that's what she hopes. She really only has Zulf and Nate's words on things but they were kind of the de facto authorities in this place.

"Yeah well, still sounds like they went way too far like idiots." As if Rai was one to talk but, "So where are they now? I mean, the people from this world that messed it all up?"

"Where do you think?"

How many people can logically survive the end of the world, Rai. Really.

"I meant are any here and where are they? I feel like filing a formal complaint with my fist."

"Hey, hey! I'm just as pissed as you are, but Nate, Zulf, the rest of them ain't the people to go after, okay?! Nate was barely involved, and Zulf and his friends tried to stop it!"

Whoops. That was a button, Rai. You now have a demon girl in your face.

Well. Relatively so. She's kinda short.

"If you wanna take your anger out on somethin, go on the Skyway and punch a Gasfella in the face. You go after anyone in this place, you're gonna be meetin' my fist. And my fist don't play soft. Understand?"

Rai's eyes widen. Well that was a surprise. This wasn't the first time he had an angry Japanese girl up in his face. He stared at her while she yelled at him and for a moment opened his mouth to say something snarky right back but it died in his throat.

So the survivors where her friends. Fine. He wouldn't punch them...hard. Maybe a little punch to the arm. Not that he's say that out loud. Nope. He's going to play it the other way. He smirked and leaned in just a little, one of his eye brows raised just every so slightly.

"You're kinda cute when you're angry, girl."

That got her tail going. And not happily.

"Watch it, Rai-kun. I haven't decided if I'm gonna give you the good food yet or not."

Just going to gently shove at his shoulder now, before starting to walk away. Follow her and she might lead you to the kitchen, Rai.

"Come on girl. Just tryin' to be nice." A light shove is better than a hard punch. He smirked and just followed along behind her. If she led to food or a place to sleep, that would be all Rai would need.

"Uhuh. Sure."

But she is going to lead him to the kitchen, pausing to point down the way at the very obvious tall building amongst all the much shorter ones.

"That's the tower."

"Now that's one heck of a place. Nice lookin'. You think there is room there?"

"Uhuh. Ryuuji and I just moved in there, but I saw empty apartments when we were bringin' stuff up."

"There a way to call dibs? Cause I so call dibs." Raimundo said with grin.

"Just go grab one that's empty. The keys should be on the front board when you first walk in."

"Awesome. No application or anything? Perfect." Raimundo moved his hands behind his head.

"This place might not be so bad."

"If you can count 'end of the world' as 'not so bad', sure..."

You sure are a weird one, Rai.

Rai's smile disappeared. "You're kind of a downer, aren't you? It's called looking on the bright side."

"The bright side is we're alive. The not so bright side is that no one else is. I'm just bein' realistic here."

"Like I said, downer."

Rin just rolled her eyes at that. If he wanted to be unrealistic about the end of the world, so be it. It wasn't her place to force him to think otherwise.

Speaking of geckos, another somewhat reptilian creature has approached from behind him. When she speaks, it's not aloud but directly into Raimundo's mind. "You understand the speech of beast People?" she asks curiously.

How else would a gecko be talkative?

"Whoa!" Raimundo jumped and stepped backwards and almost on top of the dragon behind him. He spun around, almost certain to see someone else. Nope. No witch. He looked down and spotted the blue lizard with wings? Great. Another dragon.

"Hey! Stay out of my head. I've had enough of someone all up in there, alright?" Wuya being in his head had turned out alright but that feeling was still fresh. That strange sensation of her swimming around in his brains. It was creepy!

Kitten snorts in exasperation, smoke rising from her nostrils. "Fine, I will stay out of your head and sit here silently. I assume you are just as incapable of understanding my verbal speech as everyone else is."

And with that, she sits down, scales grey around the edges rather than gold, and proceeds to quietly chirp and croak something about how she isn't a monster and she's not out to harm anyone. How is she to explain herself if humans won't let her speak?

Kitten may be very clever, but she's still a baby, and her posture alone is enough to give away the sulking, if the tone of her mutterings didn't manage it.

"Hey. You're the one who started reading my mind without asking. You don't get to be all huffy." Rai crossed his arms and looked away from Kitten. Though it didn't last long. He looked down at the chirping and croaking dragon. Dammit. She looked really mad. He sighed and moved down onto one knee in front of her.

"Look...just don't be poking around in there, alright? That's off limits. Deal?"

Playing with the stones at her feet, she flicks them to and fro with a claw. Kitten still sounds somewhat petulant when she protests, "I did no such thing. I do not read minds, I speak into them." She does look up when he kneels down to her level, meeting his eyes.

"I have neither the ability nor the intention to poke around in there."

"Oh..." That was about all Rai could say. So this gecko dragon wasn't trying to look into his head? That was a relief. At least she wasn't invading his mind. The speaking into them was...weird. Not completely off putting but weird.

"Well...sorry then. How about we start over? What do you say?"

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Day 157 :: Either or format [Closed beginning, Open later]

After Rai gets in to the Bastion

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