The sun setting over the distant mountains cast the plateau in a warm, orange light. The air was thin, a bit cold and slightly breezy, The grass, somewhat short, flowed in the breeze like green waves and despite being so far in the air, the land below was hard to discern, as if a haze filled it.
The heights were comfortable in a strange way, perhaps the bluish haze and the reds and oranges of sunset somehow gave physical form to the far more abstract notion of “serenity” that some people cannot fathom, let alone envision. It was a beautiful picture, one that no mere photograph nor drawing could really capture.
---
That said, one person’s drawings were just that kind of beautiful. Annika skipped through the field excitedly. This was a wonderful place! She considered creating a companion to join her in this place, but evidently one was already coming. She could feel him, or her, not far away. It was going to be so much fun, getting to meet someone new!
She grew less thrilled though when she felt the type of reiatsu closing in. A death god? That was unfortunate: she wanted a new friend, but as it turned out she was going to have to kill him. Maybe after she did, she was going to draw some flowers. Yes, flowers would do wonderfully here.
There were a few trees in the field that would make great places to hide from the shinigami, and would also great places to nap after fighting. She decided to sit beneath one, looking out at the sunset, and start drawing, waiting for the shinigami to come to her. As she sat, pulling a notebook out of her bag and beginning to draw her ears twitched, trying to hear his footsteps and her tail wafted around behind her, bushing against the tree.
She was drawing a dragon. A really cute, fire-breathing dragon.
A wonderful hill bathed comfortably in fine honey-gold light sat amongst its brothers, proud, but not too tall. The grass grew in abundance, lending the land beneath it its handsome and soft bristles. Reeds slapped playfully at each other, swaying in gentle dance at the cadence of a crisp breeze, and all of these together made for serenity most can only hope to find in a dream.
“Ooooouuuuaaaaaaaah!”
A brisk fwuff thump broke the stillness of nature unfettered, the sound repeating itself at a rapid pace.
“Frrrrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuu!”
Fwuff thump.
Fwuff thump.
“OuuOuuOuuOuuOuuOOOUUUU!”
FwuffthumpFwuffthumpFwuffthump.
And now along the face of our dear hill, we see a speck. The speck is getting bigger by the moment. It is comprised mostly of black cloth, a hint of red, and a mass of flailing limbs.
“WhoaOaOaOa!”
What had started as a playful tumble down a hillside had quickly transformed into ungraceful sideways falling, presented in the style of Six Flags. The flailing arms had given up in a quest to find purchase on the slick slope, content (if that is the word you could use) to just fling and fly aimlessly, slapping against the helpless ragdoll that was Raury Feybrand.
“Imma...Accka...OuOuOu!”
As the hill tapered, the failure in proper estimation of gravity’s power began to forgive. The drunk began to lose momentum, tumbling much more slowly until, at last, his body found rest. Of a sort.
“Urk.”
Though he had begun mending his abdomen wound from the mishap in the mountains, it did not prevent the dull ache of recent bruising as he rose to his feet. Wild, adrenaline charged eyes surveyed the surroundings, finding nothing any more amiss than they had moments before when he had begun his ‘descent’.
“That...” he muttered shakily, “Was...fuckkin’ awesome!” Gleefully giggling like a madman (and who was to question the madness of Raury Feybrand?), he groped for purchase on the steep slope, intending to begin the entire episode once more.
Can’t find anyone in this wonky world...thing. Might as well enjoy the small stuff. While there’s still time...
While his most recent jaunt across a freak ice-age had indeed left the Founder unsettled, hours and hours of searching for his comrades had yielded nothing more than anxious frustration. This was perhaps partly the reason he sought comfort in such play. Then again, when did the man not take time to revel in the small joys that living provided?
The dragon was still a work in progress. But he would become useful eventually. For now, though, she didn’t have the kind of time to give him the kind of detail he deserved. For now, she had to focus on more immediately entering combat that she had originally intended. It was fine, she would improvise the rest later.
For now, Annika had to do something a bit more immediate. She took a paintbrush from her bag and a small container of paint, and got to work. The paint seemed to hover in the air as her brush went through it. Wide arcs and dramatic flourishes met long, narrow legs as, in the open air, a scorpion took form. Something that didn’t need to carry energy within it was far simpler to make. And it would keep the Death God occupied.
As the painting, done with all the colors of the wind, came to fruition, the scorpion, which was roughly the size of a person, went fro, a detailed monochromatic painting in the air, two dimensional, to a three-dimensional to a real, fully alive, gigantic scorpion. Its body was colored in, red and realistic, and its tail trembled. It was alive. Almost instantly after taking its first breath, the scorpion ran off to find the shinigami that its creator wanted to be rid of.
When she was done, and the scorpion was on its way to find and destroy a shinigami, Annika went back to her dragon. If she was going to being an elegant monster into the world, she was going to do it right. Annika wasn’t going to do something half-way if she could help it.
277 Words
596 Total
Awakening
Life Imitates Art
Initial Awakening
At the cost of 5% of Annika’s reiatsu, she can paint a creature. The creature painted with Life Imitates Art has no discretionary reiatsu and can be destroyed as one would any other reiatsu construct. These constructs can persist for only five turns, and take one full turn to create.
Annika can only control one construct per 25% Resonance if they have no reiatsu, or one construct total if it can utilize reiatsu. Each turn that a construct is maintained, Annika must pay 2.5% of her reiatsu per construct per turn.
Annika’s ears and tail are permanent expressions of this ability, and are exempt from its costs and limitations. Why? Because she really, really likes them.
What can turn an innocent moment of happiness into a horrifying death lock in under five seconds flat? If you answered scorpions, you would be correct. In this case, anyway. Halfway through his second descent he noticed he was no longer alone. This realization came as quite a surprise. Both because he had not seen another living being since that wolf man, and also due to an enormous stinger scything down at his head mid tumble.
“Tha f...!”
Batting away the encroaching venom-tipped weapon, Raury fought to right himself by changing the direction of his roll. The motion was not graceful, but it served. After a moment of flailing he managed purchase, planting his feet solidly. Luckily, the terrain seemed to affect the beast’s mobility as much as his own, as it was slow to turn itself.
Round two, I s’pose. And more goddamn animals.
Digging his arms into the earth underfoot, Raury channeled his reiatsu and began to change his surroundings. The soft, fertile earth underneath the scorpion churned and rumbled, as if being sifted. Not seconds later, it was standing on the same steep slope it had been before. Only now there was a mudslide. A pretty sizeable one. Soft whipped earth flew down the steep slope at an impressive speed around the arthropod.
“Let’s rock, Zhang Xu!” He cried, sheathing himself in the hard enhancements of his zanpakutou. Following the ensnared creature, Raury used the momentum of the hill to charge hard, aiming a sliding kick at the thing’s head analogue.
“Whoooo!”
[667]
[God Hand]
Within combat a Founder’s ability to access [God Hand] is not revoked, but due to the strenuous conditions of a fight, their focus is greatly reduced. For the price of 500 reiatsu a Founder is able to twist a 5 m area to their control and shape it. This may only be used once per turn and only a maximum of 10 m may be altered at one time.
The scorpion struggled against the earth which had ensnared it, flailing wildly and only trapping itself worse. That frustrated Annika; she couldn’t give her foot soldiers much more than basic intelligence, and no matter what she wanted from them. She left it to struggle, though, and jumped up onto the air before leaping into the tree. Being able to hop on air had made climbing trees far easier.
Annika needed to keep distracting the Death God, so she let her creature keep flailing, attempting to strike Raury with its tail as he went in for the attack. When he was struck, Annika winced, feeling some of the pain her construct took, but she kept pumping him full of her energy, but not even that could sustain it; it shattered when Raury struck it. This made her frown; how was she going to prepare herself to bring a dragon into this world if she couldn’t keep a scorpion alive.
She opted to watch, or rather wait, and see what the Death God would do before preparing another construct. Maybe she’d draw a self-portrait next, to keep him busy while she got her dragon ready?
Raury rolled to his feet upon striking the creature, staring back at where it had been moments ago. As far as his reckoning went, animals and insects alike, no matter how grotesquely large, were not supposed to just...poof.
“Where’s the ‘Ooouuugh...’” he muttered, blinking rapidly. “S’posed to go like...ouuugh!” At his words, he performed a pantomime of creatures caught in the throes of death and agony, finishing the act on the ground and thrashing madly.
“OoOOoOUuuuuugh! Like’at, eh?”
Dusting off as he returned to his feet, he looked around. If the thing had gone poof, it was probably the creation of someone else, and in fact not a naturally found in the world type of giant beast. The question remaining now would be...who. And. Where?
“Who you where!?” He threw his arms up. “Where you who!?”
Fuck.
Focusing on the area around him told him little more than there was someone. And that someone was somewhere. Pretty dated information at this point.
“Well, fuck it. When ya wanna have a go at it, I’ll be right here. Ain’t gonna go chasin’.”
And with that a fresh gourd was breached. Drinks were had. Breaths were breathed both in and out. He was a patient man. Sometimes.
Annika was rather confused by this Death God. Didn’t Grim Reapers kill people? Why was this one so... well, bumbling, for all his power and instinct? With a sigh, Annika got to work, painting while the man drank. At the very least, her bond with her creatures had grown stronger so far, as she focused more energy into the combat.
As the outline of a very ornate, classically European dragon came into being, Annika felt immense pride in herself. It was big. Not the massive scale she wanted, but there simply was neither the time nor paint for something so impractical. But as white-tipped golden scales began to fill her beast in, and its form slowly took on dimensions, it’s sixteen feet of height slowly lowered from the tree. It was alive.
And with even more of Annika’s energy flowing constantly into it, it also was angry. The creature roared, and kept itself out of Raury’s fists’ reach with its mighty wings, each of which was an impressive sight to behold. Annika had stalled enough; this was her moment to shine. And to stave off Death himself.
He had expected something most likely dangerous. Maybe a sneak attack, or perhaps some wilds barbarian striking from the nearby brush. Gremlins, goblins, kittens and more dogs perhaps. Fucking plains raiders. But no one really expects a goddamn dragon.
Yet as he spun to his feet, there the fucker was. Right goddamn there. The king of fucking monsters himself, just flappin away in the breeze. Staring down on him as if to say “Fuck you, Imma goddamn dragon.” with those malicious jewels called eyes.
“...Motherfucking fuck.” Raury murmured, taking stock of the enormous beast. “Fucking fuck. You are a dragon.” He stood squared off with the king of monsters, trying to gauge a method of attack. Wings were just fucking unfair. “And that is horseshit.”
How would he even begin to deal with this?
It’s fuckin flying.
“Too sober for this nonsense.” Which of course was a preceding line to a furious bout of gulping, and an overdramatic tossing of the spent gourd. “Fuck it.”
Wasting no more time, Raury dug his hands into the earth, manipulating the ground beneath him into a pile of dense stone, roughly the size of footballs. “Plenty of ammo.” He stated, hefting one in each hand and breaking into a solid sprint. Hitting a hard pace, he launched the two stones at the dragon, then vaulted himself into the air.
Too far...
As his jump failed to reach the target, he arced under the monster’s belly, a few feet shy. A flare of reiatsu surged to his feet, giving him a supernatural purchase on the air.
Yup. We’re on earth!
Elated at this welcome development, he kicked off the energy in his legs, exploding upward off a thin disc of spirit energy, and aimed a powerful palm thrust at the dragon’s underbelly.
“Byyyaaaah!”
[1175]
Chikaihou Shinou - "Earthly Law Mastership"
This technique allows the user to condense reiatsu around their body or under their feet in the living world. This enables the user to slow their falls, extend their jumps, or even to stand in the open air. Shunpo cannot be used mid-air.
Exploding Palm:
An augmentation of a natural strike’s destructive force, exploding palm effectively deals a high amount of damage in the form of a small burst of reiatsu at the point of contact, effecting a pressurized blast. If this strike fails to hit its target, a small blast occurs as the targetless reiatsu explodes outward from Raury’s palm. The blast travels no further than 3m. (Costs 5% rei)
The dragon attempted to evade, but failed, being hit with the explosive reiatsu from the drunkard’s hand. At least he had reacted the way Annika wanted, but she didn’t know that shinigami could do her jumping trick too, and so her dragon was still in the line of fire. The dragon cracked, like glass hit by a baseball.
“No, you don’t!” she forced out even more reiatsu, essentially reforming the dragon she had made. All this work was making her rather tired, but she wasn’t going to let the Grim Reaper get too close to her.
Before shattering, the dragon solidified with a roar. No longer was it in danger of death, but Annika wasn’t sure how many times she could just recreate the same construct. She needed to actually hit this damn shinigami. She closed her eyes and began to breathe heavier. As she did, her dragon took a deep breath as well, and when it exhaled, fire left its lungs, bearing down on the shinigami who endangered her. Annika, and her dragon, burnt with reiatsu flame to set the shinigami and the world around him alight.
188 Words
1367 Total
Awakening, Resonant Attack
Art Imitates Life
Initial Awakening
The other aspect to Annika's awakening is that, since her constructs are relatively easily destroyed, she can pay 2.5% of her reiatsu in addition to the normal upkeep cost of a construct to save it from destruction and restore it.
Performance Art
Resonant Attack
By connecting herself more deeply with one of her paintings, Annika can convert up to 5% of her reiatsu into a single attack delivered by one of her constructs. This attack takes the form of any logical attack her construct could deliver.
That glorious moment when a solid strike hits. It’s a beautiful thing, feeling your force collide with another. Yours winning out, and your opponent caving. He felt this charge of elation, that singular feeling of satisfaction, as his palm connected with the dragon. He felt, he watched, as it began to shatter.
And then the sheer disappointment. Maddening frustration. When the damn thing just didn’t go down. When it righted itself, the cracks disappearing. Constructed flesh re-knitted, reanimated. And his roar of rage was lost in the conflagration bursting from his winged opponent. Some things just don’t go down that easy.
“Shit!” He yelled, futilely bringing his arms up to protect his face from the raging inferno bearing him back down to the earth. The jolt of concussive force shook his legs as he landed back on solid ground. Too solid, maybe. His legs vibrated with shuttering impact, and the flames just kept coming, scorching flesh and garment alike. There was no time to think. Only to preserve.
Without any direct though, only crazed will, he forced a cocoon of earth around himself, shielding from the hideous blaze.
“God’s fucking balls!” He gasped, the words coming out hoarse and scorched. That had hurt. Badly. Within his temporary shelter, Raury groped madly, his hands trembling, for his savior. Something strong. Something to put the hair back on his dog. No time to uncap properly, he smashed the top of the bottle against his shelter, quickly turning it up and draining it. The burn was unimaginable. Fire and fire don’t mix, it seems. Choking and sputtering, he clawed at his throat, hacking as though being strangled. Pushing his stubborn will forward, he brought his reiatsu into the mix.
Relief. It washed over him as would a river. A temporary fix, but it’d have to do. Outside of his shelter, he could feel the heat dimming. The dragon’s attack was spent. He had to go now. And go hard.
Bursting from the earthen dome, he located his target, still unmoving after its breath attack. He grabbed for another pair of his prepared projectiles, launching another volley. Wincing from the worse of the burns still plaguing him, Raury shot skyward once more, sailing above his target. Torquing his body as he neared its head, he fired a leg at the scaled beast’s head. As hard as he possibly fucking could.
[1571]
[ Belligerent Stupor ]
Drinking affords the user the ability to ignore his/her physical limits, allowing the user to expend reiatsu to allow a temporary boost to Martial Prowess.
An increase to overall physical combat damage dealt to opponents by 15% (15% to Hakuda). For the duration of the technique, wounds are treated as one level lower. Minor wounds are ignored, moderate are treated as minor, etc.
5% of total Reiatsu to activate. This effect lasts three rounds. User must be intoxicated.
[God Hand]
Within combat a Founder’s ability to access [God Hand] is not revoked, but due to the strenuous conditions of a fight, their focus is greatly reduced. For the price of 500 reiatsu a Founder is able to twist a 5 m area to their control and shape it. This may only be used once per turn and only a maximum of 10 m may be altered at one time.
How the hell had he survived? By the time Annika knew what was happening, it was too late to do anything about it. The deed was done.
The projectiles had served to keep the dragon busy, too busy to swat a shinigami out of the sky like it wanted to; and the quite movable object clashed for a split-second with Raury’s slightly-less-than-unstoppable force. There was a quiet serenity as the dragon simply cracked, and finally began falling to the earth below in large pieces, that shattered completely on impact. Again, like glass meeting its ultimate end.
Maybe if Annika had seen it coming she could’ve done more to protect it, but she was already starting to feel the pull of fatigue on her. It wasn’t like she’d have the kind of time to make a new dragon either. Worse still, the dragon had come from her tree, which compromised her location. She had really gambled a lot on her dragon, and since it had been a damned dragon she thought the bet had been a safe one! Whatever she did, now, though it would require a new construct, and she was tremendously short on ideas.
Frantically, she began flipping through her sketchbook, looking for something. She stopped on one of the first pages of concept art she had sketched after discovering her abilities, and the idea seemed to crystalize in her mind, like the sort of epiphany that few people ever truly have in their lives. “Eureka!” she squealed, though tried to keep her volume down, and she set off to work.
It did take a moment or two, but eventually the long reddish hair and wild ears and tail accompanying the form of a fourteen-year-old girl fell only slightly gracefully from a tree, and landed rather unpleasantly on her bottom. She squeaked when she did,, and winced in pain. The actual Annika sat up in her tree, on a hopefully stable branch, watching her replica lure the shinigami into a trap, as she began work on what that trap would be, flipping through her sketchbook to find the subject of her next painting.
Landing far more gracefully this time around, Raury glanced around wildly, seeking the source of this madness as bits of shattered dragon rained down around him. There! A flash of movement from a tree nearby. And a...girl fell out. A little girl.
“The flyin’ fuck?” he gasped, throat still raw. Standing tall, his bare chest gained a measure of further relief from the stray breeze. Funny that, his shirt was always first to go. Pants seemed impervious to the hazards of combat.
“Oi, get back here!” No longer in the mood to fuck around, his shunpo blurred the drunk forward, closing with the fleeing form of what appeared to be a fox child.
Fucking odd as hell, And Imma godrotted spirit being. What’s that say ‘bout all this?
Drunken rage or no, he wasn’t about to severely damage a thing like this opponent, so he contented himself with a full-blown sprint, ending in a slide to first base.
...
In baseball terms, you sick weirdo. Leg sweep. I mean, damn.
Biting her lower lip as her replica was knocked down at the base of the tree the original sat in; Annika put the finishing touches on her second construct. She then mouthed the words “I’m sorry, me” silently to her clone, and put the tail on the elephant.
What was once a few ounces of paint floating inexplicably in mid-air made by a little girl made a rather insane transformation into a seven hundred pound elephant calf. This was the Annika Reynolds version of dropping an anvil on someone’s head. Except with elephants. Because elephants were cuter than anvils.
The real one used this distraction to leap down the other side of the tree, using her ability to leap on nothing to keep herself from braking bones: Annika was a good girl, after all, and didn’t want to get hurt! As the real fox-girl dropped down one side of a tree, an African elephant cartoonishly fell down the other, taking a good number of branches with it.
In a lifespan much like a blue whale written by the British author Douglas Adams, the newly alive elephant became quickly acquainted with gravity and started to fall toward Raury and the pseudo-Annika.
Just as he had entirely innocently restrained the little fox girl, Raury had thought the root of the problem had been established. Maybe now he could get some answers, then be once more merrily on his way, drinkin’ and laughin’ just as happy as a clam stuffed with pearls. But then the elephant came.
If not for the brief moment of tree limbs crackling overhead, he’d probably be witnessing the birth of the world’s first whiskey-pancakes. Just kidding. Whiskey pancakes are a thing. A lovely thing. But Raury sure as shit didn’t wanna be one.
“Shitfuckin’ cockballs!”
What in the everlovin’ godbleedin’ shit oh damn!
Grabbing the girl around the waist, he slammed his hand onto the ground opening up a wide enough hole for the two to just fit in. The concussive force of a seven hundred pound animal, however, should never be underestimated. This thing made a crater. Not a deep enough one to squash our hero and his prize. Captive. It’s a captive. However, the crater was deep enough to teach Raury why one should never be close to the rump of a large land-based mammal. The earth blunted the majority of the force, but the drunk still got a solid bell-ringer, dropping him to the ground. Hard. Working his legs furiously, he blessed his still-charged body and its inability to know how fucked it should feel.
“Y’m’kay?” Checking his capture, she seemed alright. Probably. “S...swas....swasa...swasa fuckin’ elephant babby.” Nodding to no-one, he thought furiously about what to do next.
As she was grabbed and stuffed in a hole by an old man, the replica Annika made a sound not unlike the squeak of a rubber ducky. She was more than surprised to see her dropping an elephant on herself, but felt far more confused about being suddenly hurled into a hole. If she had the requisite intelligence to talk, she would likely expound volumes on this feeling of total confusion, but she didn’t. So, instead, she just squeaked.
As the elephant impacted the ground and shattered into tiny flecks of glass-like substance, with almost the same level of sheer confusion that pseudo-Annika had, its shards simply disappeared on contact with a surface including Raury, harmlessly disappearing. And the elephant calf and the ground had just become friends, too.
The actual Annika was going to run off and try to prepare some ungodly creature again – possibly a giant robot; that sounded fun! – but she noticed that she was still connected to a construct. Both the pain and demise of the dragon and elephant were taking their toll, but she could still feel pseudo-Annika. How? Sure, the Grim Reaper survived, he was annoyingly good at that. But why had her duplicate survived?
Curious, the fox-girl put her back against the tree, keeping herself on the opposite side of the Reaper and hr creation. Had that Reaper saved what he thought was her from a baby elephant only to kill her himself? What a sick barbarian!
The strangely colorful bursting of a baby elephant just inches from one’s own head is not something you just forget. Or ignore. Or anything else involving the discarding of thoughts. Fantastical in its absurdity, Raury was dazed by the entire experience. Both from mental and physical trauma.
Groaning mightily, he hefted his charge from the hole, picking her up by the waist and depositing her on the outside of the crater. Afterward, his own body followed, somewhat worse for the wear, but still relatively spry considering.
Once free, he dusted off his hakama and bare chest, looking down at the fox-child. He hoped she was alright. She seemed alert, but all he had heard from her since the entire goofball dumbo incident had been some awkward manifestation of a squeak.
“Hey.” He prodded at her, trying for more of a response than a confused blank stare. “Oi! Ye’allright!?”
Sighing, he sat down beside the thing, patting her head idly. “Crazy shit, I know it. Mebbe we can find a way out, eh?” He beamed down at the girl, genuine feeling in his words.
The replica still hadn’t been destroyed? What kind of game was the shinigami playing? Annika was certain he must have realized it was her creating the constructs and dragons and elephants, why was he now being so kind?
Grim Reapers killed people. That’s what they did. Every kid knew that much. That’s why they looked like skeletons in cartoons. But this one seemed not to do that. Maybe it was because of how drunk he was, Annika figured. Either way, she stepped out from behind the tree and let her copy break apart into glass flecks. Pseudo-Annika waved before vanishing completely into broken glass.
The real deal had her hand tightly grasped around her paintbrush. If he came at her, she could easily paint something simple between them, like a swarm of bees or something. Actually, bees were probably a lot harder than they sounded, but that was the general idea, anyway. “Why didn’t you kill copy-me?” She really wanted to know his answer. She needed to know. Was it just that he was drunk? Did alcohol really make adults that stupid?
After the moment of brief, heat-seizing terror that was watching a small child explode into glass in his hands had passed...who are we kidding? Those moments do not pass that quickly.
“What the bloody hell!?” He sobbed, terrified that he had done something wrong and trying mindlessly to piece together the errant bits of faux fox-girl even as they dissolved in his hands. It was not until he heard the real thing’s voice break through his moment of terrified insanity that he made any sort of attempt at being rational.
Looking up with wild fear in his eyes, his gaze came alight on the fox-girl once more. What was she saying? Kill? Copy? How’d she get over there?
Fuck, o’course.
Not a little sheepish, and feeling quite thick, Raury got back to his feet whilst rubbing the back of his head absently. So this was his little creator. The other had been a ruse.
“Kill?” He blurted quizically. “The fuck’d I kill ‘er for? Bein’ that we’re in some sorta wonky, murder-crazed alter state, o’course ya would want ta attack me on sight. Not yer fault that everyone out here seems murder-bent.”
Raury nodded, smiling.
“And I ain’t much o’ one fer killin’ in the first place, unless it means ta save others. Even then I’ve been known ta fall short...er. Dun mention that, though. Difference o’ opinion, I guess.”
Shrugging, he motioned to move on with the conversation.
“The hell’s a lil’ bit like yerself doin” out in all this madness anyhow?”
He asked a good question. Honestly, Annika had no idea what she was doing here. One moment she was in Seattle and the next, she opened a door and wound up here. Unless there was a step in this process that she didn’t quite remember, which was entire plausible. Even likely. Even extraordinarly likely. After all, the way she remembered things didn’t make a lot of sense, and sometimes her memories got a bit jumbled. But she knew someone hat put her here, had wanted her here.
“I’m not completely sure, to be honest.” She sheepishly (amusing, considering she was a fox-girl) rubbed the back of her head. None of this made a whole hell of a lot of sense, but maybe she could ask around when she got home and figure it out.
Was she completely insane? She tightened her grip on her paintbrush after noticing it had loosened. Even if he wasn’t one for killing, he was still a Death God, and they were still dangerous people. She remembered seeing people who dressed like him after her parents had died. Her uncle had called them “angels”, but that didn’t seem right to her. Angels of Death was more like it.
She cleared her throat, trying to sound a bit more intimidating. She failed at this attempt spectacularly; if anything, she just seemed more adorable. “I mean, surrender, Grim Reaper!” Though the idea of someone protecting her on her way through this maze of nonsense doors and thoughts more jumbled than her own was appealing, this place was supposed to be dog-eat-dog! Granted, she hadn’t seen any dogs, and wondered why they would eat other dogs, but the meaning still applied! There were only two ways out: winning and losing. Right?
Raury stood for a moment, musing over what to do about the whole mess.
Jus’ a confused wee thing, after all. Shouldn’t be runnin’ ‘round here at all. Let alone by herself. Probably scared ta the dickens.
Draining off another long swallow from a half-tanked gourd, Raury took a step forward.
Dun wanna scare her, now. nice n’ easy.
Shunpo. Not exactly the most effective tool in being ‘non-threatening’, but he worried that she may get confused again and start attacking. Which would only put the both of them in a worse state. Within a blur of movement, he was directly in front of the fox-girl, hoisting her up on his shoulders before she could squeak a squack.
“Not sure what ya got against me an’ me like, but I assure ye rightly that ye got the wrong idea.” he grunted, settling the girl higher on his shoulders. “Also, ne’er been a big fan ‘o Grim Reaper. I’mma Founder, to be specific. An’ we ain’t lordin’ o’er death. Jus’ makin sure folk get where they’re supposed ta go when it’s all said and scooty, right?”
He began another walk along, not determining a real direction, and waited for the lass to react.
