Octeuril Catch All

[long_live_the_queen]

Who: Kaede and you! And people doing quests.
When: All month where convenient
Where: Within the City, The Slums, Outside the City
What: Another monthly thread container!
Warnings: Goose. Will update as needed.



I. Duck, duck...duck? [River Temese Bridge]

[One of the bridge's occupants doesn't seem interested in an argument, at least for the moment. Nor the lanterns, nor the decorations. No, Kaede's leaned over the rail and staring over the side, her scarlet feathered tail lashing in agitation behind her. She isn't being too mindful of where it's going, and smacking people in the ankles with it is a very real possibility. There's a stiff core to the tail, under all the fluffy feather.

Get close enough—an easier proposition this time, as she's distracted—and one can hear her mildly distressed muttering.]

...those ducks have shells on them.

[What the fuck. How long have they been this way. How long has this been happening.

This is messing her up.]

II. Garden Troubles [Slums]

[Seeing a garden—one that wasn't a mess of weeds, or a vandalized sunflower field—was nostalgic, in a way. As was...seeing parts of it all torn up. At least the pawprints around kept it from reminding her too much of that.

Kaede had split up—the better to flush the wolves out of whatever burrow they were hiding in. She could be quiet when she wished, her senses were sharp despite the rain, and she could get into places someone more human-shaped couldn't.

Something rustled the plants in a row nearby, and Kaede stilled. She couldn't see through to the other side—there was a heavily laden trellis in the way—but she could pinpoint the sound quite easily. The Chimera gathered herself, coiling her legs and back like a cat about to pounce, and sprang up, almost ten feet up, until she could clear the trellis and come back down on the sound.

...and, hopefully, what was rustling on the other side of the trellis was one of the creatures they were after, and not a person. That would just be dreadfully inconvenient, wouldn't it.

At least the Chimera's on the smaller side.]

III. honk [Outside the City]

[Kaede didn't choose this quest. It chose her, with a yank on her tail. And a sharp pain from a few of her feathers coming away, but mostly from the sheer indignity of it. The Chimera roars—a proper one, not a grumbly mumble—and whirls about, but the culprit was already dashing away down the dirt road, a few of her scarlet feathers clutched in a clawed hand.

The goose-feathered Harpy finds this all quite hilarious, shrieking with laughter as he dashes off, the Chimera hot on his heels. He's quite fast, though, even without flying. The Harpy occasionally makes a few fluttering hops when she gets too close, but he doesn't take off.

Occasionally, Kaede's chased the Harpy up onto some building—a barn, a cottage, a stable—and is sitting crouched at the bottom, tail lashing like a frustrated cat. The Harpy looked fairly smug up there.

Sometimes Kaede doesn't make it that far, though. Her knees had been prone to aching lately, sometimes going a bit numb. And this time they crumpled entirely, sending the Chimera toppling facefirst into the road. It wasn't raining today, but the ground was still plenty damp—and mud got on her clothes and once-bright feathers immediately. Kaede tried to get back up, but only pins and needles answered where her legs should have been.

Worst of all, the Harpy was impossibly far away down the road now. His off-white feathers were mockingly bright against the fading summer colors.]

Get back here you little shit—

[Kaede's opinions were intact! She'll probably live. After she gets back up.]

Wildcard

[For prompts or closed threads not seen here! My plotting post is here for ease of use. ]

Comments

[long_live_the_queen]

[Friend?? What is that word, Kaede suddenly doesn't know what it means.]

Hmph.

[Kaede shrugged, and her feathers ruffled and resettled themselves in the process, though her tail kept lazily flicking back and forth like nothing was the matter. Antisocial aloofness was hard when your body contrived to ruin all your poker faces.]

Assume they gave you the talk about what you're turning into.

[This girl seemed human, and smelled human, but Kaede's nose was the weakest of her senses. But some Monsters just weren't very obvious.

Not like her, who had no chance of hiding her horns here.]

[princessascended]

[Learning animal tells was going to go a long way for her here, apparently. Kairi didn't know exactly what Kaede's feathers and tail were signalling to her, but they were still telling her more than the woman actually said.]

I'm a witch, actually. I'm going to be starting my lessons very soon. Not that I know anything about how magic in this world actually works.

[So unfair. All the training she'd done back home, wasted.]

[long_live_the_queen]

[The Monstrous woman snorted, attention split halfway between the waterway and the human next to her.]

Lucky you, not growing any new limbs.

[princessascended]

Eh, I dunno. A tail might be useful.

[She chuckled, trying to make a joke out of it, but it was pretty weak.]

[long_live_the_queen]

[Kaede found it at least passingly amusing, from how she snorted. The tail currently in the equation curled upwards at the end, like some kind of cat's. A really, really feathery cat.]

You sure?

[She...didn't mind the tail so much, now. It was pretty to look at, and Kaede had gone almost two weeks now without any close encounters with doors.]

[princessascended]

Well I won't know for sure unless I try it out, naturally.

[Another thought occurs to her, and she sighs wistfully.]

Of course, if I was traveling worlds the way I was supposed to, I'd probably end up in a world where I had one eventually.

[long_live_the_queen]

You--?

[Wait, back up. An ear turned in Kairi's direction as Kaede looked at her with more than just split attention now.]

You're a...planeswalker?

[The word was still a bit strange for Kaede to say; she wasn't all that familiar with the term. Yet, at least.]

[princessascended]

Uh...

[She can't answer for a moment, not knowing how to deal with a response like that, using a word she's not familiar with.]

I've never heard that word before. But if it means someone who goes around between worlds, then... I was in training for that, yes. A type, anyway. I don't suppose "Keyblade" is a word that means anything to you.

[long_live_the_queen]

[Kaede tilted her head, antlers emphasizing the otherwise slight gesture.]

Close enough, I guess.

[Then it was Kaede's turn for some blank bewilderment.]

If you say it's a big key I'll pretend to be surprised.

[She's imagining some outsized set of keys you'd whap someone with in a parking lot, not the Disney definition.]

[princessascended]

[She can't help but laugh a bit.]

That's not wrong, exactly. There's more to it than that, but... short version. We travel from world to world, keeping the balance between Light and Darkness.

Or, well, fully-fledged Keyblade wielders do. I'm just an apprentice. But that's why I was talking about traveling between worlds.

[Well, ignoring the whole kidnapping thing. And the time her world got swallowed by darkness. And the other time-

Honestly she's usually gone to other worlds involuntarily.]

[long_live_the_queen]

[One of Kaede's ears twitch when Kairi laughs, though she said nothing about it being loud.

Chandra had never mentioned using objects that way; as Kaede understood it, planeswalking was just something she...did, like walking anywhere else. Kaede didn't pry into the specifics.

...these particular specifics made her expression flatten into less than impressed one, though.]

Balance between light and darkness.

[Said with a healthy dose of skepticism.

She's from the wrong genre for this, sorry Kairi.]

[princessascended]

[Well that's some pretty obvious skepticism. Kairi shrugs in response.]

Look, when you see weird shadowy creatures that are literal embodiments of darkness crawling around, you learn to accept these kind of things pretty quickly.

Though hopefully none of those show up here. I'm not quite sure this world has any way to defend itself from the Heartless.

[long_live_the_queen]

I suppose. Still seems like a big judgment call to make.

[Kaede tended to assume The Worst about people, anyway. And her understanding of that conflict was superficial at best, even before Aefenglom granted her night-piercing eyes. The dark was...what it was. Not nice, but there were far fewer people to bother Kaede in it. Once her vectors could guide her around like whiskers, the dark became like any other obstacle.

Still, it would be nice to see her feet sometime. And to see the dawn again.]

What's a Heartless?

[Not someone missing some vital organs shambling around anyway, that was clearly just a zombie.]

[princessascended]

It's a pretty easy one to make when people's hearts start getting torn out of their bodies.

[There's darkness, as in "I can't see very well", and then there's Darkness.]

The shadowy creatures I mentioned. They roam the worlds, searching for hearts, taking them from anyone they can find. Kind of like zombies, actually, now that I think about it, just more magical and way more dangerous.

[long_live_the_queen]

[Kaede blinks, a little bit surprised. That didn't seem very childish or idealistic.]

That sounds messy.

[This is Advanced Darkness.]

[princessascended]

The bodies vanish when they do that, so it's not as messy as it could be. It's still horrifying though.

[She's only seen it a few times, and it's still enough to make her shudder.]

Anyway, that's what I was being trained for, that's why I was going to be able to travel between worlds. Not that it matters now that we're here... unless the Heartless find this world.