hellburger: (2D_Window)
Kazuhira Miller ([personal profile] hellburger) wrote2016-02-29 08:37 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

Kazuhira Miller leans against a brick wall covered in the illegible remains of old wheatpaste posters, layered with a smattering of graffiti. With the exception of his bright yellow scarf, his uniform looks entirely at home among the coveralls and drab work clothes of the Industrial District's labor force. Workers representing various species wander past on the way to work sites and factories while others huddle together to eat lunch or enjoy a smoke break.

Miller looks down at his watch compulsively, only to be reminded once again that it stopped the moment he set foot in the Nexus. He sighs, pulls a Rite in the Rain notebook out of his breast pocket, and flips through pages covered in copious notes while he waits for a certain Mobian magus to appear.
ixis: (Angry)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-12 02:41 am (UTC)(link)
"YOU DARE TO THREATEN ME!?" Which is totally what Kaz was getting at with that mention of more men coming on their way. He doesn't even bother to look afraid of that gun; he's too mad to remember guns are anything more than an annoyance, a stupid Overlander annoyance. One that he aims to swat away with his claw once he closes the distance between them.

He's too mad to take in anything Kaz is saying? Sunglasses? What sunglasses? Who cares!
ixis: (Yelling)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-12 03:37 am (UTC)(link)
Naugus is high alert now. While Kaz is trying to talk calmly, the wizard is only increasingly aware of how there are others coming. Already here! Watching just out of sight, ready to pounce, clearly! They want him dead, or worse! What else could you expect on a world full of Overlanders!?

Rather than respond like a normal person, Naugus opens his mouth and hisses again, loudly, before turning and charging off into the underbrush, his footsteps quickened with gusts of wind magic. Great. Now there's a proto-chubacabra loose in the jungles of Costa Rica.
ixis: (Attack)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-12 05:22 am (UTC)(link)
Jungles are places with a surplus of organic material and little else. Trees, bugs, plants, fungus, animals. The earth has to be reached for and work gets sloppy when he has to worm past so much matter he can't bend. He got lucky with the first one! He needs to get someplace where he has more room, more material to work with!

He can't drain the air from the lungs of his attackers; too many of them. Focus on three and another five sneak up on you. Water thick in the air is a good bet. Transform humidity to heat, set fire all around him. Burn it, burn it! Burn it all! Their soft, Overlander hides can't withstand the heat, but you can! You can!

He's panting heavily from anger and panic, drool hanging from his lower lip. He looks around frantically. Where are they coming from? Where could they approach? They know the terrain, he does not. The sound of a snapped twig occurs to his right, making the monstrous mage whirl that way and hiss as he shoves a gout of flame towards whatever assailant is there, imaginary, soldier or otherwise.
ixis: (Casting Fire)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-12 06:51 am (UTC)(link)
Naugus spares a moment for a manic smile, pleased at the mayhem his magic has caused one of his attackers. He continues charging headlong into the foliage, crashing through it loudly and with no care for being covert or trying to sneak. He glances upwards a few times, wonder if he can take flight, but determines the canopy to be too dense. He'd get tangled in the vines and then that'd be the end of him!

There's options for hiding, for proper escape, but the panic is too thick and too frantic to occur to him just yet. Slide into shadows, turn into mist; adrenaline's pounding much too free that there are no options other than running and attacking what attacks him first. Or at least what he perceives as an attack.

Another burst of flame is unleashed, now in just a halo around him, trying to plunge it deep into the dead foliage underfoot, to anything dry and suitable as tinder. Burn the whole forest! Who'll mourn a mess of war-mad Overlanders?!
ixis: (Scared)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-12 07:57 am (UTC)(link)
It's a few more frantic bursts of flame before he pauses, casting wide looks around himself, teeth bare and breath coming between them in ragged hisses. No sound. No tremors. (Because now stealthy steps dampened by plant life can't reach his sense for it.)

He needs to go back. He has every intention of finding the man in the glasses and making him pay for this, but he has to go back first. He can't run forever on an entire planet populated by war-crazed Overlanders. He can take so many with him, oh yes, but he knows he'll fall in due time. Not without a plan. With a plan, with time to think straight, it could be different...

But he can't go back. Despite his prowess with portals, Naugus still needs an item from where he wants to go. And everything on him is from his native planet of Mobius. Any portal he tried to open using his personal effects as a keystone would just lead to the blank that was left in his world's erasure. He has nothing that would take him back to the Nexus.

This only occurs to Naugus after he's already sunk to his knees, ripped up handfuls of foliage to get at the bare earth beneath, already scratching symbols and sigils from muscle memory. Then he just stares at it, mind racing.

Think. Think. Think. Think.
ixis: (Cringe)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-12 08:53 am (UTC)(link)
Naugus has stared long and unblinking at the unfinished sigil in the earth and no answer has come to him. One way portal. Keystone is on the man trying to kill him. Kill him first and get it back? Kill all his soldiers in the process. They're organized. This place is remote but they were ready. More will come. How quickly? All of this was a trap. How could he have been so blind? All of this was a TRAP!

Hide? He should hide. But his own pride rails against the idea. Hide? Like a scared rodent? Hide and quiver in fear of a bunch of Overlanders with their outlandish tech and reliance on guns? To slip into the shadows or the soil or the air now wouldn't be tactical retreat, it would be cowardice! Another insult to his primacy!

Think. Think. Think. Think.

Naugus pushes himself back up to his feet, still breathing hard, furious at his quandry. When was the last time he did battle in a jungle? Not ever. He ran right through it to find a location better suited for his magicks last time he was in a place like this. Pushed on right to the Southern Tundra. But he doesn't know what lies beyond this place. The situation of the continents in this unknown world.

"YOU'RE MISTAKEN IF YOU THINK ANY OF YOU WILL LIVE TO SPEAK OF THIS INDECENCY!" He roars into the trees, sending birds from the branches in noisy flight.
Edited 2016-03-12 08:54 (UTC)
ixis: (Yelling)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-13 03:39 am (UTC)(link)
His ear quirks in Kaz's direction when he hears that voice, whirling around and crouching low, hissing again. And drooling. He really is acting like a corner animal and it's kind of disconcerting? Given his grand and snooty behaviour otherwise when he's in the Nexus. Or just in control.

"HHHHSSSS! Tricked! Trapped! I follow you nowhere! That's what caused all this in the first place! I know how you work! Where are the rest!?" Naugus looks around frantically, searching the trees and vines for any sign of a gun barrel, a glint of metal, a masked human face.
ixis: (Angry)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-13 05:00 am (UTC)(link)
"Trap me here and I'll-...I'll sink myself into the core of your world! I'll shift the plates and send your cities crumbling! I will crush you all! I will turn the elements against your entire civilization of you even think for a moment that I'm your beast to capture!"

Funny how his fear of being caged and treated as an odd animal is making him behave like one.
ixis: (Cloak)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-13 06:05 am (UTC)(link)
He hisses something that sounds remotely like, 'anything for revenge', but instead looks...momentarily like he's calming down? Taking a few deep breaths? Maybe things are finally de-escalating.

At least that's what can be thought up until Naugus locks eyes with Kaz...and then suddenly darts back into that cape of his, slipping into its dark folds like it somehow hid a portal within it. In a display of completely bizarre physics that kind of are confusing to witness, said cape soon folds in on itself, following the owner, and vanishes.

Somewhere else in the jungle, back near the portal that he had created, Naugus bursts from the shadows beneath a tree, hissing and making a grab for Snail's gun.
ixis: (Flatten Ears)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-13 06:46 am (UTC)(link)
"Do NOT shoot me again. Why did you shoot me at ALL!?" He at least doesn't seem to be intent on hurting or hurtling Snail again. Just suddenly seems to have it in his head that she's the one who'll determine if this was a planned, attempted ambush or not.

Glaring at her angrily, rather than try anything violent or rash, Naugus hunkers down and remembers, oh right, he is shot, huh. And he's got some distance between him and the other soldiers now. Might as well deal with that. And by dealing with it, that means using his crab claw to try and pinch out the slugs left lodged in him. It's messy work and he continues to shoot angry looks at Snail because she caused this. Clearly.

"Well?! Do you even understand me? Me comprenez-vous? Pourquoi avez-vous tuer!" Might as well try other languages. Like these savages know Mercian, though.
ixis: (Grumpy)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-13 07:03 am (UTC)(link)
"You already had your gun pointed at me! What was I to think! An Overlander already armed and ready is one who's already decided to kill! Your race is not to be trusted back home and not here either, clearly." Digging into his own bullethole'd collarbone doesn't seem to be working, but not for lack of trying. He grunts and switches to a finger instead. That's thinner and more dexterous, right? Just dig on in there.

"I'm sure your leader will somehow make this all my fault."
ixis: (Annoyed)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-13 07:42 am (UTC)(link)
If nothing else, this whole adventure is demonstration to Kaz how mercurial Naugus can be. Going from his usual pompous self to hissing monster and then off to being an old grump. An old, bleeding grump.

"Oh, and you're concerned now? For me, the thing?" He flicks his hand in irritation, splattering drops of red across the leaves underfoot. "Tell me the real plan. The one where I wind up in a prison or a cage, for the scientific curiosity or simple amusement of your leader."
ixis: (Flatten Ears)

[personal profile] ixis 2016-03-13 08:26 am (UTC)(link)
"ENOUGH! The only reason I haven't set your insides on fire is because I just want to leave this miserable pit you call a planet and try to forget there's entire worlds overrun with your filthy, violent species!" Wow, touchy.

At some point, Naugus angrily looks to his right, perhaps watching for more mystery soldiers arriving...and spots the tranq dart sticking out of his shoulder.

"And this!? Really!?" He points at it incredulously.

(no subject)

[personal profile] ixis - 2016-03-14 21:45 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] ixis - 2016-03-16 05:58 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] ixis - 2016-03-16 06:25 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] ixis - 2016-03-18 06:02 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] ixis - 2016-03-20 22:31 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] ixis - 2016-03-21 05:39 (UTC) - Expand