No Loitering [Emi]

[III]

Once upon a time, Xaldin rescued six cabbages and a half. He was given a ludicrous amount of pocket change for the feat. Not having anything better to do, he walked into a bar with the intention of getting maybe a wee bit tipsy-

In that respect, he failed.

__________________

"AND STAY OUT-"

Ooof. Ow. Xaldin dragged himself off the comfortable, comfortable ground. It was a bit confusing as to why there were pieces of glass stuck in him, but it wasn't an interesting enough subject to explore at the moment.

Sleep. Yes. He needed sleep. Needed to open-

Xaldin watched in some confusion as the door of the establishment he just got kicked out of blew in.

Heh heh. Whoops. That was wind. Wind didn't open corridors of darkness. It could open doors but not corridors. He knew that. He should probably move. People would come and-

Ow. More pain. They were lucky that the swill was good. Or he'd just beat em' black and blue and red all over.

Now. How to get home.

Right. Maybe a sacrifice. That was magic, right? Dark and evil magic and would no doubt get him straight to-

Uh. Somewhere. Anyway. Point being, he needed to find a sacrifice.

[Emi]

"I got this one."

A testimony to her days as a crazy hoodlum, Emi was used to drunkards causing problems. But this....these were the only decent noodles in town and they were lax on the IDs. (She would've had a drink herself, but after what happened LAST TIME, she'd sworn off alcohol. Oh no. She refused to spend one more night drunk out of her mind, puking in some godforsaken alleyway.)

You simply do not blow the door off the only place in any town that Emi lived in with decent noodles. It just didn't happen.

While everyone else fussed over the door and broken glass and debris, Emi left the money for the noodles on the table and walked outside, picking her way over the broken door and concerned bar patrons.

She smirked when she saw the one who made the mess.
And then she laughed outloud because it really was a funny scene. Some black clad man with crazy huge sideburns flopping around in a puddle on the sidewalk.

She walked over to him, bending over him. She had a very disturbing look on her face. A sweet smile mixed with the eyes of a demon.

"Heeeeey.... you wanna explain why you freaking BLEW THE DOOR OFF THE ONLY DECENT PLACE IN TOWN?!"

And then proceeded to step on his face.

[III]

Ow. Pain. Dreadlocks not meant to be pulled that way.

Also. Voice. Screechy. Please stop screeching?

Whoops. Had he said that out loud? Mum had always mentioned to make sure to be polite to women. For various unexplained and likely illogical reasons. Still. Mum knew best. He'd given Larxene a large berth (that had come in handy) and when he broke the rule, hadn't Beast's true love given him a good punch in the gut?

Yeah. Mum knew best. Pity she disappeared.

"Mpfff." After Xaldin's head was allowed to get out of the water, he considered the question. With the brain in the state it was, it took him a moment.

...maybe even a long moment. Finally, and extremely coherently, he said:

"I need a virgin sacrifice. To sacrifice. To KINGDOM HEARTS! PRAISE BE KINGDOM HEARTS."

And then he may or may not have started singing.

[Emi]

Good god.
Emi took a few steps back. She didn't want to catch his crazy. Or be vomited on.

She laughed when he started singing. Yeah. Virgin sacrifice. Good luck finding one of those on this side of the tracks.

She crouched down. She could smell the alcohol on him.
She was getting angrier. She couldn't really remember why she was angry in the first place. Oh yeah. He'd busted all up in her noodle place. Plus, she couldn't stand people like him who just got drunk for no good reason or the wrong reason. Not that there was a right reason to get drunk.

"Look, you either need to get up and get out or I'll take you away myself. I hate people like you honestly and it would be my greatest pleasure to beat the crap out of you right here and now."

Blood pressure rising.
Ears ringing.
Heat pounding.
Palms sweating.
Head swimming.

Yup. Right on time.

[III]

Somewhere between the need to pause for the ukelele solo and the realization that the drummer was drumming off tempo (the horror!) Xaldin noticed that he was no longer being stepped on.

Wooh! This boded well for his future endeavors.

Carefully getting up (heh, silly ground, not going to let you trick me again oh no I won't) Xaldin clutched onto anything that his hands could get a good grasp on and ended up slightly tangled with a lampost. It may or may not have been peed on recently from the smell.

People these days.

A spark of killing intent dampened his alcohol-induced fog.

Wut? Fight? Darn straight he'd fight! He was the fightingest fighter there ever was! Dragoon of powah they called him!

...no wait. They didn't. And he still needed to get the sacrifice. He blinked at the dragon. Had that been there before-? What world was he on, anyway? Oh well, probably medieval. He'd need to change his vocabulary.

"Allow me to kill thee, dragon of Doom."

Huhn. Didn't sound quite right. Oh well. Diplomacy had never been his strong point. "I need yon tender princess for a magic ritual most foul and-"

Ah, screw it.

"Just gimme the princess and no one gets hurt, okay?"

[Emi]

Draaaaaaaaaaaagon. Right-o.
Okay so obviously this guy wasn't right in the head.
There wasn't a princess. Literal or methaphorical.
He was just rambling anyways. Haha. Emi wished she could keep recordings of some of the things she'd said while SHE was drunk. She never remembered them in the morning, but she was told her sense of humor got a lot better under the influence of alcohol.

But this guy was just nuts and she was losing patience.

"All right man, I warned you."

One two three, one two three.
She pulled her kali sticks out of the pocket on the inside of her jacket and walked over to the man wrapped around a lamp pole talking to an imaginary dragon.

And she whopped him upside the head.

[III]

Nothing clears the head like blood clearing the head.

Xaldin nearly facefaulted into the ground but managed to prevent himself. Just. Girl hadn't hit him with anything pointy, but she might not have been entirely aware of her strength when she slammed his forehead into the side of the lamppost. A nice crimson sheen was slowly descending from a cut on his forehead.

Oh, screw realism. It was a lamppost with edges, alright?

Good.

Slowly turning, he cocked his head at her and blinked. This was somewhat more dramatic and creepy than it had absolutely needed to be because he was still hunched over as he'd been when yelling about dragons and such. He peered at her closely.

"Radiant Garden." Confirmation. Question. Hard to say.

"There were survivors...?"

[Emi]

Emi froze. Her mouth hung open and she gave him an intense, squinty eyed look worthy of a Western movie.

"Yes, there were...[/color]" she said slowly, hesitantly. "Why do you ask?[/color]"

Inside her mind, she was screaming "AHHH! Creepy! How did he know!?"
But then she was taken aback when she realized he looked sort of familiar. Of course, she couldn't be sure. She had been very young back then, and with the trauma of it all, her childhood was kind of blurry. But she thought maybe she knew him from somewhere...
did he recognize her?

[III]

Xaldin straightened. He hadn't been sure. Judging from her age, she'd been a brat when Radiant Garden fell but something... something had felt strangely familiar about her. Now he knew.

"I... just didn't... expect it." He winced - a fake, piecemeal expression, but he'd been practicing. "The end was brutal."

How much had he given away? What had he said while he'd been drunk? Was his sudden clarity too fake and inconsistent? His eyes tracked her responses carefully. This was tricky, tricky territory he'd landed in. It was possible she was a Nobody. It was equally possible she was a true survivor and thus part of the misguided 'committee' or whatever it called itself these days.

In the end all that mattered was a single question: would she require silencing?

[Emi]

She wasn't sure how to reply.
But she was afraid her hesitance would let him on to something.
On to what, she wasn't sure, but she was beginning to think there was something about her that she didn't want him to know. How confusing. She was hiding something from him, but she didn't know what.

This was certainly the strangest drunken encounter she'd had, and she'd had many.

She had the urge to just run away. Which is what she usually did in these cases. Beat the crap out of whoever it was and then leave before any evidence could be collected against her. Something about him was keeping her there though... something bad, something good?

Finally, words came to her with a tilt of the head.

"What is this?[/color]"

[III]

Xaldin blinked. A dead habit sprang back to life and he actually tilted his head quizzically, miming the young lady. His dreadlocks felt damp as they brushed the side of his neck.

"What is... what?" He shook his head. He scrutinized her for another moment before his gut told him that she was probably a little tipsy and responding randomly. He himself had been singing for a little while there. No need to leave trail that could be traceable. That'd be unprofessional. By the same token, he wasn't sure. He had to be sure.

"Nevermind."

Come on brain. Think of an excuse to stick around. Think think think-

"...did you mention noodles?"

[Emi]

Emi scowled.
"Well, you kind of just got kicked out of the only decent place in town. And I'm sure as heck not going to help you find another."

Oh yeah. She came out here to kick the crap out of him.
Uh, well... she sighed. She just didn't feel like it anymore. His weirdness took the fun out of it, and now she was kind of feeling freaked out and just wanted him to go away.

She was stuck between curiosity and being majorly freaked out.

"Look, maybe you should just get out of here."

[III]

"But it's been so long since I've seen another Radiant Gardenian." Xaldin said smoothly. She was scared - or at least getting there - perhaps he *had* been too quick in the sudden character change. Somebodies couldn't pull it off at all.

And honestly, the alcohol was still affecting him. And blood loss was only therapeutic insomuch that too much of it was just as bad and the crimson sheen descending across his head was-.

Oh wow. Stars.

Drunken stagger. And then Xaldin folded forwards and collapsed.

ooc: apologies. Shifts were too.... abrupt.

[Emi]

Emi watched him fall to the ground and was at a loss of what to do.
She could leave him here, let the bar owner get a hold of him.
She was wondering why he hadn't already, but she figured it was because they were in a side alley and the owner knew Emi had come after him.

Or, she could drag him away somewhere safe and wait for him to wake up so they could have a little chat. This man was from Radiant Garden, like her, and if he was the only other one left...

She heard voices approaching so she nudged the guy in the ribs and urged him to wake up. Emi was tall for her age, and stronger than the average teen age girl, but she doubted she could drag him very far. No choice. She grabbed his ankles and started pulling him down the street.

"That can't be very comfortable,[/b]" she grunted as she dragged him away.

[III]

[ooc: should we start a new topic?]

Xaldin stirred three times during the entire drag-and-drop episode.

He hit his head on a curb. That was the first. He would lose the rest of the night due to a combination of a minor concussion, minor blood loss and a blood alcohol content of 0.32 which really, all on its own, could have caused the unconsciousness.

The second time was when a car nearly ran them both over and swerved rather messily to avoid them. Instincts that were ground into him through sheer time and training nearly shook him into an unconscious, but still capable, battle-ready stance but once the danger was over quieted back down and allowed him to sleep.

The third was when his Heart that he couldn't possibly have reasserted itself.