OoC - 20° Mia 81380. This is private for the first person to join in. Please only post if you are going to be able to make timely and relatively “lengthy" replies, please and thank-you. BiC - Riot sat on the front stoop of her Watani home, staring at her feet. They happened to be fastened into the brackets of a brand new airboard, and she was just now wrapping the wrist band controller – with its face and dials – around her banded wrist. Her helmet was already snuggled tightly to her head, the chin straps taut beneath her throat. She was ready to make her maiden voyage on the state-of-the-art piece of mobile technology, though, to be honest, she was a little bit scared. Hoisting herself up, Riot stood on the airboard, which was firmly on the ground. Cayson had given the bright orange and blue board to her as a birthday gift – she had turned twenty yesterday – and the thill had immediately pored over the instruction manual. Case had a similar board, but he was unable to show her how to use hers today due to having several exams at Janardan. So she had decided to teach herself, kamikaze as that decision might have been, and now she began to finger the controls on her left wrist, a white finger hovering over the power button. Her hand abruptly snapped away and moved towards her rear jeans pocket. She had almost forgotten to switch on her tunes! Riot had fitted a pair of earphones in her ears, and her hand fished around in her pocket to turn on her musical player. Her spry digit soon found it, and adrenaline pumping music immediately blasted in her ear. It made her blood run just a little faster, and Riot flexed her hands now as she prepared for take-off. After just a few moments of hesitation, Riot pushed the button, and the airboard vibrated beneath her feet. It was a bit longer than a skateboard, and a bit shorter than a snowboard, and Riot felt precarious as it began to hover over her front walk. Her arms flung out instinctively to maintain her balance, but the thill soon realized it was unnecessary. The airboard seemed perfectly smooth and balanced, and Riot hunched the slightest bit, bending her knees, as she then put the board into the equivalent of “drive." Whoosh! She was swept swiftly through the air, and Riot gasped as the velocity yanked the breath clear from her lungs. Like a jockey riding a thoroughbred, she crunched down a bit more, and braced her arms as she guided the airboard through the air just a few feet off the ground. The cold Mia wind whipped against her, but it was more exhilarating than uncomfortable, and Riot smiled broadly as she picked up speed. The mansions on either side of the street flashed by so fast, she barely saw them, and it was almost no time before she reached the end of the street and had to swerve, doubling back. At that exact moment, as Riot began to ascend higher into the air for a more breathtaking joyride, she heard a bunch of shouting behind her. The female pendragon chanced a quick glance behind her, and gasped as she saw a pack of preteens behind her, all on their own airboards. They waved at her, and bounced in her wake as they tagged along. She gave them a skeptically amused look before facing front again, leaning into the howling wind and listening to her cranked music as she involuntarily led the pack.
<span style='width:100%;font-weight:bold; font-size:10px'>Out of Character</span> <table class='ooc'><tr><td>Not as long as I would have liked it, but hopefully good enough. Havent rped in a long while. :musicnote: </td></tr></table> "Shit!" The flash of black scales had a split second, and he chose to use it as a scapegoat, scuttling sideways on all fours onto the lawn of a large airy mansion, his claws tearing up the turf, costing the residents possibly hundreds of dollars. He kept moving, just as a pack of something loud and obnoxious rushed by him, catching him in the back with a burst of air, and barely missing his tail. He reached out and yanked it totally out of the way, mentally cursing whatever deity he could name at the moment in a futile attempt to get his frustration out. "Stoopid pieces of mammal dung, should cook ‘em in a pot and then eat the innards!" His angry stream of threats might not have succeeded in reaching the pack of preteens and their childish leader, but it got his immediate anger out, and it made his point in that he was clearly pissed off at having to move HIS ass, when pedestrians should have the right of way. He didn’t bother getting up, or looking to where the careless group had gone, but began picking at his fingers and toes with an index claw, trying to pry dirt and expensive turf from the cracks. “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING ON MY LAWN!?" Kala swung his head around and caught a glimpse of a bright red robe, and immediately booked it, claws clacking against the cement in a mad dash towards… Anywhere the loud millionaire wasn’t. After a few hundred feet, he realized the rich guy hadn’t taken chase, and sitting on the curb again, he continued his futile effort of trying to get the tiniest pieces of grass and grit from his feet, promising himself that he would eat one of the kids if they came back his way…
Riot felt adrenaline shoot through her when she rocketed higher up into the sky, and for a split second, she hovered in midair, spinning slowly. The view around was fantastic – mountains off to the left, below which spread the sea, and the rest of the residential area spanning off to the right. She only got a glimpse before she began to plummet downwards again, the chilly wind shrieking past her as she plunged towards the concrete below. With an airborne mastery she’d had since “rebirth," the thill maneuvered at the last minute so that she skidded just inches above the street, and she grinned as she sped up the boulevard. As she went, she glanced behind her. The pack of young adolescents was still following, but they were not doing so without tricks of their own. These were offspring of the rich and famous, and they had probably had airboards for quite a while. In any case, they spun and flipped along behind her, whooping back and forth and even pulling some stunts that their parents definitely would not have liked to see. Turning to face front again, Riot sucked in a sharp breath as she suddenly lifted, barely missing a very reptilian pendragon. As she whipped past him, just a foot or so above his head, she glanced downwards to make sure she hadn’t hit him somehow. The peculiar looking male seemed unharmed, though he had leapt sideways to avoid her and the stream of niotis behind her. The kids all pointed and laughed at him as they soared past him, one even having the audacity to throw a piece of gum at the stranger. Riot rolled her eyes at the nioti’s antics, and then banked, with the intention of gliding back towards the pendragon to see if he was all right. That was when her sensitive ears picked up the sound of his cry even above her music, and the thill lost any desire to apologize to the peculiar arden. Her mismatched eyes flashed and she instead considered throwing a rock at his face. That would be immature, though, so instead the female guided her airboard towards him and began to trail him, maybe ten feet above his head as he ran along the street. “Where are you going?" Riot asked as the stranger eventually ended up sitting on a curb, and she paused in midair. “And who are you? What are you doing on this street? You don’t look like you particularly, ah," she spoke, holding her tongue so as to not come across as immature, rude, or petulant, “belong here."
Kala Nag looked himself over. It wasn't THAT shabby, at least to him. A pair of baggy cargo pants, a dark blue in color; torn at the knees, a gungy looking dark brown overcoat; buttons mostly torn off, and his black scaled chest visible in the middle. A long red scarf was wrapped around his neck with one side draped over one shoulder, and with the other side hanging uselessly down his bare chest. The entire "suit" was dirty and torn to bits, especially the coat, with several holes in it which revealed black scales underneath. If it wasn't for the cold, it most likely would have stank as well. "Whats wrong with it?" His anger had subsided just a smidge at the inquiries, but soon rose again as he noticed the muffled sounds of laughter behind Riot. The snobby rich children had begun snickering at him when he began looking himself over. "Is he too stupid to know he's a bumb?" "Why doesn't he get out of here..." "What a dirty hobo!" His response to them was to snarl at Riot, to narrow his yellow eyes on her and bare his fangs. He glared at her for a moment, trying to think of what to say, but drawing a blank, slumped back down onto the curb. "Why do you care? I don't need a reason to wander around your fancy little neighborhood." He mumbled, and picked a piece of gum off the side of his snout, finally realising it existed there. Some of the children laughed at him for not noticing it for so long, but he only clenched his fists, hooked yellow claws pricking his own scales in fury. He was obviously not going to act on his promise. "What else do you want from me? I'm no circus freak, ya know."
The kids had followed Riot over towards the strange pendragon, and “milled" about on their airboards, throwing jests at the “hobo." She could make out their insults above her music, as well as the stranger’s snarled retort, and her mismatched eyes flashed. She made some hand movements at the young pendragons, obviously telling them to leave. They looked at her with skeptical faces, but when she added a hissed, “Beat it!" they shrugged and launched off down the street, laughing and pulling tricks even as they disappeared up the avenue. Once they’d gone, Riot maneuvered herself downwards, until her airboard eventually met with the grass of someone’s lawn. She was several yards away from the reptilian arden, but she was nevertheless quick to undue the buckles and traps around her feet, and then hoist her orange and blue board beneath an arm. She kept her helmet on and her music playing as she then prowled towards the shabby looking male, who was still seated on the curb, looking more than a little disgruntled. “Why do you let a bunch of kids get under your skin?" Riot asked, her tail flicking. “They’re just," she paused. “kids. I don’t even know them and they were following me, so who cares what they say or do? Anyway, on that note, I am no kid, and do not appreciate you snarling and baring your teeth at me when it really is obvious I live around here and you don’t," she added. Her latter statement was not made to make fun of him, it was stated in a factual tone of voice. “I didn’t do anything to you."
Kala Nag immediately realised how stupid he must look, griping about how a bunch of kids were picking on him, as if HE couldn't stand up for himself. Her last words really sunk in however, and he immediately slapped himself in the forehead, realising how rage filled he had just acted. "Aye... Aye! Yer right. They're just some stuck up little rich Neeotees anyways." His words were sincere enough, and the anger had fully ebbed away, evaporating in front of her logic like ice in an oven. He stood up, scratching the last of the gum off his snout, wrenching a pinky claw into his nostril to extract a stubborn piece of pink goop, and, after hastily wiping it off on the thigh of the tattered pants, extended a scaled black hand. "Me name's Kala Nag. I was just checking da place out, if ya don't mind. When ya zoomed by, I tore up some richees 'perfect' lawn dodgin. It pissed me off just as much as it did him!" He chuckled to himself and grinned, revealing a piece of half rotten meat in between two teeth on the bottom right, and a drop of some dark purple liquid that had just chosen to drop from the upper left venom fang, dropping onto the pavement with a small "plink" noise...
Riot seemed a little surprised when he accepted her logic so easily, but she just shrugged lightly to herself. When he began to pick the gum off his nose – and from inside it as well – she watched with a mildly offended look on her face. This expression intensified when he then offered her a hand, and she clenched her teeth down on her studded tongue to remind herself not to behave rudely or say anything offensive. “Riot Stormwing," she said, introducing herself, but she did not offer one of her own hands. Instead, she wrapped her free hand around the edge of her airboard as if indicating that its weight required two hands, and instead nodded. “I don’t care what you do, you just seem a little out of place. That’s why they targeted you, I’m sure," the thill added on, glancing down the street. The niotis were long gone, probably up some other street to perform some stunts. Turning her mismatched gaze back upon Kala, Riot wondered what to do next. She still wanted to practice on her airboard, but it seemed rude to just walk away from a stranger, no matter how odd he acted or spoke. For a split second, the hospitable side of her conscience whispered for Riot to invite the “hobo" to her place, but the more instinctive, preservational half immediately shot that idea down. She had no real idea about this arden, and the fact that he had dead meat between his teeth did not speak well for him. Plus, he would stink up her house. “So," the female said, shifting her weight. Her music player, which had still been playing all along, suddenly went silent, and she felt put on the spot. “Just passing through, or are you checking the street out for some particular purpose?"
Kala smiled, and withdrew his hand, not seeming to care that she didn't take it earlier. He picked the piece of meat out of his teeth with the opposite pinky, and then reate it, quickly swallowing and running a long serpentine tongue along his fangs to clean out any further 'prizes'. "I'm lookin fer a house." His answer was short and blunt, and immediately his attention began to wander. The job of house hunting reoccupied his mind, and he swung around absentmindedly, glancing down the street. "I just finished a job, for da Mavaatis. I'm gonna use every last coin to buy meself one of these really big mansions, maybe even da richees one." He laughed heartily, and turned back to face her. The Mavaatis were a big crime family, fairly well known, especially in Bhim for big dealings in drugs and arms. Whatever 'job' he had completed must have been worth a pretty penny for the Mavaatis to even bother to hire him. He paused a moment more, focusing the black slit of one yellow eye on her, and his attention down the street, and let out a yawn. "Tax free dollas are much better than gov'ment jobs, dontcha think?" He asked, absentmindedly, and lifted a foot to inspect under a claw, appearing exactly like the retarded bumb the children had made him out to be.
Riot could not help but look skeptical at his response. He was looking for a house, here? She could already hear the rich mothers screaming about having a murderous bum moving in next door and being a threat to their dear children, as well as the sirens of the squad cars as police were summoned every other day to check in on the reptilian “hobo." Riot valued her peace – she had even taken a few classes in order to study ancient earthen meditation practices – and so she was not so hot on the idea of his moving in. It would stir up a lot of shit, and be a majorly annoying disturbance in the neighborhood. There was also the fact that this strange male had just admitted to fulfilling what sounded like an illegal job. Riot had no idea who the Mavaatis were, nor did she care, but when Kala mentioned that he had avoided taxes, alarm bells went off in the thill’s head. Not only did he look and act weird, he was probably a criminal. Hell, he was probably the arden responsible for Scout Diabolus’s murder, come back to pick off another young, female victim. The thought caused Riot’s hackles to prickle, and she took a step backwards. “Just finished a job, huh?" she asked edgily. “Kill someone, did you?" she added on, a studded tongue darting out to lick at her lips in a nervous fashion. Riot had guns in her pouch, as always, but this arden was big and quite intimidating, now that she took the time to notice. She could stand up for herself – but only to an extent. “You know the homeowners around here do extensive background checks, as do the real estate agents. It was hard for me to coax them to sell a residency to me considering I had tie-ins with marijuana a couple of years ago, not to mention what happened with me and Koani Grader. What makes you think you could get a house here?"
Her words caught his attention, and yellow reptilian eyes slid over her being, locking onto her like a missile ready for launch. "I dun have to worry about dat, I just have to do a job for the meelitary, and dey'll wipe my record clean." He grinned, and flicked a tongue out, before recoiling at his own stink. He shifted slightly, and flicked his tail, sending a wave of movement down it's thick scaly surface. Suddenly he became interested in the limb, and plopped down into a crosslegged position, sweeping around and grooming his tail with long, slightly yellowed claws. "I was just in da jungle for a long time, The Mavaatis wanted me to proteckt a drug smuggling operation there, but the gov'ment didn't come, so it turned out to be a very boring job. Even IF the Mavaatis say it got them lotsa money. I just took my cash and left, but they might call me again later for a new job. Maybe the guv'ment will call for another job, I dunno. So what happened between you and da graderz? Isn't Koani dere little brat?" He was obviously very much out of the loop. His yellow eyes slid over his tail, his claws picking at it as he spoke, but even the seriousness of what he was saying didn't seem to faze him too much. He had either not been paying attention to politics and world news recently, or had indeed been out of contact with civilization for a long while. "I do stink somthin awful. Maybe I should use the shower in my new house eh?"
OoC - Short but fun thread. Is he really going to be moving into a house? If he is, we should do another thread sometime so Riot can kick him in the balls, lol. BiC - Stormwing was no longer interested in convering with this fellow. She had few prejudices when it came to others, and the fact that he looked and smelled odd had not kept her from approaching him and speaking decently. However, his words, and the way he conducted himself, rubbed her the wrong way. Besides that, she no longer had any interest whatsoever in ever keeping company with criminals or their ilk. Sure, she had been a “bad ass" back in the day – not that long ago, really – but she was over that now. She was mature, she was in love, she was an adult and she wanted nothing to do with this reptile anymore. “How nice," Riot said when he talked about the job he had done. It did not involve murder, but trafficking was still a shady business, and she did not wish to associate with someone involved in it. “I know firsthand that peddling that shit won’t get you, or them, or whoever, anywhere, except in trouble. It’s not my business, though," she tagged on, taking another small step away from him. As she put some more distance in between herself and the odd “hobo," Riot slipped her airboard from beneath her arm and placed it gingerly on the ground. She kept her mismatched eyes upon the male as she then began to strap her feet down, adjusting the brackets around her digitigrade ankles. She did not think he was going to suddenly launch at her and eat her, adding her flesh to the stringy meat hanging in his stinking jaws, but she definitely did not have any trust in him. Her eyes never left him, and when she was done buckling herself in, she stood upright and peered intensely at Kala. “Koani Grader isn’t a brat. I might have agreed with you at sometime, but as it is, I no longer have that opinion of her." Riot’s voice was icy, but she did not state why she had had a change of heart. The fact that Koani was close to being her mother-in-law was not public knowledge, as nobody knew Cayson was her son. “And you go do that," she said in reference to showering, her tail flicking almost aggressively as she now fingered the controllers on her wrist band. Even as she turned the airboard on and began to hover, Riot wondered whether Kala was serious about moving onto the street – or was he just trying to make her uncomfortable? Whatever he was doing, it was working, and Riot never wanted to see him again. If he did, indeed, become her neighbor, she would be sure to keep one gun at the ready at all times. If she saw his creepy face peering in her window or saw his claw tracks on her gated lawn, she would not hesitate to shoot him point blank between the eyes – and you could trust the master sharpshooter to hit her mark. “I’d say it was nice to meet you," the thill piped up as she kicked several feet into the air and began to turn away from Kala. “But that would be a lie." This was the last sentence to leave her muzzle. In the next second, Riot blasted away, soaring swiftly up the street and towards her house. She resisted the urge to act childish and give the creep the middle finger as she propelled away from him, and instead dared not look back. If she had her way, she would never set her mismatched eyes upon him again – and if she did, she really would pump some metal right in between those reptilian eyes.
<span style='width:100%;font-weight:bold; font-size:10px'>Out of Character</span> <table class='ooc'><tr><td>Aye, twas enjoyable, and I think I will have him move in, if only to live in the house at random times whenever he feels like being civilized. ;p And aye, another thread would be fun.</td></tr></table> Kala looked up to see her go, and her words flared his temper a little, but he paid no heed to the brief rush of emotion, as he caught sight of a "for sale" sign a little way down the street that had escaped his notice before. He pulled himself to his feet, letting his tail lift into the air once more as he prepared to move, and was soon striding towards it, a grin plastered on his face... ~~~ "And heres your deed to the house Mr. Nag. This payment also gets rid of the morgage, so the house is... Ah... yours to keep. It comes fully furnished, and we've taken care to... Ah... make sure you have a... Wardrobe. Every week a maid will come to... Ah... clean the house, and food will be delivered, as well as old food taken away... Ah... These services will last... Ah... Year!" The real estate lady suddenly let out the sneeze she had been trying to supress since the start of the short meeting, sparked by Kala's rank smell, and daintily wiped her nose with a tissue afterwards, trying vainly to get the snot off the window behind her desk with the same piece of paper. The stinky reptile stood up and gingerly picked up the rolled document, and without even so much as a "thank you" or "goodbye", he had scuttled out the door, leaving the stainless steel briefcase stuffed full of money on the agent's desk. She immediately grabbed a can of air freshener from a desk drawer and ran the nozzle dry... The neighborhood would never be the same...
