XII Step Recovery

For once in his life, Myde was on time.

Actually, he had to stop and think about that for a second. Whoa. Him. Being punctual. Man, he even surprised himself every once in a while. He grinned and continued bouncing down the hall to get to the meeting, pleased as punch with his one stroke of... punctuality. (Or maybe he should say... punchtuality. Because. He'd just said "pleased as punch." So. Geddit.)

He flung the doors open with his usual dramatic flair - but almost immediately regretted that action. The only other person in the room was the guy that was eight steps ahead of him on the social ladder; in fact, he was on the very top of the tops. Ansem always sort of freaked Myde out a bit, as IX was a teensy bit afraid of the power he could wield and knew that he'd be turned to dark Heartless mush if he ever so much as thought about pretending to rebel.

"Oh, hey, bossman," he said, bubbling with a nervous energy as he took his usual spot - which, thankfully, was a long ways down the table from Ansem. "So, ehh, what's up? Oh wait wait, sorry, that was kind of a stupid question, I mean, uhhh..."

He knew exactly what was up, but he'd felt the urge to break the silence - even if it was with near-incoherent babbling. He knew that the collapse of the old wizard's Tower was fresh on his master's mind - and it was a fight that Myde had not partaken in. Apparently they lost Arlene too (though, in all honesty, he wasn't that fussed, wincing as he remembered her electrifying outbursts).

Twiddling his thumbs, the Rhapsodist avoided looking at the Higher-Up, waiting impatiently for others to join, almost wriggling in his seat with nerves.

//I presumed no one will post until someone else does it. Also there isn't much people to wait for since 99.9% of them are gone. We can pretend NPC them, since this thread was right after the plot warg. ACTION!\\

A ghost of a scream whispered in the air like a breeze hissing its way through a slightly cracked window. Ripping from the realm of darkness, a flying black bundle whipped through the room all the while yelling ‘I could’ve died’ before crashing into the table. Like a bomb, darkness flared out into a mushroom only leaving a lithe black body marveling close to a neoshadow. The body was too long, sleek, and lacked the uneven proportion, which was harder to observe; it was curled up in a fetal position with nervous rock. The antennas were shorter and twitched sporadically with labored breathing. The thinner claws were buried deep in a nest of black hair before luminous yellow eyes opened before whispering darkly in a raspy yet fading voice, “I could’ve died you sick bastard.”

“By myself I was, no one else, and it burned so so much,” the body was shaking, and the raspy voice became clearer but stuttered nearly every other word. Lesser heartless hardly spoke or never at all, but it had the quirky twitches; in actuality, it still throbbed and flinched from muscle memory, how it felt being drowned in an endless undeniable death pool of light. “Where the hell was you and the others? Did they all die too? What else is to be expected from an old ass wizard, who fucking masturbates light?”

He wasn’t a handy dandy picnic; the place was rigged up for his liking. What were they’re odds? They were all divided up, since none of them met up with her at the peak of that damn tower. She was able to evade a Lion just constructed out of pure light. Did the same happen to them? Did that slow them down from catching up, or were they all that damn insolent and weak? They were all too weak even in numbers to handle it; she was too weak, a confession she absolutely loathed to admit. As a heartless kissing the pentacle of her mortality, she was unstable from it all yet quivering with hunger to devour heartless for survival. Screw the factoid that there were some “human” qualities left; when one is so close to the end, animal instincts turn on.

“And for you I NEARLY FUCKING DIIIIIIED,” her scream was louder after dropping her clawed hands revealing a humane but scarred face. Disheveled and ruffled blonde hair was tasseled everywhere like angry feathers, while what was deemed Arlene’s face was ravaged like a burned victim unit. Instead of burns like fire, her skin was paler and seemed to crack all over her face like crumbled paper and shattered glass. She hadn’t lingered or gained enough beauty sleep in the Realm of Darkness to efficiently recover. Earlier once waking up in a wasteland, she was too feeble to stand let alone carry her human fascade; instead she was an unstable bog, who just recently was able to withstand a humanoid figure. Even now it called for too much strength to be functional, her tongue was loose; formalities were gone, and she was drained, furious, and hungry at the same time. Eventually she would burn out depending on how far she pushed herself.

“At least tell me you killed him,” her voice was begging for it; she craved for his heart, and a side of her didn’t want it to devour but rip to shreds if that was feasible. Her shoulders jerked in a shudder, while her claws scratched at her arms to relieve an insatiable itch, a craving, a heart, carnage.“His heart…GIVE IT TO ME!”

Reaching out, she dug her claws into the table dragging and crawling her way towards him, "I want to rip it; I want to crush it; I want to smother the very LIFE OUT OF IT!"

---

Even was still wrestling Cersei onto his lap when Ansem addressed him.

Arlene’s sudden and unexpected entrance sent the Magpie into a frightful fit and the Heartless took wing, shrieking shrilly as she beat laps about the room until Even seized her by the tail. One hand clamped about her beak and the other pressed down upon her back, the Shivering Savant peered over the Magpie’s flailing wings and at Arlene’s smoking form.

He was quiet for a good long moment, studying the fellow member of their number with an equally confused and annoyed expression upon his face.

“I would think it obvious,” he started at last, giving Arlene a disgusted grimace. Such vulgarity, audacity… and she just had to survive her encounter with the old Master. Better her than him, he supposed. He turned to Ansem as Cersei smacked him with a wing. “The sun gives light, warms, and nourishes, but if it shines too brightly or if you’re foolish enough to fly too close it burns. And that, I surmise – OWE!” He yanked a finger from the Magpie’s beak and quickly grabbed it again. “ – That, I surmise, is what happened to Arlene. She was a gnat flying into the sun. The light shone down and it was too much for her. It set her afire, and her Shell was incinerated.”

And sending her to end the old Master was folly, he may have added but he held his tongue. He wished to keep it.

“Had she come back sooner,” he added, leering back at Arlene, “perhaps I could have done something for her.”

---

Feeling his fingers around her throat only made her lip curled; her jaw strained from snapping at his wrist. Was she rabid or just plain mad? Still a growl shook through her already quivering unstable frame. She snorted at his questions and merely glared at him. Primitive is what he made her to be; after that damn wizard she was so feeble she couldn’t stand, but just lay lifelessly until she could summon a portal to take her away from a wasteland. Lost is what would happen for fools who charges into that forsaken tower so damned blinded. Looking back at him she glared and hissed, “Isn’t that to be expected having us go head to toe with that damned wizard? We didn’t have a damn chance in HELL!”

Her arms barely caught her drop; the muscles were still loose, but her anger still held back exhaustion. An elbow propped her up, while her claws dug into the table loathing every second of this weakness and feebleness. Even right now it wouldn’t surprise her if an Invisible can best her, but her hunger for its heart may tip the scale to survive. With a wave of a hand, she could smell and hear the parasitic shadows; he expected her to be sated by them. They were filthy in every aspect; the hearts were tainted, and shadows weren’t the strongest of heartless. The quality of hearts they carry would hardly be satisfactory; it wouldn’t say much for her to scavenge off of them like a greedy vulture. Unfortunately her heartless nature didn’t give much of a choice with her severe state.

For one with a human form, she moved rather quickly on fours slaying and purging the heartless of their vitality. Nearly done, she was able to stand up, but still leaned on the table for support. Her face began to heal up slowly, while her hair hung limply over her face like fringed curtains, “Act…like a XII. What XII? I don’t see any XII here. Your XII is what made me like this. Where the hell was your XII in that tower playing patty cake at the base?”

Knocking over a chair that belonged to singular number, she damned the XII with agitated muttering, “Screw the XII. Can’t even take done one person, who we could’ve even damn handled to begin with, and now he’s gone. Doing what, primitively prattling about the damn XII? Well I guess if you wanted us all dead that would be the damn route.”

Wanting to tear up something else, she hobbled her way out of this stupid meeting of this so called XII. To even emphasize on of her loathing points for this group, Myde was so stupid that he didn’t even know when to just shut up. Slowly turning her head, her eyes narrowed at him before sending a small thunder spell to his ears.