[Random adventure times] Kat X Rogue [with Celölas and Lutis!]

"Adventures just tend to waltz in the door with a big sign on them..." Lutis continued along his trailing line of thought as Celölas spoke, not really paying too much attention to what she was saying. He had gotten a little lost along the way, and didn't quite know where he was going with things any more. Blinking a few times to get himself back on track, he frowned a little at the shade runner before turning to follow her gaze, noting how she didn't look quite so comfortable any more (despite the fire), then immediately understanding. "Oh uh... Yeah they don't seem so-"

He cut his words off as the two immediately found their way over to the table that Lutis and Celölas were sitting at, not wanting to overly annoy someone who so suddenly displayed a mean temper. Like the shade runner, he almost jumped out of his chair with shock at the man's violent action, glancing with wide eyes towards the dragon before looking up with a hastily cooled gaze.
"Can we help you?"
"Yeah, you can help." The man had a wide, thuggish build, but his movements and the look on his face didn't look like he wanted anything other than to flatten Lutis' face a little, and get his friend to do some equally nasty things to Celölas. "You're them two crawled out of the wreckage the other day of that warehouse. We had stocks in that. You caused it, dint'cha?"

Lutis glanced sideways briefly at Celölas, quite suddenly wishing that he hadn't been spreading so many high tails. "Nope. You must be confusin' us with some other pair of uh, dragon and human. I heard they uh, were stayin' across town. Far far across town."

Celölas seemed to shrink a little as the man began to talk, and stayed very quiet, hoping Lutis would find them a loophole. She only spoke at all to add her voice to his in agreement. “Oh yes, I think I know the two you mean, yeah, they’re from right near the north gates I think…” she nodded, hoping that the men were daft enough to believe them both. There was surely a reasonable excuse for them both to be so bashed up that didn’t involve the warehouse… although nothing was springing to mind…

The men looked at each other, clearly thinking about it, before turning back to face Lutis and Celölas. Some private discussion had clearly taken place, but Celölas had no idea what had happened until the second man raised an eyebrow. “We don’ believe you.” He grinned. He had surprisingly few teeth, although that probably shouldn’t have been /that/ surprising considering the circumstances they had met under. “An’ I think you two should come with us.” That didn’t sound good…

“What do we do?” Celölas breathed to Lutis, shrinking even further down as if that would let her melt into the floor, or even hide under the table.

Lutis was so very glad that Celölas decided to sing along to the same tune as he was; obviously, the dragon would want conflict even less than he did. His eyes flicked from her to the two men with great wariness, then behind them a little to check for any more men coming in the door. They hadn’t made any movement to hail others, but who knew what the gangs in this area had worked out between each other. It was the easiest thing in the world to say, if I’m not back in ten minutes, bring heavy backup.
Lutis would have done just the same.

“You’ve definitely got the wrong people. Honestly!” He was having a hard time trying to keep his panic under wraps, and no doubt it would give Celölas little cause for calmness either. The dragon seemed prone for eating off others’ emotions, especially when she was already trying to hide herself behind Lutis’ chair. Little good it did her as the two men grabbed the pair of them and hoisted them to their feet, apparently having no trouble with either a dragon’s unwieldy proportions, or Lutis’ weak struggling.
“Seriously, boys, you don’t wanna be doing this. Can’t we all just sit down like nice gents an’ lady an’ talk all this out?” His weak protestations were cut off again as the man who had him in a tight grip found the best way to shut Lutis up, grabbing him firmly by the injured arm and towing him away to the door, Lutis yelping like a wounded dog the whole way, a good handful of choice curses mixed in there too.

Celölas didn’t dare struggle when the men finally decided to force her to her feet. She was too nervous to put the thought of breaking free of them together in her mind anyway. So she stood and let them lead her out of the way. Lutis didn’t seem to have the same problem, and was still trying to worm their way out of it. “We-we’re not…” Celölas tried to help his pleas, but ran out of words before she could finish her sentence. Damn, she wished she wasn't such a coward sometimes. It really made things difficult.

When she saw the way the men opted to get Lutis to follow them, however, she was suddenly thankful for her cowardice. She didn’t want to see what else they might have tried to get her to move. Padding along carefully, trying to keep pace with the men, she let them lead her outside.

When they were outside and away from the door, the men let go of Celölas, and backed her and Lutis into a corner. She squeezed her eyes shut and hoped they would go away, but they didn’t. “What did you see?” one man grunted – she couldn’t tell which with her eyes tightly closed. “Talk.”

"Ow, ow ow ow, seriously, ow!" Lutis didn't stop his complaining until the men let go of him and Celölas, rubbing ruefully at his arm and twisting his bandages back the right way round. They weren't really actions to entice him into speaking any more truth than he had spoken minutes ago... although the threat of earning some more bruises wasn't a pleasing thought either. He scowled, an unusually strong burst of courage filling him.
"I'm seein' three ugly goons in front of us not knowin' what they're talking about. We haven't seen anything."
His eyes widened again and he ducked fast as one of the men lashed out with a fist at his head. There was a satisfying crunch as it met with the wall and he howled, making quite the scene about it.

Violence never solved anything, did it? He straightened up again to look to Celölas for her take on this whole thing, less concerned about the other man. It looked like he probably only had a fifty-fifty chance of actually being able to process what Lutis had said, and those odds were good enough for him. Although, apparently the odds were a little higher, as the other man did manage to understand, and all the air went whooshing out of Lutis as he recieved a punch to the stomach. He crumpled against the shade runner, wheezing for breath.
"Might be a good idea to shout f'some help about now," he huffed, cringing at the thought of any more blows aimed his direction.

Celólas watched Lutis wide-eyed, marvelling at how well he kept his nerve. He must have been in horrible pain, but he was still outsmarting their captors perfectly. Shout for help. Yes, that was something she could do. “Somebody help! Please, help!” she started to howl. Her speech capabilities were mental, so the bandaged didn’t affect them greatly, but the man holding her didn’t seem to grasp that. He clamped a hand over her already closed mouth and slapped her. The cry went quiet for a moment, but once the street stopped spinning she was right back at it. “Help! Somebody!” she repeated, hoping that all the noise would bring someone over.

The brute holding her went to hit her again, so Celölas pre-emptively flinched, bowing her head. The man mustn’t have been looking very hard, because he managed to only hit her ear, which was soft of course, and moved harmlessly away from the blow. Standing up, Celölas realised she was free again, and leaped away from the man that had been holding her and at one of the others, who had their attention focused on Lutis. The second man flinched, clearly assuming that dragon meant dangerous, although for Celölas that was only true half of the time, but the leader was not so easily distracted. Nevertheless, Celölas kept up the shouting and moving about, hoping to buy them some time.

Thankfully the message got through to Celölas quickly, and Lutis was quite relieved to hear her voice reverberate through his head, even as he was recovering his breath. Finally finding enough air to straighten up, he backed against the wall, holding his good hand out in front of him and the other tucked in close at some attempt to protect himself from that source of easy pain. Although he had seen enough violence in his time, he felt distinct fear flood through him at the sight of these thugs advancing on him again, and would have been very strongly inclined to run away, had he any way of escaping.
“Please, please don’t hurt me.” He was shocked to find his voice sounding weaker and quieter than he expected, quite pathetic. It didn’t have any effect, of course. Pressing himself firmly against the wall behind him, eyes screwed tightly shut so he didn’t have to see, he waited for the next round of pain to start with fear filling him.

But for both their sakes, Celölas’ loud cries did attract attention. A cry for help would never be ignored by Foen Ekhart, luckily close enough in the area to hear the desperate dragon. He snapped shut the book he was reading (quite the skill, considering he was also walking down the road and avoiding everyone he came across without even having to look up from the pages), promptly thrust it under his arm and broke into a run after the source of the noise, hanging onto his hat as it tried to break free of his head.

He skidded into the alleyway the pair were trapped in, hardly taking in the situation before digging into one of his pockets with a hand and grabbing hold of a pouchful of powder there. He gathered a good pinch in his hand, then threw it down to the ground with all theatricalness, smoke billowing up around him and loud bangs echoing down the thin street.
“Step away from them, or I will have to force you to do so!”

Celölas huddled herself into a ball as the thugs closed back in on her and Lutis. She was surprised by how fragile he sounded – Lutis was the brave, strong one of the pair of them! She was too frightened to speak, and too nervy to put up any kind of fight, so she just got ready to flinch against any kind of attack. What actually ended up making her flinch was an explosion of smoke at the end of the alley, which scared the living daylights out of her even though they seemed to be helping.

The thug holding her held his hand up over his head and looked terrified. He seemed to be the youngest of the bunch, and the threat had scared him enough to make him give up entirely. The others paused, but didn’t look as worried. They did stop attacking for a while, however, which Celölas was thankful for. It took her a long time to realise that she could be using the distraction to escape, but by the time she managed to move, the other man near her grabbed her shoulders and pinned her. Damn, so close. But who was this mysterious stranger there to help them? There was magic smoke, and she was still almost as worried about that as she was about the thugs.

Lutis was waiting for the end to come when, instead of some unpleasant punch to the gut or face or bodily extremity, a loud series of crackles and bangs suddenly filled the air. The air suddenly stunk of bad eggs and was thick to breathe, smoke wafting down towards them where their unlikely rescuer had appeared.
He heard the call of help, opening his eyes wide and blinking against the smoke with a look to their attackers, before a deviant twist came into his face and he collapsed back against the wall, clutching at his already-hurt arm and moaning like he had sustained a fatal injury. It was a very good impression, enough to baffle the thugs facing him for a moment long enough for him to cry out for help himself. Celölas had done a fabulous job attracting attention so far, but she did not have that streak for the sensational.

Foen looked open mouthed at the situation in front of him as the dragon was wrestled by the front by one man, the other victim falling to the ground despite the warning shout the sorcerer had given. There was nothing for it but a bit of homemade magic to scare off the thugs. He scowled a little, shutting his mouth quite firmly.
“I warned you!” He dug swiftly into his pockets, finding another bottle that was a little more potent than just smoke and bangs, then ran forwards and dumped a hearty dosage of potion on one man’s head, spilling the liquid onto the next man along who was also threatening Lutis. Where it dripped, fat boils suddenly started to pop up on their skin, turning through colours of pink, red, then an unhealthy yellow faster than it seemed possible for anything to change colour. The other man, holding Celölas, was a little more fortunate in the powder Foen sprayed across his face, although not by much as flowers started to sprout in his hair and thin vine tendrils crept from the spores that landed on him to twist down across his features and around his neck. Within moments, the two with boils had run yelling from the alleyway, the third letting go of his grip of the shade runner and instead clawing at the plants now firmly tying themselves around his upper body.
“Ah,” Foen said, dusting his hands off carefully before stepping towards the two now ‘safe’ with hands outstretched. “What an unfortunate pick of potions. Those plant spells really are difficult to make.”

Celölas watched in astonishment as the man holding her sprouted flowers from every orifice, and stepped free as he began to claw at them. She darted towards Lutis as soon as they were both free, and looked at their unusual rescuer with wide, saucer-eyes. Lutis had crumpled spectacularly, but she didn’t know if he was badly hurt of putting it on, and it didn’t seem like the right time to ask. She gazed in wonder as their rescuer commented on the potions, before finally coming to her senses. “Th-thank you for rescuing us.” She said childishly, not sure what to make of the smoke and boils and plants that had just appeared everywhere, for no reason so could put her paw on.

“Lutis are you alright..?” she finally manage to get as far as asking. She was seriously convinced that something in the warehouse incident had killed off the majority of her brain, she was so slow that morning. Maybe it was just the sheer concentration of unexpected occurrences that had followed her about for the last couple of days.

The thugs were long gone now, which was probably a good thing because Celölas was a little worried those boils might be contagious. She was a little uncertain about what their rescuer was going to do no, so she hovered, looking down the alley in case the thugs came back.

“Mm yes, I wouldn’t stand too close.” Foen looked to Celölas as she scuttled away, then peered a little closer at the thrashing man with no sympathy in his gaze, only fascination. He raised his voice a little to speak, as if he were a cretin; “My dear man, perhaps you had better get that seen to!”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes as the man started to make gasping noises, clawing at his throat, then pointed along the street. “Second house on the left, there’s a healer there. She might be able to do something for you. If you get there in time.” Perhaps he would, perhaps he wouldn’t. Foen had made a rash decision using whatever had been in his pockets at the time, and hadn’t quite expected such a result.

That done, he turned back to the others, waving away Celölas’ thanks with his book in hand. “Oh tosh. It’s nothing. Now, your friend doesn’t look too healthy at all, does he?” He patted the dragon gently on the shoulder, then bent to take a closer look at Lutis, reaching out a hand to lift his face up towards him.

But Lutis was fine of course, blinking open his eyes to look around and waving his hand to bat this newcomer away.
“Oh thank guardians,” he said, pushing himself up to sit a little better, but not yet standing. “I thought we were dead meat f’a minute there.” Breathing out a shuddering sigh, he brushed a hand over his hair as he readjusted himself to safety again. “All good, Celö. Cheers mate, you did us a proper favour there, comin’ along at jus’ that moment.”
He started to pull himself up the wall to stand, but then suddenly thought better of it when pale sparkles started to fill his vision, sitting down quite promptly again. The sudden ‘excitement’ had left him quite scrambled for a moment.

Celölas shook her head, still baffled, as she waited for some response from Lutis. She was immediately relieved when he sat up, looking suddenly better. That was good – she was getting too flustered to cope on her own, but Lutis’ confidence did wonders for her nerves. She recovered properly then, grooming her burnt fur back into place where it had started to puff out during the uncomfortable last few minutes. She had to look presentable at least!

“What can we call you..?” she asked slowly, tilting her head curiously at their rescuer, before twitching as one end of the bandages over her nostrils got into her eye. “And how did you do… that?” She could still see faint wisps of smoke in the air, and she had no idea where it had come from really.

She wondered briefly what the thugs had wanted. It was about the warehouse, she knew that, but what in particular. Were they the sheep smugglers, the people selling more expensive loot, or somebody else entirely? It was worrying how many people there were that could have been after them, all things considered.

“Foen, Foen Ekhart. Sorcerer at the Northern Academy, to make your formal acquaintance.” He had put his hands to Lutis’ face when he had been still and unmoving, but rose to his feet again now, looking across at the dragon who had spoken. “And who might you be?”
These two seemed like a strange pair, and certainly worse for wear. Both of them hand quite noticeable bandages and hurts, from something previous to what he had just rescued them from (obviously they had not had time in that moment to bandage themselves up, if they had just been hurt more). He stared at them intently for a moment in interest, before blinking and looking away to check his pockets would not suddenly start sprouting vines; Celölas had reminded him that the pot may be less than secure.
“That? Oh, it was nothing. Well, it was something, but it looks better if you claim it to be trivial. You’re a dragon, you should recognise something magic when you see it!” He squeezed the cap back onto the bottle of boil-mixture in his hands. “Want to help out your friend a bit, or shall we just let him sit there?”

Lutis gave a tight smile that wasn't really a smile at Foen's words, hauling himself up the wall and standing with his legs out straight in front of him so he didn't fall over. "All right, I can do it. They're not gonna... come back, are they?" He worried a little for whether the strange magics would wear off quickly enough for the men to return and try out round two for information, especially if the now-three of them were caught short in the same alleyway they had narrowly avoided being beaten up in.

Celölas listened, wide eyed n nodded. A sorcerer? Wow, that sounded fancy. She sneezed, a speck of dust in her nose-bandage making her eyes water, before straightening up, all flustered. “Oh, um, I’m Celölas, that’s Lutis. We were, um, well you saw all that.” She stammered, hastily grooming herself like a cat that had just done something silly and thought nobody had seen. She was suddenly aware that she was a mess, and she hated looking scruffy.

“Well yes, I suppose, but I can only do ice, not all those fancy kinds of magic…” she said, more accepting of the idea of the potions than she had been, but still not convinced. She nodded, whisking herself around to face Lutis. “Do you want a hand..?” she asked, with her head tilted to one side. She backed off again as Lutis got himself up (with some difficulty, it seemed, but in one piece) and listened. “Come back?” she squeaked, “Oh I hope not!” She couldn’t handle a third traumatic experience in the space of two days- it would definitely do her some damage. Just the warehouse had been bad enough, so double thug-attack would be too much.

”I did indeed see all that! Quite the pickle you seem to have gotten yourselves into. Congratulations.” Foen tucked his potion bottle away into his robes as the dragon turned to help her friend, looking vacantly at the both of them without any real forwardness of his own to assist. “I think ice is quite fancy. It’s odd though, you know, that ice and water magic are different, yet when you melt ice, you get water.” He flashed Celölas a quick smile, then turned to wander off down the alleyway back the way he had come, quite expecting them both to follow him. “Come along then. We wouldn’t want you getting jumped again now, would we?”

Lutis gave Celölas a thankful look as she came to his aid, feeling somewhat nauseous for the throbbing ache in his arm that one of the thugs had given him. Ooh he could send one hell of a set of curses after that man, had he not gotten what he did. Asshole. He looped his arm gingerly around the dragon’s neck as he came away from the wall, moving like a man twice his age and looking at her with a little curiosity. This new man was quite… quite strange, it seemed. He was just thankful that he had been around at the time.
“When y’say, come along, where’d we be goin’?”

”Where’d you want to be going?

“Congratulations..?” Celölas muttered, decidedly confused. She wasn't sure if that was sarcasm, which she had never understood anyway, or a serious compliment to their ability to… get into trouble. “Oh, yes, that is strange. Never noticed that.” She chirped more confidently as Foen continued talking, still lending her strength to Lutis to make sure he didn’t fall over or anything. He always seemed to take the worst of the damage from their adventures. Maybe that was just because Celölas was a dragon though, and bigger than him.

Where did they want to go? Celölas honestly didn’t know. Taverns hadn’t gone so well for them lately, and neither had adventuring around town. “Somewhere safe, with no more thugs would be nice!” She suggested, realising that wasn’t exactly specific. She didn’t care – just another bar would do her. She had her nose tied up still, so even stray bits of broken glass in the streets weren’t as threatening.

She looked at Lutis. He was more of a leader than she was, ad seemed to be a bit better at talking to their odd rescuer. Celölas still felt funny from the brawl, and had no idea if she was talking sense or not.

» Snazzy post-tourney times [Kat/Rogue/North]
» [Rogue X Grimm] Academy times [Foen & Malakath]
» Lutis Passal- .:In yer pants:. (Human)
» Rogue X Saphire [title to come]
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