Trashbender

I'm gonna use good old-fashioned human capability and go air-swimming, myself.

"Bad news, the captain wants to cloud-ski."

2020 -- A Comprehensive Review: This has been a comprehensive review.

Omgsh bless you, that worked, I was literally having a moodstorm about this LOL

@amenities Thanks so much! c: @supernal Omgsh you're right LOL Sorry these are so huge, I'm running into an issue where no matter how small I resize them or where I upload them, they keep reverting back to being 5000000 pixels wide and tall, and it frankly drives me effing insane. I also apologize because I don't have a scanner anymore and my phone camera refuses to focus 98% of the time. So I'm really, really unhappy with the quality of these ones. Regardless, here's some of Lala's mask's expressions I suppose. Neutral: Vexed and Delighted Manic: Also I know I suck at drawing hands please don't come after me lol I did my best

Blue, black, and purple -- very suitable colors for the woman who presented herself as hostess. Mizu noted the tone of her skin, the honest presentation of clothes, and felt delighted: this would be a fun one. Aveline seemed to represent an aspect of freedom, and as one who once was tightly bound by metaphysical convention, Mizu appreciated this greatly. The two stepped inside and indeed the warmth washed over them, along with the enticing aromas of cooking. Before they proceeded, Mizu extended a hand to Aveline with a smile. "You must be Miss Singlance," She said, "I'm Mizu, and this is--" Taras cut her off as naturally as possible with a smile of his own. "Yuri." Realizing his need for secrecy suddenly, Mizu did her best to roll with it and make no indication that she hadn't been expecting the name, simply proceeding to shake Aveline's hand. "It's lovely to meet you! Good choice on the colors, too, those ones are very watery and always full of stories." She didn't give away that she intended to make a painting for their hosts with those very colors by the end of the night, after she was done stuffing her face, of course: it was always nice to give a thank you gift when possible, and she had all her things with her.

Sweet, thanks, will detail things more appropriately in me next post <3 @notmuch_23 EDIT: having read the most recent post I have to say that I actually didn't think of the Japanese word yuri when I did Taras' cover name, just picked a random male Slavic name, but now I am laughing my ass off both at his expense and my own linguistic gaffe

Already posted but just for future/visual reference, do ye have profile sheets or anything for Aveline and Thurgood? :0

((OOC: sorry this is so long dunno what happened)) "....so then I says, 'doppelganger? I don't even know her!'" A veritable shriek of giggles erupted from Mizu Batsuya as they approached the house of interest, she and a stranger she had met on the road. It wasn't a big quest, or life-changing adventure or some strange mystical encounter -- but those were button-candies on the cake of Life, and sometimes they were a bit too much. Now, a party? That was Life itself. "You can't be telling me you actually said that to an exorcist," She laughed around her hand, held up politely to her mouth. "Why not?" He answered, smiling. Even with his bizarre jokes, he was gentle and mild, and he had been simply so polite and friendly that Mizu had to invite him along after she'd seen the notice in town. She couldn't remember the specifics: most of the information was drowned out by the listings of food and drink, and the only thing that became important after that was the location. His hair was long, dark, and smooth, working surprisingly well with a delicate face; this was what folks termed a "beautiful man", she was sure, not that she had too much of a interest. She could feel it, that this one had too much baggage and too much on his mind to be interested in a casual flirt. "Exorcists don't even deal with doppelgangers," The enrobed harionago answered with a grin, reaching up to arrange her hair. If she planned to eat barbecue, she'd better make sure it didn't get in the way. Hair felt awful going down. "Well who else was I supposed to tell the joke to?" Taras Besschentyil laughed, watching the road ahead of them. His violet eyes were bright in the descending darkness, the pupils appearing to glow from some internal light. Mizu guessed that he was either cursed, or had augmented himself -- and the amount of money he had, combined with the conspicuous lack of raw magical power she felt, suggested the latter. He'd left his family years ago, apparently. She hadn't asked for details. "I suppose it would have been wasted waiting for a new Emilie Sagee," She conceded, letting her hair tie itself up high and out of her face while her new friend's eyes were averted. "And I certainly appreciated the re-telling." "Glad you did," He chuckled, "My sister used to be full of those crappy kinds of jokes." "Do you miss it?" "What, the crappy jokes, or my sister?" Mizu giggled again. "Either one." Taras paused, letting his gaze drift upwards to the sky. His smile remained, but as she watched, it became distant, wistful. Regretful. "Yes," He finally answered as the building in question came within view. It looked like there was already a small crowd waiting there, and the smell of roasting meat reached the two. "The crappy jokes I can retell -- but no idiot tells them like my sister did." The much-shorter woman walking alongside him placed an arm on his elbow, patting it gently. "I'm very sorry," She said simply. This seemed to be enough for him, though, and his smile regained some of its former cheer. "Thanks. Hey, maybe she'll show up here," He went on, half-joking, sticking his hands in the pockets of his black, military-styled coat. It was rugged and worn, but he kept it in good shape, and it well-matched the simple-hilted sabre at his side. They all suited the look of a tired, but lawful young man. "She was always dipping into Mother's snake-alcohol, and I hear there's going to be booze at this hoedown." Mizu removed her hand, but her tone was encouraging and sincere. "Maybe she will." Finally they reached the house, and by now the smell of barbecue was almost overpowering. Even in her graceful robes and with her dainty limbs and tiny feet, Mizu stamped the ground eagerly as they waited behind the growing crowd. Her friend laughed. "Hungry?" "Like a fox," She said with misplaced determination, staring hard at the side of the building where she was sure the spit probably was. Taras laughed generously at this. They didn't have to wait very long at all when the front door opened and a young woman peeked out, welcomed them all, and stepped aside to let people inside. As they waited to enter, Taras and Mizu suddenly stopped. "Uh," The Besschentyil suddenly realized he was Carrying, and unbelted his sabre from his person. "Someone will surely steal that..." Mizu commented. "I can't take it inside, though, that's horrible manners. And scary." "What, you don't have a rack-and-lock for that thing?" "It's not a freaking bicycle." "That's not -- okay, fair enough," She conceded once more, and reached into her sash, withdrawing a small slip of paper and whispering an incantation over it. A few sigils appeared on its surface as though inked in by an invisible hand, and in good humor, she held it in the flat of her hand before slapping it directly onto the scabbard of his sword. He raised an amused eyebrow. "What's this?" "Set it down anywhere; anyone besides you who tries to take it will have explosive diarrhea until they put it back." "Oh my god..." Taras chuckled quietly, and still with no small amount of trepidation, lay his beloved weapon against the side of the house. "Hello!" Mizu greeted Aveline with equal cheer as they finally came to pass through the doorway. "Thank you for throwing such a gathering for a bunch of silly strangers. This will sound odd, but may I ask your top three favorite colors? It's important. For science."

It was past midnight and the house was silent when she woke up in a cold, nauseating sweat. Lisanne Orlos lay next to her husband, her breath coming in quick, ragged gasps. Eyes that had before been restlessly shut had flown open and stared with brimming anxiety into the void of a lightless bedroom. A nightmare had preceded this unpleasant awakening -- great looming dark figures had crowded her in dark, red halls, chattering down at her in a mumbley kind of language she didn't understand, and she'd felt heavy... far too heavy. She had tried to run, but as was the way with dreams, she only felt like she was running against a current, her legs slipping out from under her, the figures keeping easy pace... even now, in her wakened state, she could hear their muttering. She tried to lift her arms. Her fingers barely twitched: she was paralyzed. She had felt unwell before bed, but had thought nothing of it at the time; something about dinner, perhaps, she had thought. They had visited a friend that evening, and the feature was some exotic bird whose name she couldn't pronounce, and she began to feel foggy, a bit nauseous shortly after they arrived home again. A bit of indigestion, maybe: some sleep would surely fix it. But as she slept it settled in, a growing, gnawing, heavy pit in her abdomen that seeped into her blood and made it sluggish. Even in the dream her head felt thicker, near to bursting, and was beginning to hurt; a sickness rolled around inside her that felt like it desperately needed to be expelled, but would go nowhere; her mouth tasted foul, old, and sour, and despite her greatest efforts she still couldn't move. The room swam with darker shapes than the shadows, and she could see swaths of that too-red place creeping in and out of the walls, the ceiling, peeking with invisible eyes as her own watched in growing panic. Seeking something to focus on, something that might bring her back to reality and end this awful paralysis, she shifted her gaze around the room -- and it settled on something that sent her panic skyrocketing into sheer terror. At the corner of the bed, one of the figures from her dream still stood: it was tall and thin, like an emaciated shadow with no face. As she watched, its featureless, awkward-looking head tilted slowly, and she realized quickly that it was staring right at her. For several horrible moments that stretched ever onward, Lisanne held her gaze on the creature until finally, her will broke through and she forced herself to sit upright with a scream. The bedside lamp on her husband's side flipped on with a click, and she turned to him quickly, breath hitching in terrified sobs; he was a rational man and could certainly talk her down from-- All her gasping and whimpering stopped. Next to her sat not her husband, but a sagging, crooked thing, with stringy, wet dark hair, soggy skin, and a sharp hunch in its back. Rags in the vague shape of the nightclothes her husband had been wearing hung off its lank form. As she watched, her heart all but hammering right out of her ribcage, and it twisted its head around to look at her. It's eyes were deep, huge, and cavernous; its mouth, dripping with rivulets of thick, yellow saliva, stretched into an unnaturally wide and shark-like smile. "Darling," It purred. Lisanne found her breath and gave another cry of disgust and dismay, and tumbled out of the bed, tearing a path towards the door and the stairs that went down to the first floor. Behind her, Edward Orlos sat dumbfounded where his wife left him, sitting up in bed, having flipped on the bedside lamp. His brow furrowed in a mixture of concern and complete confusion; lifting his arms, he examined his arms and legs -- she'd looked at him like she'd just seen him kill a man, but he could find nothing wrong with himself. Realizing something must have happened with her, Edward hopped off the bed and hurried his way downstairs, hearing her rummaging around somewhere down there in a panic. "Liz?! Hey, what's going on?" He called out to her, pausing on one landing to listen, but received no answer. With a sigh and a frown, he continued and followed the din into the kitchen. Inside, Lisanne hunted through maid-organized drawers and cupboards, her hands shaking so badly they could scarcely grab any knobs or handles. The room seemed to swim in and out of focus, in and out of shape, and the foul taste was getting worse. She could hear voices, distant, but layered and aggressive as rushing water, and she couldn't understand what they were saying. Finally, her hands found purchase on an object she rarely held, but certainly recognized, and just in time to hear footsteps nearing, and entering the doorway. She whirled around to see it creep in, and it was much, much taller than it had initially looked: it stooped low to enter through the kitchen doorway, its disgusting hair and yellowed strands of spit hanging and waving as it moved. Lizanne shrank against the counter, whimpering, tears running down her pretty middle-aged face, but too afraid to make any other noise. "Darling," It crooned again, its enormously long legs making painfully slow strides across the tiled floor -- its voice changed, becoming feminine, disapproving: "You knew this was a bad idea, didn't you? You knew he was no good..." "Mother....?" Liz Orlos barely managed to eke out, and now she did start to sob, airy and weak like a little child. "I told you over and over again, he would get you into trouble. He's not a good man. I told you." "No....." She breathed again, "He... he loves me..." "He's buying you, just like we did. You've always liked being spoiled. Do you even care where the money is coming from?" The thing stepped closer, but she had nowhere to go. She tried to avoid looking right at it, tried to parse out her other escape options, but in her terrified state she found none. "Please...." She begged it. "You're such a stupid, selfish girl." Lisanne screamed as it came within arm's reach, and thrust the knife she'd been holding up, aimless, just hoping to hit something -- and the taunting, the rasping voice, all stopped, replaced by silence and an ugly, feeble gurgling. Still crying, still shaking, she let go of the knife and heard the thing collapse to the floor. The voices ceased. The room began to settle, and the foul taste in her mouth faded slightly. Exhausted, she sank slowly onto her knees on the floor and sat there quietly, sniffling, sobbing, and trying to collect herself. When her thoughts began to finally organize themselves, and the subsequent nausea of panic leveled out, she finally took the risk of looking at it again; just to make sure it was dead. Cautiously, she turned her head towards where the dark shape lay. And began to scream anew. On the floor, of course, was not a horrible-looking creature: Edward Orlos lay on the floor in his sleeping clothes, the handle of a kitchen knife jutting out of his mouth. As people began to gather on the street outside, and as law enforcement rushed in to investigate the disturbance, the tall, black, awkward-looking figure that had spied on Lisanne Orlos as she lay trapped in sleep paralysis, slipped easily out the back door, and made a silent but cheery waltz through the alley away from the scene of the crime. *********************************** And about two hours later, Lala Besschentyil silently waltzed into the backroom of her next victims. It had been all she could do to keep from humming with pleasure, and it had been all she could do not to laugh at Edward and Lisanne Orlos: Edward was a crooked businessman who owned a mill out in the sticks, one staffed entirely by prison inmates. Since it was somewhat remote, and nobody cared about criminals, they were frequently underfed, lodgings were uncomfortable, and some had even died when their hearts simply gave out, unable to keep up with the working conditions and demands at once. Lala didn't exactly have a bleeding heart, but when she had seen how much Lisanne enjoyed being spoiled with things that came from the money made from such an enterprise, it was simply too good of an excuse. And momma had always taught her never to pass up an excuse to do something nasty. An annoyed, barely-audible hiss escaped her dry teeth, filtered out through black cloth. It was a simple but effective disguise -- she just clad herself entirely in swaths of black cloth, wrapping even her face and head, and not only was she harder to see, but those who did see her often thought her some uncanny-valley hallucination, a shadow that was human-adjacent, but not quite close enough to be picked out. It was what she wore beneath her brighter daytime robes, beneath her mask -- she had seen it in a mirror once and decided right then and there that she absolutely had to do night-crawling in it. Her current location, about halfway across the city from where Lisanne Orlos was being arrested and interrogated, was a dingy wine cellar in the home of Duane Leeds -- a business partner of Edward's, and as far as she knew, just as low on scruples. It would be an easy enough procedure: poison his precious wine, of which he was a collector, and watch him Work. The biggest issue was getting in and out of the cellar unseen, but currently it seemed no one was home, so she had a free pass on this one. The second biggest issue was figuring out which bottle to spit in. For a couple of minutes she stood stock-still in there, looking around at the countless amount of bottles from different locales and of different persuasions, and felt her spirit Frown. This was too many choices. "O, to be a rich fuck," She whispered, and spotted out three bottles that were out standing on a ledge near the stairwell. They seemed to have been recently cleared of dust, and she boldly assumed that this meant they would be taken upstairs and consumed sometime soon; and even if they weren't consumed tonight, they would be eventually. Delighted by this new revelation, Lala walked silently up to the ledge and took the bottle closest to the stairwell, pressing the top against her face in the vague region of the mouth. To the naked eye, nothing was happening -- but a close inspection would show the cork darkening rapidly with the contact, and through the tinted glass of the bottle, a brackish sludge oozing its way through the cork and down the neck of the bottle into its contents. Several moments passed and Lala simply took the bottle away from her "mouth" and set it back on the ledge where it had been before, the cork regaining most of its former color, then crept up the stairs into the main house. With the coast still clear for the moment, she picked a suitable hiding place within its many rooms where her black-clad form would not be spotted out... ...and waited.