Wounded Wookie - Hollow Bastion [COMPLETE; continued]

[diabound]

There are always moments of disorientation when one wakes up from a near-catatonic sleep. The only thing that matters in that time is the solid thing beneath the body and the fragmented images slowly being overridden by pain. Pain brought things into focus, like the images that were just light playing across his eyelids

Comments

[diabound]

The laughter didn't stop until some time after, devolving into a very unhealthy sounding cough. The only reason he stopped laughing was that he couldn't anymore, not without causing himself further injury. A satisfied smirk lingered in it's place.

He fully accepted his new goal. It wasn't so different from the old one. It just meant that Hell would need to undergo a little renovation to accommodate Corpsey's friends.

When he moved his fingers away from the floor - which was not metal as he'd first assumed, but something less firm like a steady wood - he was a little surprised, even disappionted to find them unharmed. It explained why the crash hadn't hurt him more than it did.

He passed his hand over his chest briefly, checking for broken ribs with the proficiency of someone who was accustomed to it. He was calm again after the laughter, almost passably sane if one squinted very, very hard as to avoid all of the dead things. He was bruised badly but his torso was still intact.

He scrubbed the caked blood away from his eyes, smearing it everywhere in the process. When he could open them again, the cockpit was brightly lit with sunlight pouring in from outside. That kinda contributed to his headache.

He ran his fingers along his hairline while he waited for his eyes to adjust. No wonder his head hurt. He was going to do some stitching.

He pushed himself up unsteadily, propped against the back of the pilot's chair. It was easier to do inventory if he sat up. His knives were gone (come to think of it, it was a miracle one of them hadn't gotten him during the crash), so he improvised. The pilot was sprawled close enough doing an his best imitation of a dead fish. Bakura grabbed his arm and dragged him closer. Then he bit down on it, not the least bit disturbed by what he was doing. He braced himself to pop that shoulder back into place. No rest for the wicked.

[luckylucky]

A combination of whistle and comment were received without much shock to them, though he didn’t much like being snuck up on. He remained pretty calm and commented to whoever was observing. “You got me.” Havoc was kind of used to these of strange situations from all that went on in Amestris. He turned to face whomever had come to observe the scene- a pretty scarcely dressed man with black hair (which sort of reminded him of Roy’s) and darker skin. “You probably want to stay back. Whatever is in that seems a little too happy about it.” The reeling laughter out of a crater usually meant some strange occurrence to top off the already weird ongoing things.

He wasn’t about to charge into something that was completely screened in smoke. Once the smoke cleared a little more, he’d make his way in and see what kind of situation they had here.

At least he could say one thing for this little trip. Definitely wasn’t boring so far.

[fake_prince]

The blond was simply another onlooker, then. Not that Aladdin had been expecting anything else, really. He paced around so that he was standing next to the man instead, squinting at the wreckage. "A downed gummi ship, huh?" Great. Of all the places to land--this might attract more attention than it should, though the circumstances had a lot of room to vary.

There might be people in there that needed medical attention, but that laughter was enough to set him on edge. Still, one crazy person among a few other innocent ones wasn't enough to make Aladdin wary. Glancing at the stranger, he shrugged and started toward the downed ship, seeming unfazed by the fact that he was barefoot. He'd walked around without shoes for so long that the bottoms of his feet were callused and padded.

"Anyone there?" he called out, raising his voice. It was obvious enough that someone was, but the response would be a good way to judge what Mr. Chuckles was like.

[diabound]

Bakura grunted in pain. It took three tries to get his shoulder back into place, and by the time he had he could taste the blood soaking through the pilot's uniform. He spat the arm back out like it was a dead rat and pushed the body away with even less care.

"You.." Bakura licked his lips. He sounded like he was a three thousand year old tomb robber who swallowed gravel on his off days. He felt like it too. "You realize you owe me for those daggers." He told the corpse conversationally, voice so low it was meant for an intimate conversation. "I don't like losing my shiny things. It wounds me soul deep."

He felt along his leg, knowing something was broken even before he let out a sharp hiss. Curses. He might need to splint that before he--

"Anyone there?"

Bakura was not pleased to have visitors. He considered not answering, but that would only make them more curious and, while far from helpless, he was in no condition to start a-slaughterin all over again. That would make him very dead. And anti-climatic.

It wasn't caution, but self-preservation that made him answer the way he did.

He raised his voice as well, hopefully loud enough to carry. "Believe me, no one you want to meet." He coughed, though sounding like a dead thing could work to his advantage. "Run along kid."

Now, what could he use as a splint..?

[luckylucky]

Gummi what?

He wasn't given any time to make inquiry about whatever that was before the guy rushed ahead. Civilians. "They can never just wait." Always jumping into the scene and putting themselves in harms way. Havoc chewed on the end of his practically perminently attached cigarette before making way after the guy.

Out of a scene like this and whatever answered them seemed in the right mind enough to answer a question. that showed a little bit of promise.

He attempted waving the smoke away in front of his face as he stepped along after. The smoke was starting to clear showing a few vague forms, but in a minute or so it would be more substancially clear. For now they just had to stab in the dark to find anyone. "We just want to know what happened here."

The sound of glass crunching against the dirt sounded against his boots. Havoc looked down at it, trying to make out the other vivid color the black had charred and dulled.

..A...red?

[fake_prince]

"Kid?" Aladdin scoffed. Maybe a few years ago that title would have described him well enough, but at this point he was pretty sure he was not a kid. Though perhaps the reaction was his usual defensive nature when anyone wanted to use an insulting term toward him. After being called riff-raff and street rat so long, the thief had learned to bristle at any demeaning tone.

Still, judging by the voice, this survivor didn't sound old enough to be calling anyone a kid. And if he was young, then Aladdin wasn't sure he could simply leave him there, even if he didn't seem like the brightest ray of sunshine he'd ever come across.

Glancing back at the other stranger, he motioned him over. With visibility so low and without his normal sword, just running into the ship on his own wasn't the greatest idea--and he liked to believe he'd become a little more cautious lately.

"Is anyone in there alive besides you?" he called out. What if this person had steered the ship down? That would be suicide, but he'd obviously orchestrated it so that he, at least, would survive. Aladdin didn't like the vibes he was getting from the whole situation, but he had to figure out what he was going on before he simply turned his back on it.

[diabound]

Oh, come on.

Bakura rolled his eyes. Do-gooders or thieves like himself, it didn't make much of a difference. The only things on this ship worth stealing belonged to him, gold anklets and the like. He wasn't looking for a rescue. If anything, he was preparing for that fight. It wasn't in his nature to put bloodshed past anyone he interacted with.

He shrugged out of one arm of the coat, yanking his makeshift shirt out from where it had been tucked into the kilt. The thin sheaths lay at his side, the only thing he'd been able to reach that would suffice for a makeshift splint.

Riiiiiiip.

He gave the pilot a sidelong glance, then glanced past Corpsey stuck in the doorway. It was hard to get a lot more dead than that. "Ship crashed. Lots of fireworks. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine."

He shrugged, grinning a little as he returned his attention to the leg despite his annoyance. Luckily for him, his hair obscured it. "What do you want?"

[luckylucky]

When waved on, he did follow the civilian deeper into the crash site. There was just something about this whole crash that didn't seem right. Call it a soldiers intuition, but the laughter hinted at something being seriously wrong.

Investigate then asses what he could do. Being creeped out came afterward.

"Sounds awefully calm for someone who just crashed a ship." Havoc muttered uder his breath.

The smoke started to thin out enough to where he could make out what was, assumedly, who they were talking to. "Well, us normal folk see something crash we come over to help. " What did they want was the response? Sheesh. "To contain the situation so other civilians aren't injured."

[fake_prince]

If Aladdin were to believe what this stranger was saying, then he hadn't caused the crash. He wasn't that naive, though. Not when he somehow managed to be the only one that lived through the whole thing. His nonchalance wasn't helping his case, either.

What was he supposed to do about this, though? He had some authority, sure, but enough to capture this guy on some hunch. And if he'd managed to bring a whole ship down, Aladdin wasn't even sure if he'd be able to take the guy in a fight--especially when he was unarmed.

It was assuring to know that the blond had a similar feeling--that something simply wasn't right.

"You're injured," he stated, drawing a little closer but still keeping enough distance. "Which either means you were willing to sacrifice getting hurt in order to bring this ship down... Or you really didn't mean for it to happen." No, Aladdin didn't mind broadcasting his suspicions.

[diabound]

"To thwart evil and right wrongs," Bakura replied to the older(?) one sarcastically. He began wrapping the makeshift splint as he listened to them. It was like being in Traverse Town all over again. Nothing vaguely similar to Egypt in the way people thought or acted, though in Bakura's mind everyone was the same deep down. Some admitted it, some didn't.

It was bloody annoying.

He knew from experience he couldn't pass himself off as anything remotely nice (Zork and Pals? Come on.), so he didn't bother to try. That was the thing about these people, he realized; they didn't care if you were an asshole, so long as you weren't a violent, sociopathic asshole. He could pull off the former. He just had to make an effort.

But that all depended on how much of this was an act on their part.

He barred his teeth and growled, shifting his leg away from the darker of the two as a warning to keep his distance. He probably looked more like a wounded animal than anything else with his hair shaggy and matted with blood and a vaguely wild look in his eyes despite the way he spoke. "If I'd meant for this to happen, I would be wearing a fucking seat belt." He snapped, leaning against the back of the pilot's chair again. "Look around, there's nothing on this ship worth bringing it down for."

"I was on my way home." He added, letting more aggravation seep into his voice. "And this isn't it. So yes, the my evil scheme has failed."

[luckylucky]

The guy sure was a charmer.

If he had authority in this place it would be a lot easier to handle this. The procedure would have been simple: escort the person out to some place secure for questioning, then have the others (including himself) stay behind to clean everything up. In this case...

"Evil Scheme, huh." He started to pick out some of the remnants from underneathe the earth and looked at it. "I think I'll take you up on that look around." Couldn't hurt. If he didn't find something interesting he could go on his merry way. It was kind of hard to remember that here, he was the civilian with no obligations.

[fake_prince]

When it came down to it, Aladdin wasn't exactly cut out for this sort of thing. He couldn't remain mean and stony the entire time, especially when he got a better look at how injured the guy was and then heard that he'd been trying to get home.

He knew what it was like to be homesick.

Sighing, the prince closed his eyes as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. How was he to deal with this? The blond was already checking out the wreckage, and for some reason he felt that he could trust he'd be thorough about it. He seemed the type somehow.

So he instead focused on the one survivor. "So do you need help, then? With those wounds, or maybe with getting off of this world and onto another one?" He didn't want to reveal just who he was, since that would leave him open to be taken advantage of.

[diabound]

Bakura bit his tongue. Literally. Accidentally. But the sharp, definite pain distracted him. He wasn't in the right mind, that was for sure. Years of survival and logic took over just like it had with his wounds. His methods were perfectly suited to his home... And that was just the problem. Wasn't this what being a thief was all about? Learning to adapt? (And stealing, and killing things with a stick, and laughing like a manic... But those were secondary.)

Bakura raised an eyebrow. "What reason do you have to help me? Other than ensuring I go quietly, of course."

He was frustrated, tired, and probably too injured to get anywhere on his own for a while. It wasn't going to get much better than that offer. He didn't care if this was just a ploy to arrest him. It would give him a safe place to rest until he decided to take his leave.

[luckylucky]

Once he got a complete circular view of everything, it would be a little easier to piece together what happened. Havoc was no investigating officer, nowhere near the calabur of Hughes’ skill on that, but it couldn’t hurt to try and poke around a little. Havoc knelt on one of the “side” of the crash side and knelt down to take the view of the craft in as a whole. He’d never seen anything like this ship before. Gummi ship, was it?

Even as he looked around, he made sure to keep tabs on what the two were talking about. “The guy is offering to help you out,” He couldn’t help but interject, “and from how you look I wouldn’t be so quick to turn it down. Doesn’t look like you could make it too far on your own anyway. That’s your call.” If he didn’t want help then no one was going to force it on him.

[fake_prince]

"You're injured," Aladdin pointed out obviously. "Usually it makes sense to offer help to someone that's hurt, right?" It didn't seem like this pale-haired stranger had much of a moral code that he followed. And people said he was ill-mannered. For growing up on the streets, he had common sense and more importantly, a need to help others.

That probably explained why he was married to a Princess of Heart.

"I can take you into the castle," he said vaguely. He would make sure the stranger was watched over carefully, though. He wasn't stupid enough to let someone so suspicious loose in the castle. "I can probably get someone sent down here to check out all of this, too." He motioned to the wreckage.

[diabound]

"You'll excuse me if my first instinct isn't to believe in the benevolence of strangers." Bakura replied, the usual mix of sarcasm and bitterness colouring his words, which were more or less directed at the annoying blond one. He let his shoulders slumped slightly (flinch, bad idea). To all appearances, he'd let his guard down a little. "It's not like this where I'm from."

Bakura tilted his head, brow furrowing slightly. "...Castle?" He hadn't reacted to the word, and when he said it it definitely sounded foreign on his tongue.