Scene's out of Order: Reji vs Germaine
When Reji opened his eyes, it took him a moment to realize he'd drawn up inside himself again. He was now in that dreamlike realm of white, detached from the situation. He looked down at his prone form laying in the rain on its stomach, face down in several inches of rainwater as one of his many past mistakes stood over him projecting hatred and rage.
Now standing outside of himself, Reji looked around and saw they were alone in the alleyway, no one was coming to intercede on his behalf. He watched his body stir and attempt to lift itself off the ground. He watched his body pull a leg under itself until his body was on one knee. Even if the eyes in Reji's body hadn't been looking directly at the raindrops as they splashed against the rising water level of the alley floor, it wouldn't have made a difference. Astral Reji had taken a cross-legged sitting position atop a garbage dumpster and though watching closely, almost didn't register the next attack. The girl that Reji once knew as Germaine Taggart, suddenly snapped herself backwards until her hands touched the ground beneath the rainwater, at which point her feet left the ground, catching Reji's body under the chin as they did so. The display of acrobatics took only a second. His head snapped back, and his arms already shaking under the effort, buckled and gave out, sending him back down towards the pool of gutter water.
Just as quickly as Germaine executed her attack, she pushed off with her hands and swung her legs back down so that the heels of her heavy combat boots came down hard on the back of Reji's head adding insult to injury as he came back down hard into the rain water.
Astral Reji sat in a meditative pose upon the garbage bin and watched Germaine right herself, touching gracefully back down on both feet and in that same motion, continued swinging her right foot back behind her, before firing it back towards the top of Reji's skull. The heavy boot connected against the hood of Reji's trenchcoat, flung up over his head by the whiplash effect of Germaine's kick. The special material that made of the whole coat hardened instantly upon impact, negating the potentially lethal blow.
Atop the dumpster, Astral Reji became aware of another presence beside him.
"So, you're just going to lay there while she beats you to death then?" Teapot settled down into the same cross-legged sitting position, arms folded across her large chest, as they both watched the sad spectacle that was Reji struggling to stand up.
"Let her have it," He told his astral companion. "she's carried this with her a long time. I figure I owe her this much, I think. This is the least I can do." He continued to watch as his now standing body came under assault by a barrage of kicks and punches all accompanied by jumping, flipping and twisting. All of the attacks managed to find Reji's now unprotected head, or past the front of his open trench coat and land along his exposed upper body.
As the last kick had connected squarely with Reji's chest, he staggered back a few steps and slumped against a wall, sinking slowly back down into the rainwater where one leg stretched out in front of him. A sound of strangled rage escaped from Germaine's throat as she spit at Reji's slumped form, her chest heaving, teeth clenched, rain drenched tank top clinging to wiry muscles covered in thousands of tiny rain drops. She screamed again, kicking water at a lump of mass that would not respond.
"Fight back!!" The scream was so powerful, so full of hate that it was barely comprehensible. "Get up! GET UP!!" Minutes ago more gracefull than any cat, she was shaking now, barely in control. "You don't get any say! You don't get to play the passive card! Not after all the shit you've done!! Now get up and face me! FACE ME FUCKING DAMMIT!!" At the last, Germaine's words were simply angry noise.
"At this rate," Teapot began "if you don't get in there and start doing something, you really are gonna die." Reji simply shrugged.
"It's possible, but I don't think it's very likely" Was all he said. Teapot made a noise in the back of her throat that sounded not entirely dissimilar to Germaine's own animal noises.
"You are so fucking full of yourself!" Teapot screamed out at Reji. "And just what it is you think you're going to accomplish by having her kill you? Huh!?" Silence for a few moments, before Teapot spoke again, realization in her voice. "You're taking the coward's way out. You are! You want this, so that you don't have to carry on anymore! That's it, isn't it!?" Astral Reji made no reply. It was the truth, but there was more to it. But Teapot was a girl who lived in his head, there was no hiding thoughts from her. "GET OVER IT!!" She screamed at him. "All of that bullshit happened years ago! Years! You can't just bitch out and give up now over some misplaced feelings of guilt that you can't let go of!" Astral Reji said and did nothing. His body on the other hand, had managed to get back to it's feet again, amidst another salvo of kicks and punches, all of which were accompanied by some sort of acrobatics.
Germaine, having decided she wouldn't be given the satisfaction of a real fight, pulled a large knife from it's scabbard on her belt and leaping high into the air, bringing the point straight down to an unprotected spot between the neck and collar bone. At the last possible second, Reji's arm swung up to intercept, and the blade slid harmlessly along the protective material, before coming to a halt under Germaine's determined anger-fueled strength, just before Reji's elbow. She stopped for a moment, her face registering a brief look of surprise, before vanishing. The look that replaced it, was one of pure frustration.
"Make up your fucking mind!!" She bellowed over the sound of the near deafening rain. She looked up, and for a moment, she and Reji locked eyes. For a moment, she could have sworn she saw a flicker of some sort of emotion, from the giant of a man who up until this point, hadn't uttered a single word in response, or protest. But before she even had time to identify it, Reji swung his arm lazily out to his side forcing the knife away from him. The mass of Reji's muscled arm made it impossible for Germaine to do anything except pull the knife away or risk losing it. By the time Germaine looked back up, she was met with only Reji's now typical stone wall of a gaze.
He lowered his arm back down to his side and now stood fully upright, his black bandana soaked and clinging to large rust coloured dreadlocks. He was covered in rainwater from head to toe. Even the water proofed trenchcoat was soaked on the inside after not having been done up. Rainwater dripped off of barely parted lips and down onto a red beard which could hold no more water and was also slick with blood. Reji's body closed it's eyes, took a long, deep breath through his nose and exhaled it through his mouth, Astral Reji found himself doing the same thing in unison. When both of them had opened their eyes again, it was in time to witness a straight armed punch from Germaine, connect head on with Reji's jaw. Reji's body rocked backwards a little, but with only inches between it and the wall, he remained upright. Once again, Germaine spat on him in disgust.
"For a moment, I thought you were finally going to take responsbility for something in your life, and own it. But it looks like in the end I was right, to think someone like you could never change.." The corners of her mouth pulled tighter, transforming her scowl into a sneer as another small, wiry fist found it's way with lightening speed, towards Reji's solar-plexus. Reji doubled over, coughing up blood and dropped to both knees, arms folded across his body as if holding his ribs in place. He tried to suck in air, but succeeded only in making embarrassingly desperate heaving sounds, which were met with only a callous chuckle. Germaine appeared to be switching up her stance, prepared to launch again at the slightest evidence of Reji doing anything that wasn't gasping or puking. Perched on the dumpster, Teapot broke the silence between the technically non-existent duo.
"What a bitch, who does she think she is!? Huh!? Who do you think you are!? What do you know about Reji and change!? You can't even count high enough to know about the changes he's made you stupid cow!!" With that Teapot climbed off the dumpster and marched herself toward Germaine in order to deliver the rest of her rant by screaming it in her face, but was stopped cold in her tracks when Germaine's head whipped around to look right at her. Teapot froze and sputtered for a moment. "Wh-wha. Y-y-yo-you can... see..?" Germaine shifted her eyes from side to side for a moment before speaking.
"Who's there?" She asked forcefully "Come out where I can see you, by the authority of the North Tundra Military! This is your last warning!" To illustrate this, Germaine pulled her sidearm from her shoulder holster and pointed it straight at Teapot who made a strangled squeaking sound before dissipating. Germaine kept the gun aimed, and after a moment of rustling noises, a small shabbily clothed figure crawled out from behind the dumpster Reji was sitting on, and stood to be counted. Her hair was long, wet, black and matted. Her clothes were dirty, torn, and more than half or her outfit appeared to be missing. Her shoes bore large wholes, with no socks in them. Her blue eyes looked were full of fear, but otherwise the girl's entire posture stunk of defiance. She couldn't have been older than seventeen.
Reji blinked. He hadn't been aware that anyone was there. He reasoned she'd had to have been there the entire time. Watching. And then the recognition slammed into Reji's brain at the same time that Reji's body raised it's head and screamed out a name.
"Talon!" Reji bellowed, too late to stop himself, and clamped a hand over his mouth. This belated gesture of course was meaningless. Germaine now new exactly who was standing there, the sinister smirk of realization dawning on her face. At that moment, a voice in Germaine's head, a voice very different from the Teapot that lived in Reji's, gave Germaine a command to do something terribly irreversible, and before either Reji, or Talon had a chance to react, the gun went off.
Reji bellowed something incomprehensible, and launched himself forward so quickly, that by the time he registered that Germaine was laying face down on the ground, he nearly stepped on her. Blinking for a moment, in utter confusion, he looked up and towards talon, but he couldn't see talon because someone else was standing between talon and where Germaine had been. Someone else had been watching the situation in its entirely, and this made two people who'd managed to escape Reji's notice, and that someone else, stood staring out at Reji behind chin length brown hair, steel blue eyes, with his right arm still outstretched, fist clenched, with a foot resting on Germaine's back.
"Does this mean you've actually decided to act then?" the cold, hard voice of Archibald was unmistakable. "Because watching you getting your clock cleaned by a ninety pound waif, is nothing sort of embarrassing."
Now standing outside of himself, Reji looked around and saw they were alone in the alleyway, no one was coming to intercede on his behalf. He watched his body stir and attempt to lift itself off the ground. He watched his body pull a leg under itself until his body was on one knee. Even if the eyes in Reji's body hadn't been looking directly at the raindrops as they splashed against the rising water level of the alley floor, it wouldn't have made a difference. Astral Reji had taken a cross-legged sitting position atop a garbage dumpster and though watching closely, almost didn't register the next attack. The girl that Reji once knew as Germaine Taggart, suddenly snapped herself backwards until her hands touched the ground beneath the rainwater, at which point her feet left the ground, catching Reji's body under the chin as they did so. The display of acrobatics took only a second. His head snapped back, and his arms already shaking under the effort, buckled and gave out, sending him back down towards the pool of gutter water.
Just as quickly as Germaine executed her attack, she pushed off with her hands and swung her legs back down so that the heels of her heavy combat boots came down hard on the back of Reji's head adding insult to injury as he came back down hard into the rain water.
Astral Reji sat in a meditative pose upon the garbage bin and watched Germaine right herself, touching gracefully back down on both feet and in that same motion, continued swinging her right foot back behind her, before firing it back towards the top of Reji's skull. The heavy boot connected against the hood of Reji's trenchcoat, flung up over his head by the whiplash effect of Germaine's kick. The special material that made of the whole coat hardened instantly upon impact, negating the potentially lethal blow.
Atop the dumpster, Astral Reji became aware of another presence beside him.
"So, you're just going to lay there while she beats you to death then?" Teapot settled down into the same cross-legged sitting position, arms folded across her large chest, as they both watched the sad spectacle that was Reji struggling to stand up.
"Let her have it," He told his astral companion. "she's carried this with her a long time. I figure I owe her this much, I think. This is the least I can do." He continued to watch as his now standing body came under assault by a barrage of kicks and punches all accompanied by jumping, flipping and twisting. All of the attacks managed to find Reji's now unprotected head, or past the front of his open trench coat and land along his exposed upper body.
As the last kick had connected squarely with Reji's chest, he staggered back a few steps and slumped against a wall, sinking slowly back down into the rainwater where one leg stretched out in front of him. A sound of strangled rage escaped from Germaine's throat as she spit at Reji's slumped form, her chest heaving, teeth clenched, rain drenched tank top clinging to wiry muscles covered in thousands of tiny rain drops. She screamed again, kicking water at a lump of mass that would not respond.
"Fight back!!" The scream was so powerful, so full of hate that it was barely comprehensible. "Get up! GET UP!!" Minutes ago more gracefull than any cat, she was shaking now, barely in control. "You don't get any say! You don't get to play the passive card! Not after all the shit you've done!! Now get up and face me! FACE ME FUCKING DAMMIT!!" At the last, Germaine's words were simply angry noise.
"At this rate," Teapot began "if you don't get in there and start doing something, you really are gonna die." Reji simply shrugged.
"It's possible, but I don't think it's very likely" Was all he said. Teapot made a noise in the back of her throat that sounded not entirely dissimilar to Germaine's own animal noises.
"You are so fucking full of yourself!" Teapot screamed out at Reji. "And just what it is you think you're going to accomplish by having her kill you? Huh!?" Silence for a few moments, before Teapot spoke again, realization in her voice. "You're taking the coward's way out. You are! You want this, so that you don't have to carry on anymore! That's it, isn't it!?" Astral Reji made no reply. It was the truth, but there was more to it. But Teapot was a girl who lived in his head, there was no hiding thoughts from her. "GET OVER IT!!" She screamed at him. "All of that bullshit happened years ago! Years! You can't just bitch out and give up now over some misplaced feelings of guilt that you can't let go of!" Astral Reji said and did nothing. His body on the other hand, had managed to get back to it's feet again, amidst another salvo of kicks and punches, all of which were accompanied by some sort of acrobatics.
Germaine, having decided she wouldn't be given the satisfaction of a real fight, pulled a large knife from it's scabbard on her belt and leaping high into the air, bringing the point straight down to an unprotected spot between the neck and collar bone. At the last possible second, Reji's arm swung up to intercept, and the blade slid harmlessly along the protective material, before coming to a halt under Germaine's determined anger-fueled strength, just before Reji's elbow. She stopped for a moment, her face registering a brief look of surprise, before vanishing. The look that replaced it, was one of pure frustration.
"Make up your fucking mind!!" She bellowed over the sound of the near deafening rain. She looked up, and for a moment, she and Reji locked eyes. For a moment, she could have sworn she saw a flicker of some sort of emotion, from the giant of a man who up until this point, hadn't uttered a single word in response, or protest. But before she even had time to identify it, Reji swung his arm lazily out to his side forcing the knife away from him. The mass of Reji's muscled arm made it impossible for Germaine to do anything except pull the knife away or risk losing it. By the time Germaine looked back up, she was met with only Reji's now typical stone wall of a gaze.
He lowered his arm back down to his side and now stood fully upright, his black bandana soaked and clinging to large rust coloured dreadlocks. He was covered in rainwater from head to toe. Even the water proofed trenchcoat was soaked on the inside after not having been done up. Rainwater dripped off of barely parted lips and down onto a red beard which could hold no more water and was also slick with blood. Reji's body closed it's eyes, took a long, deep breath through his nose and exhaled it through his mouth, Astral Reji found himself doing the same thing in unison. When both of them had opened their eyes again, it was in time to witness a straight armed punch from Germaine, connect head on with Reji's jaw. Reji's body rocked backwards a little, but with only inches between it and the wall, he remained upright. Once again, Germaine spat on him in disgust.
"For a moment, I thought you were finally going to take responsbility for something in your life, and own it. But it looks like in the end I was right, to think someone like you could never change.." The corners of her mouth pulled tighter, transforming her scowl into a sneer as another small, wiry fist found it's way with lightening speed, towards Reji's solar-plexus. Reji doubled over, coughing up blood and dropped to both knees, arms folded across his body as if holding his ribs in place. He tried to suck in air, but succeeded only in making embarrassingly desperate heaving sounds, which were met with only a callous chuckle. Germaine appeared to be switching up her stance, prepared to launch again at the slightest evidence of Reji doing anything that wasn't gasping or puking. Perched on the dumpster, Teapot broke the silence between the technically non-existent duo.
"What a bitch, who does she think she is!? Huh!? Who do you think you are!? What do you know about Reji and change!? You can't even count high enough to know about the changes he's made you stupid cow!!" With that Teapot climbed off the dumpster and marched herself toward Germaine in order to deliver the rest of her rant by screaming it in her face, but was stopped cold in her tracks when Germaine's head whipped around to look right at her. Teapot froze and sputtered for a moment. "Wh-wha. Y-y-yo-you can... see..?" Germaine shifted her eyes from side to side for a moment before speaking.
"Who's there?" She asked forcefully "Come out where I can see you, by the authority of the North Tundra Military! This is your last warning!" To illustrate this, Germaine pulled her sidearm from her shoulder holster and pointed it straight at Teapot who made a strangled squeaking sound before dissipating. Germaine kept the gun aimed, and after a moment of rustling noises, a small shabbily clothed figure crawled out from behind the dumpster Reji was sitting on, and stood to be counted. Her hair was long, wet, black and matted. Her clothes were dirty, torn, and more than half or her outfit appeared to be missing. Her shoes bore large wholes, with no socks in them. Her blue eyes looked were full of fear, but otherwise the girl's entire posture stunk of defiance. She couldn't have been older than seventeen.
Reji blinked. He hadn't been aware that anyone was there. He reasoned she'd had to have been there the entire time. Watching. And then the recognition slammed into Reji's brain at the same time that Reji's body raised it's head and screamed out a name.
"Talon!" Reji bellowed, too late to stop himself, and clamped a hand over his mouth. This belated gesture of course was meaningless. Germaine now new exactly who was standing there, the sinister smirk of realization dawning on her face. At that moment, a voice in Germaine's head, a voice very different from the Teapot that lived in Reji's, gave Germaine a command to do something terribly irreversible, and before either Reji, or Talon had a chance to react, the gun went off.
Reji bellowed something incomprehensible, and launched himself forward so quickly, that by the time he registered that Germaine was laying face down on the ground, he nearly stepped on her. Blinking for a moment, in utter confusion, he looked up and towards talon, but he couldn't see talon because someone else was standing between talon and where Germaine had been. Someone else had been watching the situation in its entirely, and this made two people who'd managed to escape Reji's notice, and that someone else, stood staring out at Reji behind chin length brown hair, steel blue eyes, with his right arm still outstretched, fist clenched, with a foot resting on Germaine's back.
"Does this mean you've actually decided to act then?" the cold, hard voice of Archibald was unmistakable. "Because watching you getting your clock cleaned by a ninety pound waif, is nothing sort of embarrassing."