[Open]

[sublimated]

Method: Action or prose
Who: Kanda and anyone who wants to run into him.
Where: Poring Island
When: February 1, around midday
What: Killing little blobs of sentient jelly is about the farthest thing from Kanda's mind.

Comments

[crossgraved]

Since finding some time to explore the little island they had settled upon, Allen had decided he really had very limited interest in dealing the jelly blobs their unexpected doom. While he could see the logic in training inexperienced fighters basic combat strategies on these things, he himself found them relatively inoffensive and didn't feel that poking them would ultimately teach him anything at all. If he were of a different mind set, he might have found the suggestion insulting, but as the matter stood he was just kind of curious of the things.

He'd come to find them non-aggressive and kind of entertaining, easy to pick up and pile onto one another for a moment or two before they toppled off each other and blobbed around quite contently. It was a way to pass time and distract himself, but Allen did recognise that he was distracting himself from thinking too closely about the other more important dilemmas surrounding the present situation

[sublimated]

The startled cry of distress was certainly not what Kanda had been expecting to hear. It came completely without warning from beyond a copse of trees, and the suddenness of it seemed to startle a flock of birds there which took quickly to the air.

He certainly couldn't identify who had made the sound or what exactly had happened to them, but his brain didn't pick those points out to dwell on anyway.

Kanda didn't so much decide to go to the aid of whomever it was, so much as simply find himself on his feet, sword in hand, leaping in long strides down the little bluff and running the short distance to the tree line. However apathetic he had been these past days, by the time he realized what he was, seemingly reflexively, going to do, it didn't occur to him to stop and just not do it.

He bolted passed the treeline and through the undergrowth, never breaking his stride, and already could see the light of the clearing beyond. And in it, something large. ...And pink.

[crossgraved]

This was, without a doubt, not one of Allen's finer moments by any means. There he was, an exorcist (until otherwise dismissed) of the Black Order, a soldier, a capable and well-versed fighter, sprawled out on his back under the assault... of porings. Granted, one of them was especially large and was doing a fairly decent job of pressing its weight down upon him, but the others were sort of casually boffing at his legs and face. He was in the process of managing to grab one off of his face and toss it to the side when his entire head was enveloped by the large pink mass above him.

It was around that point that Allen Walker realised that if this continued his ultimate fate was going to be suffocation by jelly. There was something so utterly humiliating in that thought that he began to thrash wildly with muffled noises of resistance, his limbs flailing as he tried desperately to grab or shove any part of the giant glob of jelly to bring himself closer to air again.

Through the large pink blob upon his chest, Allen thought he could see

[sublimated]

The momentum of Kanda's run carried him through the last of the trees and into the clearing, and there he slowed to a standstill, stopped, and for a moment simply stared.

The jelly was huge. Far bigger than him. It stood nearly as tall as a small tree and easily as wide. That in and of itself might have been enough to warrant a stare, but not near so much as the too-easily identifiable legs and torso struggling to try and free their upper half.

That absolute, complete, unrivaled IDIOT! What the hell was he even supposed to be doing? Was he trying to get himself killed? And not even by a proper foe, but by a damn overgrown dessert

[crossgraved]

There was someone there! At least there had been, Allen was sure. A sense of discontent had filtered through him as he realised that whomever it was had clearly seen this appalling set-up, turned and walked away. If he were not in such a situation, Allen may have just wept a bit. This was not the most flattering situation he'd ever been in.

But his awareness was caught quite sharply as he noticed the return of that person's presence, felt the rush of a movement and the rush of... air. He took a generous gulp of air as the Mastering recoiled back a way. It didn't make a noise of distress itself, but it did make a face as though it were surprised to have been hit at all

[sublimated]

Kanda had seen Allen get to his feet, but for all the acknowledgment he bothered to give him he might almost not have. There was a single, rather baleful, sidelong glance, and then his full attention was returned to the huge mass of jelly as its momentum shifted towards him.

Absurd as the thing looked, it was still an enemy, and it wouldn't be hard for Kanda to guess that if he was caught in its path it would have the advantage of weight. But big as it was, he doubted it would be very maneuverable.

Without more than a passing Tch at Allen, Kanda ran towards the thing, one foot planting in the middle of its grin as he propelled himself over it, managing to turn before he landed and drive his sword down through the thick of its gelatinous body.

Now that Allen was on his feet, he trusted that he would at least manage to avoid getting pinned under the thing a second time.

[crossgraved]

The jelly itself may have momentarily looked confused, or as confused as a smiling jelly-blob can manage when blinking its little black eyes and wondering where the pretty swords-thing had gone. It was soon to find out when it juddered with, apparently, pain as Kanda's sword embedded itself into the backside of the Mastering

[sublimated]

Kanda did not need to be told twice. In fact, he might not even have needed to be told once, and whether he was responding to Allen's call or just doing the exact same thing he would have done anyway was anyone's guess.

He had already pulled his sword free and was preparing for his next strike which, whether he'd intended it to be or not, was well coordinated with the younger exorcist's words.

He drove his sword straight through into the pith of the thing, impaling it right around where an ear might have been, had it had one. And then, a second later, he twisted and angled the sword, heaving it up like a lever that would cut the jelly blob in half.

[crossgraved]

There were some targets that requires ripping at the seams from several places, and then there were apparently other enemies that were too spherical to have seams. Allen took this to mean that he would need to maintain a hold on the jelly, keep the target stable as he felt the pressure from Kanda's attack move the large pink mass before it shortly after fell apart across the grassy floor. And partly over Allen.

The splatters of pink goo didn't coat him from head to foot or anything--instead it was more like the blob had fallen apart into a few large segments and a handful of smaller pebble-sized globs that had smacked against Allen's forearms.

With a sigh, he began to brush the jelly on his arms and upper torso off of him with the back of his right hand before glancing toward Kanda. He offered the other exorcist a sheepish kind of smile, his comrade's silence throughout the whole event certainly not escaping his notice.

"It's...a bit different from dealing with akuma. I didn't even know it was aggressive."

[sublimated]

Death--whether it be human, animal, Noah, or akuma--was always messy, in Kanda's view. He expected as much because as a general rule, nothing wanted to die, and so struggled reflexively to live. Killing something meant getting dirty.

It did not, however, necessarily mean getting sprayed with bits of jelly and goo that rained down from a disintegrating body like a miniature rain shower to splatter wetly around one's feet.

The swordsman sneered in distaste at the whole stupid situation, sheathed his sword with a rough clap into its saya, and then spun on Allen, stomping through the carnage of gelatin so that he could yell into the younger exorcist's face.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU, YOU GODDAMN IDIOT?!"

[crossgraved]

Evidenced by Kanda's less than conversational nature, especially of late, Allen had not expected any kind of response from the swordsman at all really. At best, he had existed a distasteful 'tch' or a glare, and at worst an absence of acknowledgement entirely.

It did come as a genuine shock to Allen then to glance around in time to see the elder exorcist almost eye to eye with him, and only a bare second before the vocal onslaught began.

For a second, Allen was so stunned he could only stare at Kanda stupidly in total silence, his eyes wide with surprise and his mouth was held slightly aghast.

"I..." he began to reply, but then paused once again briefly. He didn't really know how to answer that question, or even if he should answer the question--was Kanda being rhetorical?

"I wasn't expecting that to happen. It looked like the other pink blobs which had all been pretty harmless. It was just...bigger."

[sublimated]

The excuse (or explanation, or whatever it was that Allen intended it to be) didn't go far with Kanda. In fact, it went absolutely nowhere. Except, perhaps, to make him even more angry. Of all the idiotic 'justifications' that the stupid Beansprout could have tried to offer...

The words swirled red in his mind, and before he'd even fully realized it, his fist had flown square into Allen's jaw. He didn't, he knew on impact, feel even a little bad for having done it.

Unlike the other exorcists, Allen wasn't (at least, the way Kanda saw it) accustomed to being on his guard--the threat of being caught unawares wasn't always foremost in his mind. But that, it seemed to Kanda, wasn't the damn point. The point was that Allen just didn't think in battle! The same way he hadn't thought about the consequences of impaling himself on his damn sword.

Perhaps he thought more the rest of the time, but Allen's particular brand of not thinking was the kind that was going to get him killed. And it made Kanda angry. Doubly so, in fact: angry at

[crossgraved]

It was a kind of deja-vu, Allen realised, as the crack to his jaw set him hurtling backwards to land fairly gracelessly upon the floor. He had about enough time to register what had just happen and stare up at Kanda before the other exorcist gave his version of an explanation behind the punch. With Kanda, his thought process was rarely obvious or straightforward, he took a lot of work to make sense of, and often Allen hadn’t known what was going on for Kanda until it was too late. Especially recently

[crossgraved]

There was a part of Allen’s brain that said he should be glad that Kanda even had a reaction at all, that it was proof that he was on his way to becoming more like himself again. But it didn’t make Allen feel better, it made things worse. He’d seen something in Kanda before he had opened the gate to send him and Alma to Martel-he’d seen his gratitude and heard him speak his name in full. He’d had a sense that things between them, at least for a moment, had been in a different place than they’d ever been before. It seemed like it was just for a moment, and the knowledge that Kanda was moving from a state of catatonia back to ‘himself’ did not fill Allen with pleasure, but heavy discontent.

He sat with his hands loosely in his lap, a cynical breath of a laugh leaving his lips. He really was an idiot sometimes.

Throughout that rather rough exchange and Allen’s quiet processing of it, the sentient jellies, in their various sizes and colours, didn’t seem to pay much attention at all.