paixaorpg | In which Oyashiro-sama's aim is a bit off [Active/Open]

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In which Oyashiro-sama's aim is a bit off [Active/Open]

Character(s): Keiichi, open~
Content: Obligatory intro post
Setting: Joutenheim Gate
Time: Early morning
Warnings: None

When Keiichi came to, he remained lying there on his back long enough to notice three important things: 1) that he didn't seem to be dead, 2) that this wasn't the forest, and 3) ... that he didn't seem to be dead. Okay, one and three were the same, but whatever. At that point he began to figure that he wouldn't get any further by lying around, and sat up to get a better look at the place.

Yep, the forest was definitely gone. Where it had been, he now found himself in a barren wasteland populated by an enormous upside-down fishbowl building that didn't look like it belonged on Earth, much less in Hinamizawa. A hundred different questions ran through his mind. Am I hallucinating? What is this? The afterlife? Why is there a line? "Huh... I didn't think the afterlife would be so space-age," he muttered to himself, standing and dusting off his shorts. "-Eh?"

A glint of metal caught his eye nearby - Satoshi's bat, still right where he'd dropped it. After a second's consideration, he picked it up and propped it casually on his shoulder. Even if he didn't wind up needing it here, Satoko wouldn't want him to lose it.

He could swear the line of people outside the (tacky) gate came to a grinding halt the second he was actually in it, but he tried not to get impatient. It wasn't a really long line, anyway, and if he was dead he had all the time in the world, right? At some point, he caught himself feeling his chest for the bullet hole - it wasn't there, and his clothes were mostly clean. No blood, no hole, no pain, nothing but his own pulse.

"..xt. Next!"

A few seconds late, Keiichi realized he was at the front of the line, mostly because the second person in line had thought to remind him with an "accidental" shove. "Hey, watch it!" he snapped over his shoulder.

"Can I get your name, sir?" the attendant in the kiosk asked. He sounded like he was going to drop dead of boredom any second.

"Maebara Keiichi," he replied promptly, and watched the guy scribble it down. "So is this the-"

"Welcome to Paixao," the man interrupted, shoving a brochure and a plastic book at him over the counter. Keiichi accepted both automatically, and had to stare blankly at them for a second before he seemed to realize he was holding them.

"Huh? Thanks, but I need to know if-"

"You can find any information you need in the brochures and the message board," replied the attendant. "Now if you'd please-"

"Hey, hang on a minute! You never answered my ques-"

"-step inside the gate, there are people waiting in line-"

"-tion! Is this the-"

"-and please enjoy your stay. Next!"

"You're not even listening to me!" Keiichi exclaimed, then stumbled as the second person in line shoved roughly past him (okay, that had definitely been on purpose) to the kiosk. "Oh, for- it's a freakin' yes or no question!!"

But the attendant was already serving the pushy guy, very pointedly ignoring Keiichi's presence. Keiichi clenched his teeth and advanced half a step on the booth, but then reconsidered, bit back his frustration and let out a deep breath. "All right, fine," he grumbled, turning back to the gate. Let it go, Kei. It's not worth making a scene over.

Finally, he rested the bat over his shoulder again and shoved the informational stuff into his pocket. "Nothing for it, I guess," he sighed, starting forward and inside. He'd just have to ask somebody else.

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Bellatrix was very close to doing something that she rarely ever did - panic. She'd lost a member of her squad. She'd lost Keesling. He'd just been kidnapped right in front of her! How did this happen?

She'd thought clearly enough to put up a notice on the message board, and found out he'd been painted pink by somebody named Larxene!

Well, that woman was going to get what was coming to her if Bellatrix ever got ahold of her - she'd see to that. For now, she and Freidrich were heading into the city, hoping against hope that maybe he'd been dropped off somewhere and they just had to find him. Maybe they'd find Larxene too. As it was, all they could do was search.

They'd found themselves at another one of the gates and were pushing through the crowd at top speed, trying to see if a black coat or a fellow prinny were visible through any of it. No such luck-

It was then that Freidrich ran head-on into the person in front of him. "Sorry, dood!"

Keiichi stumbled back a couple steps as the impact suddenly reminded him that he should watch where he was going. "Oh, my bad-" he replied automatically before realizing just what it was that had collided with him.

"A penguin?" he blurted, in combined surprise and disbelief. It - it was a giant penguin! How do you explain that? But a second later he noticed the stitches and revised his impression; it was just some guy in a penguin suit. (Which, incidentally, didn't make much sense either.)

"Prinny actually," Adell replied as he approached them out of seemingly nowhere. Truth was he had been hanging out near the gates a lot lately. He wasn't quite sure why but it was probably in the vain hope he would see someone from back home, preferably his family. He couldn't stop worrying about them. If he was stuck here who was going to put a stop to the curse? What if they had already turned into demons completely?

Not only worries about home bothered him but also what was going on here, like the kidnappings. It all made him feel quite restless and on top of that Etna had vanished on them and he had no idea where Rozalin was.

The morning had started out boring as usual, there hadn't been a familiar face anywhere in the line so far, until the prinnies had showed up. He had been wondering about how they were holding up since one of them had been kidnapped by Larxene for...whatever reason Adell didn't know. It seemed they still hadn't found him yet.

"Keesling's still missing, huh?"

Hexadecimal followed quietly--which was a feat for her--behind the prinnies. They were such odd creatures, certainly worth more investigation. She stopped when the prinnies ran into some other sprite, who looked rather confused.

She smiled pleasantly at him. Waved, too.

"Yeah, prinny, do-" Freidrich corrected the kid he'd plowed into, cutting himself off once he realized who'd been speaking. "Adell!" he burst out, scrambling over to him. "Adell! Dood! Dood!"

Bellatrix, who was generally better at keeping her wits about her, looked the boy up and down to make sure he wasn't hurt and apologized - "Sorry 'bout that, dood." - before making her way over to Adell as well. "Yeah, dood," she replied simply. "We can't find him. Have you seen him, dood?"

The red person was still there, of course, she just wasn't anywhere near the top of Bellatrix's list of priorities. Freidrich, on the other hand, simply hadn't noticed her.

By this point, there wasn't much Keiichi could do at the situation besides stare dumbly. All right, the penguins were with the red-haired guy with the ridiculous tie. But then, not too far off, there was the woman in red with the white mask, who actually seemed to be floating.

It took him a few seconds to realize that was actually what he was seeing, and her gesture jolted him back into involvement, forcing him back a step out of apprehension. Unconsciously, his hand tightened around the grip of the bat at his side. Why was she waving at him? What was she supposed to be? He didn't wave back, but glanced hesitantly at Adell and the penguins. He couldn't be the only one seeing this...

"Woah, easy there or you'll hurt yourself." Adell said as he gave the scrambling Prinny a sympathetic half-smile before turning his attention to Bellatrix when she joined them. "I'm afraid not, sorry."

He was about to say something to the boy Freidrich had ran into but, Keiichi could rest assured, he too noticed the red....thing. He narrowed his eyes at it and curled his fists, one of them giving off a fire spark as he did. He couldn't tell whether it was a demon or not, he'd never seen anything like it.

"Who's your new friend?" He asked the Prinnies, at least it seemed like it had been following them.

Not bothering to wait for the Prinnies to respond, Hexadecimal swept into a low bow. "I'm Hexadecimal~" she said, and she promptly disappeared into thin air once she had finished, only to reappear--now with her angry mask--beside Keiichi.

"I waved to you," she said, her voice low and growling. "It's only polite that when one is waved to, one waves back!" She punctuated the last word by moving to tap Keiichi on the forehead--with a fair amount of force.

"I'll be fine, do-" Friedrich's words were cut off as he tripped and fell flat on his face. Whups.

Bellatrix sighed - she'd become used to this by now - and made her way over to Freidrich, hauling him to his feet. "Well," she addressed her comment over her rather nonexistent shoulder to Adell, "let us know if you do, dood.

"And I don't know who-" It seemed as though neither Prinny would get to finish a thought today, as Bellatrix stopped short as she caught sight of Hexadecimal closing in on the kid with what looked like intention to harm. "Not cool, dood!" she exclaimed, drawing both knives and rushing towards Hex, Freidrich following suit.

Keiichi didn't even have time to blink before Hex was right next to him. She hadn't moved there, but just like that she was. He froze, unable for a good ten seconds to do anything but stare wide-eyed at the spot where she'd been. He'd only barely managed to start looking toward her new location when she jabbed him in the forehead.

That got him moving. He jerked his head sharply backwards, stumbling a step or two before he got enough purchase to actually backpedal; his bat whizzed once through the space between them, although fortunately, by then he had just enough distance on her to miss completely.

Not relaxing, he gripped the bat defensively in front of him. "What are y-" he blurted, but then the penguins reentered his field of view wielding knives, and the sheer ridiculousness of it all reduced the rest of his question to a very confused grunt.

For a moment Adell had the face of someone who was going to say 'I told you so' but refrained from doing it, the words were basically written all over his face so there was no need to say it.

The fall had temporarily distracted him from the creature who had called itself Hexadecimal - what kind of name was that anyway? - and when Adell looked back up he noticed Hex was no longer on the spot she was before. Instead she was moving towards the kid and just like the Prinnies, Adell sprung into action at once. Placing himself between Hex and Keiichi, narrowly avoiding getting hit by the bat, with his fists up in front of him as he fell into his usual battle stance.

"It's not a very good style to get angry at someone who forgot their manners for a moment either," he reprimanded with a grin.

Hexadecimal, taking note of the sudden completely unwarranted hostility, hovered in the air above the group.

"Now, now, no need to get testy, I was merely telling the boy to have some manners~" she cooed. "We wouldn't want to have to get violent, right?" And her voice raised up to a harsh scream, combined with a cackle.

She wasn't evil. She was just insane. All the same, she didn't like being attacked.

That was just fine, because at the moment, nobody was attacking Hex. For now, both prinnies were eyeing the strange red woman warily. They weren't exactly unaccustomed to people bursting into laughter at a moment's notice, but this was different. The woman was obviously out of her mind, and it wasn't something either of them wanted to deal with right now. Or ever, really.

"No," Bellatrix snapped back, "we wouldn't, dood." Behind her, Freidrich nodded emphatically, knives still at the ready.

Now that he'd had a few seconds to stop freaking out, Keiichi quickly tried to forcibly get his wits back about him. This had gotten way too tense way too fast, and even if Hex was clearly off her rocker, this was his own damn fault, so it was kind of on him to fix it. The answer didn't take long to hit him - if this really was just a question of manners, then the solution was both simple and painfully obvious.

He forced himself to relax and lowered the bat to his side, then grinned sheepishly and scratched the back of his head with his other hand. "Excuse me - sorry about that," he said. "It's just that I'm new in town, and you startled me." A lot. As an afterthought, he waved back at Hex. "How about we start over. Nice to meet you!" Never mind that you're crazy and probably not even human and I must be out of my mind-

On the contrary, Adell would've loved to get violent but he refrained from saying so. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't itching for a good fight to take things off his mind but he wasn't about to involve an innocent person. So the only reaction Hex got from him was the slightest raise of an eyebrow at the cackle. Like the Prinnies, he got used to the random bursts of laughter from demons in the Netherworld but he still had to question her sanity.

Keiichi made a surprisingly quick recovery though, Adell hadn't been expecting that. Humans seeing demons for the first time always had quite a shock but this guy bounced right back, Adell liked him already.

The threat...or promise in Adell's case, of violence seemed to have passed at the moment so he lowered his fists back to his side. He kept them clenched though, just in case. You never knew what would happen if you were dealing with someone so unstable.

Keiichi's response was exactly the right one in this situation; she smiled happily and returned to the ground.

"Understandable, this place is ra~ther odd, isn't it?" she said, and then turned to Adell. "If you don't want to get violent, shouldn't you relax?"

Still, she smiled. She was just being pleasant.

"What brings this particular group of sprites together on this fine day, hmm~?"

Both prinnies were a bit surprised at the turn of events - not only at the boy's actions, but also at the fact that they'd actually worked - though neither of them showed it. Knives went back in pouches, ready to be pulled again at a moment's notice - neither of them trusted Hex at all. She was unpredictable and obviously nuts, and that made her dangerous.

"Coincidence, dood," Bellatrix replied flatly. One of her squad was missing or worse - though she wasn't quite sure how it got worse than being a prinny, but she wouldn't deny the possibilities - and she really didn't have time to waste here with the crazy person.

To be honest, Keiichi was pretty surprised himself that that had worked, but he wasn't about to say so. The next question was how to (tactfully) get the hell away from her. "Ra~ther odd" was easily in the running for Understatement Of The Century, whether about her, the city, or practically anything else; at this point he was torn between sucking it up, smashing it down, or checking himself into a mental institution. Ultimately he wound up choosing D. none of the above, but he was more than ready to change his answer to C. on a moment's notice.

"Yeah," he said, agreeing with the penguins. "We just happened to run into each other." The pun was intentional. "Actually, I was just on my way to meet somebody," he added quickly, pointing in the general direction he thought Rika's hotel was (though in reality he was about ninety degrees off).

Adell suppressed a 'tcch' noise as he slowly uncurled his fists and instead tried to put on the most pleasant face he could manage at the moment. "I was looking for someone when I saw some familiar faces," he replied as he nodded towards the Prinnies. Not that it was any of her business but it seemed best not to provoke her.

It was good to hear the newcomer already seemed to have someone he knew in the city. Adell would've offered up to be his escort but there was no guarantee Hexadecimal wouldn't just follow them again. "There's a map on your journal," he told him instead, just to be sure.

"What an interesting coincidence~" Hexadecimal said, spinning in mid-air and teleporting back to the ground. She focused on Adell, grabbing for his hand in an attempt to pull him closer.

"Just who are you looking for, hmm~?"

Crisis averted, at least for the moment, Bellatrix headed over to the boy Freidrich had plowed into earlier. "Are you okay, dood?"

Freidrich, attention wandering once again, had turned his back on the boy and was just in time to catch Hex reaching for Adell. "None of your business, dood!" he screeched, heading in to intervene-

And getting clobbered halfway there by a gigantic flying bomb. Bellatrix, it seemed, was quick on the uptake. "Sorry," she apologized to Hex, closing her pouch and trying to head yet another potentially violent disaster off at the pass. "He doesn't know much about manners either, dood."

At Adell's suggestion, Keiichi took his journal out again and checked for the map - oh, so there was, he wondered how he hadn't seen it the first time. As a result, he almost missed Bellatrix's question and wound up answering it almost belatedly. "Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine," he said.

But that drew his attention back to the situation, which, apparently ignoring everyone's manners, was already devolving into bad again. The giant bomb took him by surprise (where had they been keeping that?), but a second later he realized it was probably as good a distraction as any. With a quick wave and a half-mumbled "So, I'll see you guys later then," he began walking discreetly (but briskly) away down the street.

Adell hadn't been expecting that even though he had kept a close eye on her movements, she was just too damn unpredictable. Because of that he reacted a moment too late and found himself being tugged closer, much to his horror. In a somewhat automatic reaction he forcefully pulled his hand out of her grasp and took several hasty steps back.

Freidrich was right, it really was none of her business and now that she had gone past his comfort zone he was a little ticked off. Still, it probably wouldn't do much good to get them in more trouble then they already possibly were. "Family and friends," he replied warily, too focused on Hex now to notice the fact Keiichi was leaving.

"Oh? To help them or hurt them, hmm~?"

It was curiosity. After all, she and her brother had a notoriously hostile relationship. She disappeared, reappearing behind Adell, leaning over his shoulder. "What do they look like? Perhaps I've seen them~"

Hexadecimal almost reacted in anger to Freidrich's reactions, but, pleased with how Bellatrix had handled the situation, smiled pleasantly.

She was too caught up in questioning Adell to notice Keiichi's departure.

Freidrich sat up, rubbing his very sore head with a flipper and in time to catch Hex's question. "Why would you hurt your family, dood?"

Bellatrix had the same question, but she knew better than to ask, or even say anything to Hex that didn't absolutely have to be said. That person was dangerous, and she was already missing one member of her squad. She didn't need to add to that list.

Both prinnies were too caught up in the goings-on between Adell and Hex to hear Keiichi's farewell or see him leave.

"Yeah, why would anyone hurt their family?!" Adell blurted out, unable to comprehend just why anyone would want to hurt their own family. It just didn't make any sense to him.

He was only mildly startled by the next warping and invading of his personal space but still quick to turn around and create a distance between them. It was really getting on his nerves, this person was definitely mental.

"Like demons," was his reply, because well...they did look like demons thanks to Zenon's curse. Someone with horns, tails, wings or a giant blob on his chest was sure to stand out in this place.

"Well, there are always ungrateful brothers who use their dear sisters as batteries!" she shrieked, her mask becoming viciously angry.

But as soon as it had switched, it switched again to the smile. "And what do demons look like, hm~?"

"...batteries, dood?" Freidrich questioned flatly. He'd seen some pretty strange things, but nothing got close to sibling batteries. Bellatrix didn't even bothe trying to dignify the response with an answer of her own - she'd taken advantage of the momentary lack of potential violence to check the journals, keeping an eye out for anything of interest.

Neither prinny had time to answer Hex's next question, as she simply disappeared. There was a beat of silence as they both waited for her to randomly reappear, likely too close to Adell for comfort. Finally, Freidrich spoke. "I...I think she's gone, dood."

"I think so too, dood," Bellatrix replied, looking back at her journal once more before she closed it up and continued to search for-

Wait.

She stared in quiet shock at one of the comments in the Overlord's journal entries, typed a few quick responses, then snapped the journal hurriedly shut. "They found him!" She was nearly yelling, a potent mixture of excitement, relief, and flat terror at what state the last member of her squad might be in by the time she got there. "They found Keesling! He's at the Muspelheim gate, dood!"

It didn't take Freidrich long to snap out of his shock at hearing the news. "C'mon! Let's go, dood!" Both prinnies were on their feet - peg legs, rather - in a flash, heading off in the direction of the gate. "C'mon!" Freidrich called again, this time over his shoulder at Adell. "You come too, dood!"

Adell raised his eyebrow at her rather...unusual remark. Batteries? True, his mother had used the life force of his siblings and his father in the summoning ritual to summon Overlord Zenon but the way she had said 'batteries' didn't make it sound like it was something similar.

He opened his mouth to answer the question, only to shut it again when she disappeared once more. He was already tensing up, ready to step away as it was likely she would invade his personal space bubble again. He waited...but nothing came.

"Y-Yeah," he agreed with the prinnies, looking a little bewildered before regaining composure. "What the hell was that all about?" Not that it really mattered, good riddance.

He watched Bellatrix as she had suddenly taken quite the interest in something on the journals. He had just fished his out of his pocket to look what was up but it proved to be unnecessary as she promptly announced it. So they finally found him, huh? He was glad for them although a bit worried about what Larxene could've done.

He was snapped out of his thoughts as Freidrich called out to him. Adell blinked in surprise for a moment, taking a glance back at the gate hesitantly. Well, he decided, waiting around here wasn't going to do any good and it wasn't his style to just sit around and wait either. Might as well help the familiar faces he did have around out. With that in mind he quickly dashed after the prinnies.

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In which Oyashiro-sama's aim is a bit off [Active/Open]

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