Tired of Wall Art [Active]

[dood-asplode.livejournal.com]

Character(s): Keesling, King Mickey, Alice, Luffy
Content: Somebody finally un-stakes Keesling from the wall. Thank goodness.
Setting: Muspelheim gate
Time: Morning (after this thread - he's been on that wall all night)
Warnings: Um, a prinny has been staked to a wall here. Violence, I guess? :D;

It had been night when he'd died, Keesling remembered. It had been his seventh horrendous day that week. He remembered being publicly humiliated, having nowhere to turn...and then he remembered waking up the next morning in a body not his own, informed he had to atone for his sins, and meeting his squad. He remembered a razor had helped him along that turn of events.

But there was a difference between where he'd been then and where he was now. His death had been his own doing. Though it was shaped much the same way (a terrible day, humiliation, and blades), this - this situation he was in now - was not his fault.

That, of course, didn't change the fact that he was still staked to the wall in a relatively strange town, in so much pain he could barely think anymore and exhausted from standing stock-still all night - he couldn't lean at all, or the kunai keeping him against the wall would rip straight through his flippers. Not that they hadn't gone through his flippers already, but he just didn't want to make anything worse.

So he spent a sleepless night in a thick haze of pain, exhausted and tense all at once. The gate stayed open all night, but the guard never talked to him, never responded to his pleas for help. It was a very long time before the artificial sun rose - forever, to Keesling, and then forever again - and people began to stream through the gate again. Keesling shivered and whimpered as the motion pulled against the kunai in his flippers. He had to find somebody who wasn't blond. The blond people wouldn't help him.

"Help, dood," he finally managed, voice barely above a whisper. "Dood. Please. Dood."

[OOC: Description of injuries is as follows: one kunai in each flipper and each foot attaching him to the wall. Stab wounds in the left side and the stomach. About a half-dozen or so kunai stuck in the chest to form the shape of a heart. Covered in dripping pink paint. The poor prinny's been through the wringer. ^^;]

Comments

[amcgees-alice.livejournal.com]

Alice had left the girl Rika a few days ago. She had been more or less used to being alone by this time, and that was fine, as she'd been alone most of the time anyway. That melancholy Alice had felt in her last entry was gone temporarily: she saw no reason to harbor it, having the drive to still try and understand what was happening in this place. So it was back to revisiting places shed been before, looking for anything to do. She almost wished she remembered where she'd gone with her company before.

This time, she was at Muspelheim gate. She found that revisiting the gates from time to time gave her a little more information about what was happening around her. Not that the guards impressed her of course: they were still the inattentive, mindless habitants of a very strange world. Which was why the moan for help did not go escaped by Alice's ears. She turned, and beheld a rather bothersome sight.

It looked like a penguin, but then, penguins hardly frequented places like these, did they? No, he was most certainly one of the people pulled here, and by the look of things, what happened to him was not a common occurrence. It had the stink of an Organization member, all right. But this member had been rather monstrous, Alice certainly knew that. She hadn't seen cruelty this bad since the Hatter to his friends in her world. The penguin thing looked to have been painted, then viciously spiked to the wall, thought it was the faux heart that tipped Alice off that this was Organization meddling.

Disgusting. Alice clenched her fist a moment. Oh, she'd find THIS one, that was for sure. If she liked pain, Alice would show this person what happened when they inflicted such a severe level of craziness to others.

"You are hurt," Alice said simply. She reached into the folds of her dress, and pulled out a triangular looking object. "Meta-essence. The taste will not be to your liking, but it will let the pain subside a bit. I'm going to try to free you now, and I will do my best to be as delicate as possible."

Alice slowly started with the flippers.

[the-mouseking.livejournal.com]

It had been an odd trip outside the domes of the city. Mickey had hoped to find a way off of this world that was somewhere outside the city; he'd explored thoroughly, gotten a little lost and had interesting encounters with animal-like beings that seemed to be made entirely of light, as though they were the opposite of Heartless...but he hadn't found a way out. At last he was forced to admit defeat and trudge back to the city, coming through Muspelheim Gate, intending to relate his findings, if they could be called that, to Riku.

He was not expecting to see...to see what may well have been the most horrible thing he'd ever seen in his life. A bird-like creature, pinned to the wall with knives and covered with pink paint, a series of knives forming the shape of a heart in his chest...who would ever do such a thing? The heart shape suggested the Organization...but misanthropic though they were, Mickey hadn't known any of them to be capable of such deliberate sadism. Unless that one...

The sight before him was enough to stop his heart in revulsion and terror, but he could not possibly stand idly by and let this poor creature suffer. There was a girl he didn't recognize already there, but Mickey would do what he could to help. He came forward slowly, and following the girl's lead, he began to carefully, carefully work one of the knives free from the other flipper, propping the victim against the wall with his own weight so as not to jostle him and cause him more pain.

"What's your name, my friend?" he asked in a reassuring if not entirely composed voice. At least once the creature was free, Mickey could summon his Keyblade and performing a Cure spell.

[stretchmeout.livejournal.com]

"...what's going on over there?"

It was only a glimpse, a fleeting glance, but it was enough to make Luffy take pause from his quick and abrupt leaps across the modest height of the area's rooftops. Just between the tight gap between two wedged buildings, a very small and rather helpless-looking figure, painfully pinned to a wall, with two figures standing in front of him.

The fact that, from the vague distance of his rooftop perch, it looked as if the two were actively responsible for the little creature's plight, was enough to force Luffy to stop and watch with sudden irritance bubbling up in his soft features, but even worse...one of the two was wearing a long, shadowy cloak.

"Bingo!" Luffy shouted abruptly, slamming a tightly-clentched fist into the open surface of his palm. "This time I definitely found one!"

Standing on the very edge of the building, the toes of his sandal-clad feet dangling just barely into the open air, Luffy gritted his teeth into an angered snarl, then crouched down with his lithely-muscled legs tensed like coiled iron springs. He seemed to be gathering strength for something, his whole body tightening, gathering in the energy he'd need for his next movement. What he planned to do would need to be very fast.

Thrusting off, Luffy shot into the air with tremendous speed, practically exploding out of his low stance. He easily cleared the buildings that stood between himself and the figure in the cloak, his loose clothing ruffling wildly in the wind while he soared high overhead. Then, with a thunderous impact, one that left the sidewalk stone splintered just around the spread shape of his feet, he landed just behind the pair as they suspiciously worked with the sharpened edges holding the penguin-ish creature to the wall. With his head bowed down, his legs bent, and one crushing fist pressed down into the disturbed stone, Luffy suddenly raised up and flashed them both a rather ominous little smile, his eyes ablaze with a sense of challenge.

"I dunno why you'd want to pick on someone that small...but maybe it's time for someone your own size instead!"

[dood-asplode.livejournal.com]

Keesling was surprised to see a dark haired young girl coming towards him. Had she actually heard him? "Dood," he tried again, still too quiet for his own liking, desperate. "Dood!"

She was coming for him. She was coming to help him. He started shaking again, wincing at the pain the action caused, yet he was unable to stop. After being stuck here all night, someone was finally coming to help him.

...despite that, he wasn't really sure he wanted to accept what she was trying to give him. Something he was supposed to eat from someone he didn't know...after Larxene, he didn't trust anybody. He was grateful, incredibly so, but he wasn't going to drop his guard.

With his attention focused on the girl, he didn't notice the other figure approach until the kunai in his other flipper moved. He flinched and tried hard not to whimper, not to break down, not now, he had to get down, had to find his squad, Bellatrix was probably worried sick by now...

"K-Keesling," he finally managed to answer the second figure. "Name's Keesling, dood." He flinched again, unable to suppress a pained yelp when first one kunai and then the other slid out of the wall and his flippers. He slumped forward against the cloaked figure, then cried out and jerked backwards, back against the wall. He'd landed on the kunai stuck in his chest, managed to push them in further, one of them was almost all the way in and oh it hurt...

He was shaking again, holding himself up against the wall despite the pain because he really did not want any of those kunai pushed all the way through, when the third person arrived - well, landed was a bit more accurate. He didn't sound happy...was the new guy going to fight the people that were helping him? Did he think they were the ones that had done this? "No," Keesling gasped - he didn't want them to fight, he just wanted to get off this wall! "No- it- Larxene- dood..."

[stretchmeout.livejournal.com]

Once he had straightened up from his crouched, almost feral-like stance, Luffy regarded the two with his fists balled up and his back arched rather threateningly, his head tilted up to glare down upon them. Yet they didn't move, didn't stir, instead responding with not only a bit of cockney snark, but with surprising indifference; surprising, of course, from the fact that someone had leapt across several buildings and landed with such presence that the ground cracked beneath his feet.

"Be quiet?" he replied quickly, the girl's sour greeting hardly giving the bull-headed pirate pause to reflect well on her. "It doesn't take two to bully little guys like him, but that's the way it usually goes." Bullies usually prefered superior numbers, didn't they? "And I do see him with one," he snapped back, pointing a finger.

The fact that Mickey still hadn't even acknowledged him wasn't helping; granted, the king knew it was more important to tend to the wounded, but ignorant of the situation still, Luffy lacked just enough information to remain dangerous. It still seemed like two people, one of them a member of a group Luffy had been after since his Paixaoan touchdown, were skewering a pink little penguin, then taking him down to likely inflict even more punishment upon. The young man in the straw hat was already cracking his knuckles soundly as he strode up towards them. Stepping away, the section of sidewalk he had landed on crumbled a little, tiny fragments falling from his sandal soles; judging by this, taking a split second to explain the situation seemed like the wisest course.

[dood-asplode.livejournal.com]

[It only just occurred to me now that Prinnies have peg legs. Wow I fail. :D; Pretend the kunai were stuck in right above his legs or something?]

Keesling bit back whimpers as the rest of the kunai were worked out of his skin one by one. Just because they were gone didn't mean the wounds didn't still hurt, after all. It helped to hear the mouse - Mickey - talking, though. Someone cared, and they were getting him down, and they had a healer -

Hang on, evidently Mickey was the healer. "Thanks, dood," Keesling managed quietly, only barely managing to stay upright.

But - wait, hadn't that guy heard him at all? Keesling didn't want him to attack Mickey and the girl - they were the ones who'd helped him out! They shouldn't get hurt for that! Finding some small reserve of strength he didn't know he had, he hobbled forward as best he could on damaged legs, trying to intercept the one with the straw hat. "Wait- don't- they helped me, do-"

That was when Keesling's small bit of strength gave out, and he staggered and collapsed to the cobblestones.

[stretchmeout.livejournal.com]

Here it was, Luffy's moment to attack! The young man in the straw hat felt his heartrate start to rise and his eyes sudden take on a battle-ready focus, the intensity and intent evident in his strong-willed stare. He drew in a surge of breath, steeled his nerve, and took one very firm step forward to brace himself as he reared back his arm and prepared for his opening salvo...

But up came the little...penguin thing? It fell with a soft, cushy splat on the pavement before him, giving his plea of defense for the two just before Luffy could let his iron fist fly.

So he stopped short, faltering slightly and looking comically awkward as his moment was thrown off. His hat slipped forward against his forehead; Luffy reached up and replaced it neatly, then immediately began to smile as warmly as one might from a visit from a dear old friend. "Na, that was close...I thought I was finally going to get to send the bad guys flying. Oh, well."

He pouted faintly as he thought about his lost opportunity. Then he happened to look up at Alice, who was still looking rather annoyedly at him; despite all the strength he had demonstrated earlier, Luffy jumped lightly, his features drawing in worry. She looked a lot like Nami did just before she smacked him for doing or saying something stupid, that stern and heated look in her eyes.

That aside, Luffy returned to a more pleasant look, then knelt down beside the injured creature. With his lithe little body bent down low, his arms draped over his knees and his head bowed down. If Keesling happened to look up at him, he'd find Luffy wearing the biggest, toothiest grin imaginable, his cheeks spread almost inhumanly apart around the smile.

"So, these guys were helping you, hmm? That's fine then. Thanks for saying something," he said, nodding appreciatively. His attention turned to Mickey, wearing that cloak that gave Luffy his initial confusion. "But then why are you wearing that thing?"

[dood-asplode.livejournal.com]

That was certainly a turnaround on the part of the one with the straw hat, but Keesling wasn't complaining. At least nobody was fighting over a misunderstanding.

"Th-thanks, dood," he said softly, both to Alice for helping him up and to Mickey for the Cure spell. He sighed softly as he felt his wounds close - thank goodness - before settling rather abruptly back on his keister, the only part of him that wasn't incredibly sore right now. He was exhausted, but spending a night trying to keep kunai from slicing completely through one's flippers would do that to anybody.

He looked back up at the Straw Hat and couldn't help but return the smile, at least a bit. Somehow, it was contagious. "Yeah, thanks, dood."