We're Not Going To Fall & Forget

Bleach 'verse roleplay. Didn't want to waste all that effort only for the board to go and get deleted.

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With naught but the echo of her scabbed knuckles rapping upon wood to keep her company, Fianna's eyes soon began to lose their interest in the door standing between her and the man she had resigned to death.

While her chapped lips held onto a minute smile and refused any other expression the permission to manifest upon her beaten features, a sense of amazement led her gaze down a hallway only she occupied. It was not the same hallway she recalled bolting through just several weeks earlier. It was not even the same building, for the academy that once stood for centuries had been the victim of war’s savage flames. Her final memory of it manifested as a tower of charcoal smoke crawling towards the sun. Once the flames starved themselves into oblivion and the last billows of smoke climbed into the atmosphere, it became apparent to all that restoration was nothing short of wishful thinking. Nothing could be salvaged, save for the fragile charred bones of the bodies scattered amongst the rubble. Their identities had scaled the tower of inky smoke, much like their uniforms and their cold, lifeless flesh, and escaped into the air.

The building she spent the past five minutes admiring from the inside had reached completion in little over a month, its presence so fresh to the world that the scent of the newly laid pine floorboards was singlehandedly the most overpowering fragrance to be found within the halls. Even so, the reaper occupied but one fraction of the academy’s upcoming campus - yet for all the sturdiness that the walls boasted, Fianna’s amazement soon made an acquaintance out of her uncertainty. The act of trusting a building so hastily constructed was a challenge she could not accept, and with nothing better to do as she waited the warrior pondered if others would share the same sentiment as her, all whilst her hands, unnecessary in the thinking process, busied themselves with the task of unravelling the coils of pearlescent hair crowning her collarbone, tugging one loop after the other until the tresses spilled over a single shoulder, left to hang just inches above the floor.

Her mind was well on the way to considering how tragic it would be if the life of the reaper she waited for were to end at the hands of a collapsing building after his miraculous survival, but before she could nurture the macabre thought, the door that barred her from progressing began to open. Her train of thought was promptly abandoned, and her eyes deserted the immaculate walls to follow the door as it stirred within its frame and exposed the familiar figure behind it. Pale and wan, he was not the lively figure filled with verve she was accustomed to associating with the name that had signed her invitation, but the man standing in the threshold was an improvement from the unconscious, brutalized form she had left in the hands of the medics. So drastic was the improvement that her lips parted to form an insignificant grin in a matter of seconds. There existed in her mind no words that could pin down the relief which dropped into her ribcage upon seeing his sickly countenance, for in the few days consciousness was once again her own, she had convinced herself that she would not see his face again. She was overjoyed to know that she had been mistaken.

Ushered in with a few words she glided into the doorway, but her curiosity refused to go ignored any longer. She carried herself humbly, an arch in her spine, a carefree flow in every stride whilst her gaze drifted off of her feet, bolted across the floor and began scaling the walls. A gloved palm strayed from her side and gently laid itself against the doorframe before she could pass into the room. It felt as sturdy as it had first appeared to be. The woman remained unconvinced, yet her smile persisted.

“I don’t think I could trust a building that went up so quickly.” Were unpredictable, perhaps inappropriate first words, and no more than a way in which for her to puncture the hypothetical ice that stood between herself and a comfortable conversation with the man who had taken a death blow on her behalf. In all of a second, she had cast him a sidelong glance, and in that same second the habitual curve of her mouth wavered, unable to maintain itself at the sight of him devoid of energy, now supported only by the door he had, most likely, struggled to reach under his own steam. He had survived, but he had not recovered. He had probably not been expecting an arm to slip under his own and gently coax him away from his makeshift crutch until he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his guest, and his weight was no longer his own burden to carry, but that was precisely what occurred.

All that was left for her to do now was to state the obvious.

“You are a truly lucky man, Officer.”

No One Runs Faster Than You Can

No one runs faster than you.

Fianna's legs unfurled at a tremendous rate to carry her across the rooftops in the cocoon of a blur, they hurdled her over urban chasms with the innate skill found in a wild deer, whilst those blue-green eyes of hers keenly smothered the alleys and paths beneath them in search of their elusive quarry.

Her eyes had begun to tire of vacant alleyways by the time she sped past a blotch of grey, soon to be obscured from view by the same building she had vaulted over. A leather-clad heel scraped down the terracotta roof tiles, her remaining empty hand clutched the chimney in passing, slaughtering her stride so that she might catch another glance of the entity.

A charcoal-coloured skeleton, its thin shoulders host to the sort of coat one would expect to find in a laboratory, a hoary wisp of hair settled between its shoulder blades, slivers of ivory white adorning what little she could see of its jaw. This lanky, skulking figure was, without a doubt a doubt in her mind, the source of the disturbance that had been so abruptly concealed minutes earlier. Whilst her lungs ate through air as though it was going out of fashion, the foundations of a plan for a pre-emptive strike began to settle neatly into place.

... and they were promptly dented by the skittering of dislodged roof tiles - then they were demolished entirely by the faint, horrifyingly sharp smash of terracotta shattering across the ground below. Beneath her pitifully minute smile, her jaw locked itself shut, her teeth grated against one another, a silent curse at the expense of her luck. That had not been a part of her plan.

Her once hasty breath stopped dead halfway down her windpipe, her sword arm choked her blade between its gloved fingers, and her eyes widened to obsess upon the back of the figure trudging through the alley below her. A series of fleet-footed steps and a single hasty bound carried her off of the offending slope and onto the flat roof belonging to its neighbour before more damage could be dealt to the structure and her freshly-killed plan could be desecrated further.

Keeps me awake, but I don't mind

Old post is old.

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The interior of the coffee shop was warm, and the clientèle passive compared to the norm in New York. The treat of central heating, fused with the calm that a little peace and quiet brought was a much-awaited luxury to the courier, especially after he had spent the early hours of the dark morning riding through the city, delivering every package and confidential envelope he had been assigned the evening before. Griffith did not hate his job, in spite of the hours he kept for his wage, such a statement was far from the truth. He adored it, perhaps more than he had originally, after such a long stint off the road, thanks to the anonymous driver he had been forced to avoid. That one sharp turn had left him a wreck, but it was his first motorcycle, his late eighteenth birthday present, that came out the worst, everything battered, dented, and ultimately broken beyond all repair.

Psyches could repair themselves, in time; punctured and twisted metal, on the other hand, had no healing properties to speak of.

No, Griffith simply disliked the winter weather, and it was after staring out the large double-glazed window the shop front sported as he waited for the queue at the counter to dwindle, to observe the smattering of cars as they trundled up the road, that he really began to savour the warmth he had walked into when he stepped into the cafe and out of the cold dark street, the time just a little after five in the December afternoon.

And just minutes after that minor revelation, he was out in the cold once again, the only warmth that he received a gift from the rich yellow glow of electric light as it filtered through the window pane and washed over the ground before it. Not that the workers would complain about him, choosing to sit out in what could only be called a simple parking space in front of the building. He was a paying customer, after all – but he was a bizarre-looking one at that, his hair a myriad of sandy blonde and mocha brown streaks, pale cream-coloured face sporting dark pencil about almond shaped eyes, tapering tails curling up and around the crease of double eyelids, as opposed to simply halting once the general shape of the eyes had been traced. His body was dressed entirely in the leathers synonymous with motorcycle safety, the contours of the charcoal grey hide hugging his trim body – limbs and torso alike, the leather panels stitched together and bordered by fine Tyrian purple piping on both the jacket and the matching trousers – the padding on the shoulders of the jacket doing little to accentuate his dangerously slim figure.

He was not really the type of customer that they welcomed with open arms, but after he had paid, even going so far as to adding a little tip for the young lady behind the counter, they could not really deny him the right to simply sit alone in front of the shop, completely at home on the seat of his scarlet bike (which always won his undivided attention, even when rivalled by a warm seat in the window of a quiet little cafe), the kickstand providing enough support to allow him to lean back in his seat, thin muscles across his stomach stretching, a gentle rattle coming from one of his booted heels, his favourite spur chattering to itself as he perched his foot upon the proper hold, the gunmetal and purple coloured helmet that normally concealed his whole head sitting between his legs.

A light sigh left rounded and full lips in the form of a faint mist, a single leather-clad elbow settled itself against the locked and half-filled luggage box fixed behind the seat; a cardboard cup locked in the grip of a gloved hand, a map of the city crunching lightly in the grip of the other, as chocolate brown eyes traced one of many routes that led to his next drop-off point, the broad scarlet vein printed onto the repeatedly folded map easily picked out of the tangled web of lines thanks to the light from the shop window.