Welcome to Gaia! ::

{another rp for the sake of it
versatility and variety are the two Vs of awesome characters, i wanna see yours }



He stumbled over to the bench, one hand clutching his stomach and the other groping blindly for the bench’s armrests. When his outstretched fingers connected with the cool, grooved iron of the bench he flinched without realizing it but managed to haul himself into it seat. He took his seat heavily, more falling than sitting.

Desperately, James tried to quell the roiling of his stomach. He was senseless to the newly-planted trees of the park, of the mother and her son tossing a Frisbee and of the surly-looking teen walking his dog. All his attention and effort went into attempting to dispel the nausea through sheer force of his will. He should have been able to do it, he thought with grim, ill humor. He was sick so frequently now that fighting through the violent upheavals of his stomach was, unfortunately, the norm. There were perpetual deep circles under his eyes, and his face was ashen and gaunt; though tall, James was a distinctly unhealthily underweight kind of thin.

It hadn’t always been this way. When he was younger, James had been the picture of robust youth. His cream skin nearly glowed, his dark, silken hair was the envy of every girl he knew, and his bright green eyes sparkled with life. He’d never caught so much as the sniffles, even when sicknesses ran rampant through his boarding high school’s dorms. It’d been the same in college housing – in the beginning, at least.

A year after starting university, everything changed.

The world had trembled while its people watched with bated breath as the lost city of Atlantis rose out from the darkest depths of the sea one sunny July morning. With its return came the magic that had been previously lost to the world.

People had overcome their shock surprisingly quickly and adopted the Lanteans’s superior magic-infused technology without hesitation. Within the two years since Atlantis’s appearance, the world had become the stuff of Dungeons and Dragons geeks’ and religious attendees of Comic Con’s dreams.

A few months after the resurfacing of Atlantis, ordinary people began developing magical skills of their own to rival the Lanteans’. Lantean scientists theorized that they were the ones who would’ve possessed magic had it not been removed from the world by same unknown force that had sunk Atlantis and forced the city to hide itself.

James’s reaction to the return of magic was the exact opposite of an emergence of talent, unless being physically weak and constantly struggling to keep his meals in his stomach constituted a magical ability. He started becoming more and more sickly, and he soon realized that while others thrived, he was cursed with some sort of sickness. Doctors (pure-human doctors, as James refused to visit Lantean or magic-touched healers) could find no underlying reason for James’s sudden decline in health and had suggested that James had an allergy. To magic, of all things!

The washed-out looking college student leaned heavily on the bench’s armrest, eyes closed and looking as though he were going to sick up at any moment. The second his bare skin touched the armrest, however, some primal instinct screamed the alert.

James pushed himself to his feet with herculean effort and staggered away from the bench before he even realized what he was doing. Any questions as to why that rush of adrenaline born of an irrational fear that lanced through him were put off (again, some part of his mind reminded him) when his knees gave out.

The student crumpled on the grass, limbs folding like the perforated edges of paper, and moaned.

If it wasn't one thing it was another, bloody humans constantly running up to him wanting to take a picture with him or get him to write his name down on some odd figurine that looked nothing like him or a shirt with crossed axes and a shield. He had wished he had his axe during times like that, but no such weapons were not allowed in public around here. With a grumble and a quick spit to the ground Ivan held back many of the curses he was wanting to spray out. He had hoped the park would have brought some measure of peace of at the least a place to get away from the crazy geeks and freaks. Even then there was only so much peace one could have without a good pint of ale and a few heads to bash in...but blasted all if everyone seemed more willing to shout at others than have it out with them proper like.

It had been years since the bloody sunken city came back up and Ivan had tried to get along with people but most of them were just bleeding idiots to him. He tried joining the militaries but they told him he had to lose some weight, shave of his beard (oh he nearly tore that one's head clean off there) and that he was not the proper height for a front line soldier. Then they gave him some accursed metal weapon and told him he would be fighting his enemies from several hundred yards away. So he tried the city guards, or police as they called themselves now, and they said he was to rough and needed to learn how to be politically correct, and wanted to give him an even smaller weapon and still fight at a distance. Even the baton they wanted to give him wasn't up to his standards for a proper club.

As he growled some more about the absurdities of the world he now lived in he heard the sounds of someone who sounded in pain. Actually it sounded like Ivan after he had downed one too many and tripped over his own beard. As he came upon the sound he could see what looked like a child trying to ask the groaning man what his problem was, but not really sure she wanted to find out. Well Ivan Hammerstorm was a lot of things but someone who would stand by while a girl was willing to approach he was not. While stroking his black beard the stout man raised a bushy eyebrow and came to stand next to the girl while the man still seemed to be moaning.

"He should be alrigh' las, likely jus' had one too many down at ta pub las' night. He'll either let it all out or need bit of ta beastie tha' bit him, iffin' your known wha' I'm sayin'," Ivan pulled a flask out of his coat pocket and sloshed it in front of the man, "The sight of tis will likely tell us more. Hey lad, you want a swig? Brewed it meself I did, betta' than anythin' tha' comes out of one of them funny cans or pretty lookin' bottles. It's real dwarven elixir, will wake ya up in a hurry. Jus' don't spill any or it'll kill ta grass."

Kuhle's eyes flitted from the dwarf to his 'elixir' with a single raised eyebrow and a muttered, 'disgusting', under her breath. She didn't like alcohol in the slightest (considering her very, very poor tolerance to the stuff) and someone who was not only capable, but willing, to produce the vile stuff in public -- in the middle of the day -- warranted a certain amount of skepticism from her, in the very least.

Her concern quickly changed from that minor irritation to one much more pressing - her own stomach rolling at the sound, and then sight, of the tall, skinny man vomiting before both of them. It was almost all she could do to cover her mouth to avoid joining the sickly guy in his retching, but that too was quickly forgotten when he produced a painful looking floral design on his arm. Even as the man confessed his doubt, Kuhle glanced from the fading design on his arm to the bench that he had just stumbled from before she had approached him.

A growing dread rose to replace any residual nausea she had felt moments before, her hand remaining over her mouth as she kept silent. She'd dabbled here and there in strange hobbies in the extensive amount of time she'd had alone, unwilling and unwanted by the other children in schools, and one of those hobbies had been an unhealthy amount of research into all things weird, creepy, and otherwise supernatural... until Atlantis had risen and all of those things had suddenly become less weird and more natural.

And of all of those things she remembered a few very certain things; like silver, holy water and salt, iron could be counted on to repel and harm unnatural and unfriendly creepies and crawlies.

Only, he doesn't look so creepy... she thought, looking him over. Nontheless, her grip on the violin had tightened and she didn't mind taking a small step backwards in case she needed to duck behind the loud, accented dwarf.

"What the <********>"

Kuhle's green eyes had easily doubled in the span of a few moments, namely due to the appearance of another sickly male. The presence of blood made it worse, however, and the spritely young woman darted out from behind the dwarf to a safe distance away, knuckles whitening over the bridge of her instrument.

"Is this some kind of... contagion or something? What is wrong with you people?!" She raised her violin up now, warding off the trio of strangers. "Did you wake up this morning and think, 'Gee, wouldn't it be wonderful to take a stroll through the park and spread my disease and sickness to whoever I can possibly come into contact with! Maybe I'll get lucky and I'll happen upon a birthday party full of children!'"

Taking another step back she glared at all of them, "Really people, it's called a hospital... what is wrong with you!" and half turned, looking for park security or, if need be, a quick escape route. She wasn't catching any deadly virus.

Kuhle looked at the vomiter incredulously, hoping he wasn't going to have a sudden return of whatever bug was ailing him before. She found it unnecessary to convey words when her facial expressions were more than adequate, especially in this case when someone was protesting a sickness and then proceeding to seek a hospital -- a magical hospital no less.

At least he was doing just that, however, instead of standing around and bleeding.

"Uh..." She murmured, breaking her own thought to cast her eyes around the park. "You could take a bus. Most all of them take you to the transfer station eventually..." As soon as she said it she questioned her own logic of sending a coughing, vomiting man onto a public bus. Or any public transportation for that matter.

Grimacing now, she offered hesitantly, "Or... maybe I could drive you to a ferry?"

"Riiight. Kuhle said slowly, then shrugged. She had been called far worse.

"I'm Kuhle, and don't mention it. Really. I think it would be terribly irresponsible of me to put you on a public bus in the condition you're in right now." She wondered at him for a moment, starting towards where she had left her case and bow a short distance away, then asked, "Excuse me for being blunt, but If you think you're allergic to Atlantis then why would you want to go there?"

It only took her a moment to pack her violin away and she pointed down the path, trying to avoid looking backwards at the bleeding bow and drunken dwarf. She slightly regretted the fact that she had offered a ride now, not because this James seemed strange or funny, which he did, and not because he also seemed sick to her, which he also did, but because she was acutely aware of how strange it must look to passers-by for them to be walking together. Though she lacked the limp-like gait that other 'little people' were mocked for, she still looked a child compared to his tall and slender frame... even when he was half-slouched and pale.

Pushing the thought away with some annoyance at herself for even thinking of it, she continued, "Not that it's my business if you want to go there... as long as you don't want to shake hands I'll take you anywhere you need to go."

(( because I'd rather see a post from masked vigilantes and goggle boy ))

Kuhle stopped dead in her tracks at the sound of the dwarf and, upon turning, the sight of the bleeding boy.

"Are you f**king kidding me?" She blurts. "That kid needs a paramedic, an ambulance, and maybe some therapy, not a drive across town and over the bridge to the f**king ferry... and the last thing I need is two," the midget-girl raised two fingers, gesturing as her voice rose, "possible contagions in my car. It's a small enough space that sharing it with vomit-boy here is all the charity I'm willing to offer today."

Not to mention she was wanting to throw up herself from the amount of bodily fluids she'd seen today. "No!" She sputtered then, at a loss for words (but no loss for profane hand gestures) spun on her heel and dragged James away by the hand. "Get the f**k in," came out as a half hysteria, half plea, as she threw her violin unceremoniously into the cargo space of her small, chevrolet beat.

Robert hung is head in silence with his eyes closed, not really paying attention to what was going on around him. He simply heard high-pitched squeals from the small girl. ‘Oh goodness… Look what I’ve done…’ He thought as he shed a few tears, already to weak to care.

He had half a mind to walk away just then, but instead he felt himself being lifted off of the earth. ‘What the hell..’ He thought to himself as he opened his eyes to see the dwarf’s back in front of his face. “Thanks… sir…” He muttered quietly as the dwarf simply carried him wherever it was the man was going.

As he hung there, Robert slowly drifted to sleep with the blood from his face slowly dripping down onto the dwarf’s back and down to the grass beneath his feet as he walked.