Into the Dark (P, NK)

    Now, Laezi couldn't sense energy, NOR was she particularly intelligent when it came to most things... but even SHE could tell that when an OMINOUSLY COLD CHILL blew through a desert, something was really, REALLY wrong. The little blue Majin's eyes shot up, catching sight of a NEW GUY wandering through the dunes in her direction.

    ...Seriously...? Why was this place so popular?

    Initially suspicious, the little blue Majin shot to her feet, scooping up one of the guns one of the MANY MEN around her had brought with them and RAISED it over her head by the barrel like a club! She was about to waved it at him in warning, hoping he'd BACK OFF... but then she noticed... this guy wasn't like these other guys... Starting with the obvious, his HAIR! It spiked up like it was a mane of black fire frozen in mid-flicker, it being all spiky and stiff, standing erect entirely on his own! Secondly, he was wearing DARK COLORS and a BIG OL' JACKET BESIDES, wandering through the dunes like the sun WASN'T BEATING ON HIM JUST AS HARD (if not harder) than it was on HER! Thirdly, there was those EYES of his. Beneath his hood, their bright red hue contrasted the shadow that fell over them ominously. It was as if there were something else behind them, something... not man-like... She couldn't tell what from here, but that ominously cold chill wasn't exactly soothed by the sight of eyes so scary. Then there was his sword. She had no idea what that indicated, but, whatever it was, it didn't exactly fill the little blue Majin with confidence.

    He walked RIGHT up to her all casual-like... and Laezi didn't lower her makeshift club. Up close, the man wasn't any more inviting than from afar. His sinister appearance paired with his apparent immunity to heatstroke gave the Majin the idea that she... maaaaaaay be in the presence of what some might consider to be a land shark... All she needed to see was him smile to reveal several rows of razor-sharp teeth and hear him introduce himself as "Bruce" and she'd know for CERTAIN what his game was.

    ...But he wanted HER to tell him HER name first!

    ...She supposed his game would have to remain a mystery... FOR NOW.

    "I'm..." Laezi began.. then choked on the dryness of her throat. She couldn't tell if it was because of the SHEER INTIMIDATION FACTOR this man was giving off... or the fact she was already parched again from the water-sapping desert heat. "...I'm Laezi! What do you want?" She raised her gun-club up and shook it threateningly... but judging by the way she looked around, already counting her potential avenues of escape, it was clear the Majin's bravado was forced.

WC: 465

TWC: 1015

    Call her crazy... Call her SUSPICIOUS... but Laezi wasn't about to drop her weapon JUST on a stranger's say-so! She did, however, lower her weapon, allowing the butt of the rifle to drop into the sand. After all... she didn't wanna start anything right NOW, not while she was surrounded by a dozen unconscious men. If she wasn't about to scare him away with her new club, the most she could do was try to keep things civil until this guy moved on. If the cold wind he carried on his cloak wasn't enough of an indication that this guy WAS ANYTHING BUT NORMAL, he also carried a pressure, something she had failed to notice before he'd gotten close. The air was THICK around him, perhaps even HARD as if they were both the same sides of a magnet pushing against one another from a distance! Laezi actually had to PLANT her feet and DIG her heels in as best she could in the shifty ground to keep her place as the man walked up, the Majin baring her teeth defensively as he came to a stop before her.

    ...Unfortunately, he wished to talk. The impatience and suspicion the Majin felt towards the man was as clear on her face as the sun on the sand. She wanted this guy to just mosey on by, maybe even neglect to question the fact she was surrounded by about a dozen unconscious men... In fact, he seemed to have done the opposite: Taking in the scene and asking aaaaaaall kinds of bad, BAD questions! The first.. she didn't even know how to answer.

    "I dunno what you mean!" Laezi grunted. "I dunno 'my people!' I'm just me! I always lived here!" Laezi gestured at the wasteland around them, referring to 'Earth...' though to anyone NOT knowing that, it could easily imply this desert here. What a miserable childhood she woulda had if THAT were the case. Noting her defensiveness, the man would astutely surmise that the Majin had to be a fighter of some kind, though he could hardly fathom WHY she'd be in a place like this if she had a choice. It was at this point that Laezi would begin to pick up on the man's oddly... complicated speech patterns and how it added to the THICK AIR OF MENACE that surrounded him. He spoke with an intelligence that, up until now, had been unheard of among the people Laezi had spoken to, using two and three dollar words as if they were nothing! It took every last scrap of processing power the Majin had to ROUGHLY translate what he was saying in her head, most coming out sketchy at best with only the faintest grasp of his intentions: He obviously didn't like the men she'd beaten. He called them 'worms' and, as any girl knew, worms were icky. He made a proposition too: water... for a fight. He had judged that Laezi herself must've been growing thirsty and that she had little water to quench her need... and he was right. As if to prove it, the Majin would raise her taken canteen up to her lips... only for a few drops to slither down her throat.

    IT HAD BEEN ALMOST KINDA FULL A SECOND AGO! WHERE DID IT GO!? ...She must've drank more than she THOUGHT... What was more, a quick glance among the men revealed that there were no other canteens to speak of! ...UUUUUUGH! She must've knocked them off and flung them around when she fought them! HOW WOULD SHE KNOW THAT'D HAPPEN!? SHE WASN'T PLANNING FOR A FIGHT, LET ALONE A PROLONGED STAY IN THE DESERT!

    Laezi's eyes read like a child's picture-book, displaying her frustration, discomfort, and realization all to the stranger. He had her in a bind... and he probably knew it. Laezi huffed, puffing out her chest in defiance of the man. She didn't WANNA fight right now! ...But she did want that water... she wanted it more than she wanted to keep her fists unballed. ...And so, at the man's request, LAEZI WOULD RAISE UP HER CLUB AGAIN AND BRING IT SMASHING DOWN ON THE CROWN OF THE STRANGER'S SKULL! If it connected, the gun would SNAP in two the moment it made contact with his body, Laezi watching in AWE as the lower half of the weapon flew ineffectually off over her head and into the sand behind her! Assuming he kept to his word and didn't fight back, Laezi would LEAP back and let out a ROAR, her energy EXPLODING out in a flurry of pink ki! She would then rear back, taking in a deep breath, before firing a MASSIVE BEAM out of her mouth at the haunting, dark figure, aiming to BLAST with all of her power right then and there!

WC: 804

TWC: 1819

    Honestly, Laezi didn't expect too much from her club. From her own experience, such things were easy to break if anyone put ANY kind of force into it. A stomp here, a bend there and these guns SNAPPED like twigs. So what Laezi brought what amounted to a stick of wood and metal down on the man's head and it broke, the ONLY surprise Laezi felt was when the butt of the gun SPIRALED over her head a commendable distance behind her! THAT part, she wasn't expecting!

    What she had expected, though, was her SECOND attack to do SOMETHING! Her first had been intended as some kind of distraction. Perhaps the audacity of Laezi SWINGING a larger-than-average twig down on his head would distract the man long enough for the Majin to get off her attack! Well... it got off. And it diiiiiiiid....

    NOTHING.

    Laezi's mouth-cannon ROCKETED towards the dark figure with IMPRESSIVE SPEED AND MIGHT, the sheer heat it had let off reducing the desert sand under it to a smoldering slag of malformed glass and peppered sand particulates. She condensed her beam down to a hyper-thin, HYPER condensed beam of Ki, almost like those laser-beams that sometimes shot from the defense turrets on the ships she saw on TV! She aimed it at the Man's forehead and it BLITZED across the landscape. It drew so close, the Majin was CERTAIN it would hit! NOBODY COULD BE THAT FAST!

    ...Except this guy, apparently, who, as casually as you please, lifted a hand... and FLICKED her attack UP, UP, and AWAY! Laezi's head SHOT UP, watching as what she thought to be her most POWERFUL attack yet, disappeared into the stratosphere, ZIPPING up that way as if she had shot it up into the endless sky in the first place! The awe on display upon the Majin's face was reflected in the dropped JAW Laezi was neglecting to pick up from the ground, her eyes  LOCKED onto the spot where all that KI, all that POWER... was reduced into irrelevancy. Slowly, Laezi would regain her wits... but it wouldn't be long before those very wits fell under the sway of another, more powerful emotion than surprise: Embarrassment. Of course, Embarrassment was never too far away from it's sibling emotion, outrage, the Majin's face flashing a dark tint of blue as she brought her eyes DOWN upon the man, her face scrunched up in humiliated ANGER. All of that... she had TRIED her hardest and here he was, MOCKING her, calling her WEAK in bigger words than the Majin could understand! She could read his face and tone of voice, though. He was looking down on her... and what made her the angriest was that, in that one little display, the man proved he had every right to.

    Laezi let out a low, animalistic growl as the man asserted himself... only for her to be SMACKED in the face with something heavy and plastic, stunning her out of doing something... most assuredly stupid. Reaching up and pulling it off her cheek, the Majin saw it was a canteen! ...And it was HEAVY with water. Instantly, Laezi's eyes LIT UP as if the water were a gift from the kais themselves, the Majin CHUGGING a massive gulp from it's neck before pouring a little more onto her hands and drizzling it over herself from above!

    AH! It was even kinda cool too! ...Must've been because of that weird, haunting breeze that followed the dark man. ...And speaking of dark men, the stranger would then make a proposition. SURE, Laezi was HARDLY anything more than a disappointment to him NOW... but he was more than willing to train her out of that if she just came inside his van- I MEAN gave him a chance. Laezi slowly narrowed her eyes at the man, her lips pursing suspiciously.

    "My momma told me to not trust people who say stuff like that..." Laezi mused, strapping the canteen to her hip. "...Are you a bad man?"

WC: 670

TWC: 2489

    ...Laezi didn't know why this guy was laughing. What did she say that was funny!? It was a SERIOUS QUESTION, DARN IT! But here Maxsus was, chuckling away as if she had said some pun or something, treating her as if she were nothing but a big ol' joke to him. Now, Laezi COULD be funny. She even TRIED to be sometimes. THIS, however, wasn't one of those times. The little blue Majin stared at the man in disbelief, the significance of his laughter not exactly flying over her head... but the reason as to WHY he found her question funny juuuuuust missing her.

    When the utter CATACLYSM that was Maxsuz' power finally came to heel, Laezi simply flopped off the rock she'd been driven into, hitting the sand hard, face-first. Gravity, it seemed, had as little pity for the Majin's current predicament as the black-clad stranger did. Somehow finding the strength to rise, Laezi would PUSH herself up to her hands and knees, shaking off the sand sticking to her like a dog would water. ...Somehow, she didn't exactly believe Maxsus as he offered her his apologies. The imprint of her outline upon the rocks was a testament to that feeling. REGARDLESS, for the first time in a while, Laezi would be asked what she even WANTED from this partnership, if she had any goals! The Majin would rise to her full meager height... and blinked. What DID she even want? Yeah, she liked fighting people but she could do that herself! Strength...? Eh, it was fun to have, but it wasn't anything she'd PARTNER UP over... Not for her own, casual use, anyway. Laezi then remembered the shadow-man, how helpless and useless she was watching her mother die in front of her. She winced away from the memory.

    "I wanna kill somebody." Laezi said, emphasizing the word with an almost uncharacteristic amount of venom. "I dunno who they are or what they look like... but they took my Momma away... I wanna kill them." Laezi's silver eyes had flashed RED as she spoke, her aura flaring pink as her raw anger fed her power! Doubling... TRIPLING... and Laezi didn't even seem to notice. Either that, or she didn't care, especially as spirals of sand began whirling around her like thin double-helixes!

    It was then that Maxsuz became ENRAPTURED with the idea of training her, asking her to envision the strength he could draw from her, the possibilities, ETCETERA! He even gave her the opportunity to call him things like "master" or "father"... and Laezi looked at him oddly at that point... To Laezi, all that was missing was an EVIL LAUGH to seal the deal and the man would have made himself out to be a super-villain of some sort. He had the scary monster form, he wore all black, his HAIR looked like fire frozen in time AND he had just spoken like his plan was coming to fruition! If Laezi was just a liiiiiittle bit smarter, she might've put the pieces together! But in her emotional state... and with a carrot laid out in front of her, the little blue Majin lacked the impulse control NOT to take it.

    And so, at his beckoning and agreeing to his condition of "loyalty," whatever that meant for Laezi, the Majin would follow the man into the sky, doing her best not to wobble out of balance as they made for literally greener pastures.

WC: 471

TWC: 3630