[1x1][PRP] MURDUR BURD (Taima and Marcus)

[Inle-roo]

Taima was hopelessly, painfully lost. She was still learning her way around the school, but she could have sworn she knew the path from the classrooms to the dorms, and this was Clearly Not It. This was Something Completely Different, and Taima was far too tired and busy and tired and cranky to want to deal with it right that second. These twisting hallways led to rooms she had never seen before and went nowhere. She was inches away from throwing her armful of books to the ground, shifting into her natural form and ripping a hole in the damned ceiling when she found herself in a room larger than the others she had wandered into, its paint job resembling the out out out that she wanted to be.

It was almost taunting her, and she wanted to be really mad about it, but fortunately, possible salvation stood right in front of her.

"Hey, guy," Taima said, "do you know how to get out of here? I'm trying to get back to my room but I got kind of, um...lost," she admitted sheepishly.  

[Inle-roo]

Taima had heard of the Hunters, of course--after what happened to the Horsemen's homeland, word spread like wildfire--but she had never actually run into one before. She had actually thought this guy was just a reaper with poor fashion sense, until he started talking. Her eyebrows rose in stunned surprise as he threatened her and then gave her an out. She just kind of stared at him for a moment after he finished his spiel, several beats passing before a grin curled her lips.

She managed to clap a hand over her mouth, containing the snort of amusement that turned into a chortle and from there into full-out laughter so hard that she had to lean against the wall to keep upright.

Taima laughed in the face of danger, literally and kind of a lot.

"I'm sorry," she said once she was able to draw a breath, "but," she giggled, "you just, like." Taima straightened, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye. "Like, really? Really really? Who even says stuff like that? Like, okay, I understand that you're trying to be, I don't know, intimidating or whatever," although judging from how funny she found him, he obviously wasn't succeeding with her, "but your lines are so played. I'm pretty sure I heard those exact words in a movie once. It makes you sound kind of like a tool." Her feathers ruffled as she composed herself, and she cleared her throat before adding, "But I do appreciate the attempt. I really did need the laugh today. Now, do you know how to get out of this place, or what?"  

[Inle-roo]

He liked horror movies. The sheer irony almost had her in tears again, but she managed to tamp it down, letting only a few surprised chuckles escape. "Isn't that kind of redundant? I mean, here you are, so ready to throw down with a 16 year old ghoul who obviously has zero interest in reciprocating--isn't your life kind of like a bad horror movie? Shouldn't you be into, I don't know...romantic comedies or something? Just to balance it all out?"

He claimed that he wasn't trying to intimidate her, and then threw idle threats at her: nets and something called a Dis and promises of places she wouldn't want to be. "Well," she continued, "if you're not going to help me get back to where I would like to end up--that being my dorm--then I guess I can keep going it alone, but I really don't have more time to stay and chat. Homework," she explained, shifting her grip on her armful of books. "This was very entertaining, though, and, y'know...work on those lines," she finished with a grin, turning back towards the doorway.

This was the scary hunter Herryk had warned her about? Some tacky clothes and cliched lines? Adorable, but she had better things to do.  

[Inle-roo]

Taima started as the daggers thudded into the wood in front of her, determined to press on--only to find that doing so caused an almost physical ache. With the deep, heaving sigh of the teenaged and put-out, she turned around, eyeing the hunter almost sadly. Her wings flared behind her, the eyes at the top of each one seeming to glare at the hunter even as Taima seemed nonplussed, all traces of her earlier humor gone.

"I would have been happy to go around you," she said evenly, "or even just away from you. But I'm not unwilling to go through you if you so insist. And you are insisting now, right?"  

[Inle-roo]

Taima didn't bother waiting for an answer, she just leapt unsteadily towards the hunter--not straight at him, that would have been stupid, even for someone as inept at combat as her, but off to the side. She swept the wing nearest to him forward, trying to hit him with the hard bone and. Missed. Completely.

She wasn't surprised. She'd never been much of a fighter, and certainly not in so small and frail a form, but the room, while large, still wouldn't have been big enough for her to maneuver around in her natural form.  

[Inle-roo]

"Little bit," she admitted. There was no use denying it, it was only painfully obvious. Her wing flinched back as his blade came in contact with it, sending her stumbling off balance. She overcompensated with the other wing, turning herself around. She would have done a full turn if the hunter hadn't been in her wing's way.

That was less aiming, more dumb luck.

HP: 28
Damage: 8  

[Inle-roo]

Did she actually hit him? The impact against her wing said yes; she'd have to remember how she managed to pull that off and then keep doing it until this guy went away.

"Aw, are you mad now?" Taima asked when the hunter insulted her, smiling rather than taking offense--like the she'd get upset at the guy in the ridiculous costume calling her ugly. Pot, kettle, black. "Don't worry," she said, quickly pulling her wing out of range of the slashing blade, "I'd be mad too if I just got hit in the face completely on accident."

HP: 28
Damage: 0  

[Inle-roo]

"You're annoyed?" Taima asked, incredulous. "You insisted on this, remember? Besides, I've got homework to do, and it's not a report on who I've fought with today. If either of us gets to be annoyed, it should be me." And she would've been, too, if she wasn't almost enjoying herself. Learning to fight in this form was just as educational as any class, even if she found combat in general to be a pointless waste of time.

It was instinct to lunge forward, to parry the slash with a beak she didn't have; if she was in her natural state, it would have worked, and then she would have swallowed the hunter and his little toothpick whole. Fortunately, since she was significantly smaller in this form, the blade whizzed by her face, only slashing into her shoulder instead of stabbing out an eye. The angry shriek of howling wind was the same in both forms, though, and she shoved him away with her opposite wing.

"a*****e!" Taima exclaimed, clapping a hand over the wound. "That hurt!" If looks could have killed hers would have--maybe someday.

HP: 12
Damage: 6