[SIRENS] Clipped Wings (Shun)

[Smerdle]

Blade Kuroda

To:
From: iamthevaughn@gmail.com
Subject: Meeting?

I was wondering if I could talk to you a little about sigils and sirens.

I'd really appreciate it.

Rabbit Vaughn

 

[Blade Kuroda]

Smerdle

To:
From:
Subject: Re: meeting?

Very well. Time and location?

-Shun Kuroda

 

[Smerdle]

Blade Kuroda

To:
From:
Subject: Re: meeting?

Tomorrow at 6pm outside Town Hall on the other side.

Rabbit

He was where he said he would be at the time he said he would be there, sitting on someone's bizarre idea of a metal bench outside the new Court. The sirens were with him, playing some sort of twining finger game only they seemed to know the rules of, and Oroh stood off to one side, staring majestically into the distance at nothing. She had changed as much as the children had, having grown several inches taller and come into possession of a lot more dark, healthy-looking skin than she'd had the last time Shun had seen her. She also had human eyes instead of the metal ball she'd stuffed into one of her sockets, though the eye on that side was still sparkling gold.

When Rabbit saw Shun he smiled and waved, though the expression was rather timid.  

[Blade Kuroda]

Shun appeared at the designated meeting point right on time. The sigil was one thing, but he wondered what Rabbit had to say about the sirens. Honestly, he wasn't really sure what to do about those now that he knew they were apparently kids.

As he approached the group, he blinked at the two feathered ones that were with the noble. He had seen them at Pax's funeral, but didn't know who or what they were. He tilted his head at them, then looked to Oroh, who was a bit different since he had last seen her. She seemed a bit... more lively for one.

"Vaughn," he greeted.

smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"Hey..." What did you call a person who you'd thought was just a detective but who turned out to be a detective lieutenant and who might possess a desire to kill your kids? "...Detective." Good enough.

"I wanted to be the first to formally re-introduce you to the sirens, since, um, I heard they'd been mentioned by various people recently. Neverain, Sywyly." He gestured at each child in turn, and as he did they sat up straighter and nodded politely. They didn't go back to their game, watching Shun instead with curious little smiles.

"This is Shun Kuroda."

"The Shadow Man," Nev said. Rabbit flicked a displeased look at his fetch.

Blade Kuroda

 

[Blade Kuroda]

Shun looked to the two, slowly tilting his head as Rabbit introduced them.

"They are... quite different from what I last recall of them," he murmured. When Nev called him the shadow man, he raised his brow, but said nothing of it.

"A pleasure to meet you two, I suppose."

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"Yes. When we made the sigil, they changed. A lot. I'd hoped that by introducing them..." Rabbit cleared his throat. "I'm quite attached, you see, and I was hoping that you might consider not trying to get rid of them until there was no other option." He didn't plan on letting anyone have them no matter how close they got to the end, but he wasn't about to tell anybody that. Out of all the people who Rabbit had heard knew of the sirens' significance, this was the one he feared the most, if only because he knew Shun had a tendency to pull knives without hesitation.

"I'm working on an alternative. So... yeah."

Blade Kuroda

 

[Blade Kuroda]

That explained a thing or two.

"Figures we would end up complicating things in the end," he sighed. Shun shook his head, glancing to the pair of sirens, then back to Rabbit. The man was worried; that much was apparent.

"I heard from Mercer of their current status. An alternative would certainly be ideal; perhaps you could find a way to swap out their position with the cage with something else. Like an actual bird or whatever," he shrugged.

If for whatever reason they could find no alternative whatsoever...

Well. Some hard decisions would need to be made.

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"Hm. Yeah. Maybe." Somehow he couldn't see it being that simple. "So, um, I just wanted to let you know that I'm trying and I appreciate your time and..."

"Detective."

Rabbit closed his eyes in a long blink when Oroh spoke. Even though he didn't intervene, he also didn't approve.

"As a gesture of good faith, might you teach the children something that would help keep them safe." Her voice held no questioning inflection. Clearly she expected him to do as she suggested.

Sywyly, whose expression had gone from interested to irritated the longer the adults talked around her, was much kinder in her request. "We're not trying to run from what's got to be done, we just don't want people trying to get us before it's time. So if you've got some lightning hands or a hidey hole thing you know, that'd be cool."

"Or just a suggestion on how to keep out of trouble." That was from Neverain, who might have actually wanted to keep safe rather than use danger as an excuse to learn cantrips.

Blade Kuroda

 

[Blade Kuroda]

Shun nodded, then looked to Oroh as she cut to the point of why Rabbit had called him out here. With a slight tilt of his head, he looked to the two children as they took their turns to speak as well. That was fair and all, he supposed. He had no intentions of killing them, unless maybe if there really weren't any other avenues he could take...

But even then he wasn't certain what he would do.

Generally speaking he was willing to get the job done, at any cost, but that cost usually wasn't quite on the level of killing an actual kid.

Well hopefully it won't ever come to needing to test that.

"I could teach you a thing or two, yes. Do you want something that can be done as a more active defense, and possible offense but is a bit more complicated, or something simpler and perhaps a bit more passive?"

smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"Passive," Rabbit replied, not missing a beat. The rest of his brood looked at him with expressions that ranged from fond to resigned. "All right, okay. Do what you like."

"Well, I know Oroh and Sy want offense—"

"No," Sywyly said, earning a shrug of pleasant surprise from her brother. "I mean, I want to beat people up who want to hurt us, but... we can't win. Not against a bunch of magic grown-ups. So we should just be able to hide for longer. To give you guys time to think."

"So, simple then," Nev confirmed.

Blade Kuroda

 

[Blade Kuroda]

Shun raised his brow, then nodded to the group. This was an innate thing to him, but with some willpower, the two should be able to mirror the ability. He looked around to see where the stark shadows were, then stepped on in. After a few moments, he appeared to melt away into the shadows, vanishing completely. If Rabbit or the others had any sort of vision that wasn't regular sight, they could probably still see him.

"You can hide within the shadows and effectively become one with them. I will warn you - the baseline ability of this will not shield you from those with magic sight, heat vision, or the like. But seeing how anything is possible here, with practice, you may be able to make it so you cannot be detected with those types of vision either," he explained, "And you are still very much solid so it does not help if someone were to bumble into you."

He stepped forward, revealing himself once more.

smerdle