04-11-2010, 01:10 AM
Orion was the benefactor of a rich tapestry of experiences. He had instigated war over countless alien worlds, assigned to him by the Cold Dynasty's belligerent agenda. He had mastered the art of combat, capable of pounding any foe into submission with his fists or, failing that, blasting their worthless hides into oblivion. He had ventured to the furtherest corners of the galaxy, born witness to events that he would simply disbelieve had he not been present at the time and had his entire perception on reality twisted and tweaked until it was not the same anymore. He managed to leave the mortal realm and spar against the greatest martial artists the afterlife and possibly the universe had ever known, and even infrequently return to the world of the living, subverting the original sting of death.
But never in his life had he weathered such endless, mundane banter.
Kaden was like an attention deficient disorder mouse locked in a room of cats. He never seemed satisfied with the object at his attention, constantly letting his mind gallop free and subsequently taking him along for the spirited ride. Whatever arbitrary thought sprouted at the time of his boredom was taken hold of immediately and beaten until the human's interested died. It was probably acceptable and commonplace for Kaden, and quite possibly his entire primitive race, to act in such a fashion, but Orion saw it only for what it was; a weakness.
The blonde courier was exceptionally chatty compared to their initial introduction during the Friend or Foe tournament, but that was no doubt contributed to his lack of experience in dangerous and unfamiliar situations. Orion recalled his attempt to seize leadership of the Hunters, and while some of his suggestions held validity, he was in no position to command a ragtag crew of random strangers, that much was certain. Now, he wouldn't just shut the hell up for ten seconds. Every thought trickled unfiltered from his brain and barrelled out of his lips blithely. Orion wondered how Kaden put up with himself.
Still, his relentless impulse to converse dug up some intriguing gems that the cyclopean saiyan couldn't discover on his own. Judging by his fumbled apology about Orion's death, which was a completely different kettle of fish, he held feelings of detached duty, as if his current strength could have easily saved his life. That informed the veteran warrior of two things. One: Kaden was a firm believer in compassion and comradeship, opting to prevent harm occurring to anyone that he could intercept and halt. He figured as much during their Friend or Foe duress, since he stressed their roles as Hunters needed to be ignored for the sake of their prey. His comments merely cemented the conjecture as solid fact.
Two: Kaden presumed his strength had grown to a point where he could intercede on Orion's behalf. He was a vigorous, never-say-die kind of guy, but his abilities were severely lacking. He understood the basics of ki manipulation, and strangely enough for a human, took to it like a duck to water. Orion really wasn't cognisant of how much time elapsed in the mortal universe since his death, but Kaden already had tickets on himself, albeit modestly. To an extent, the disgruntled soldier was curious to witness the courier's newfound powers in action, but that would have to wait until an appropriate moment.
Beyond all of this, however, Orion had become suddenly fixated on Kaden's apology. Perhaps he had things of greater importance to dwell on since his assassination, but now that it was brought to the surface, the saiyan realised just how much he blamed the human. He recalled their exchanges, how the blonde referred to Orion's mind frame of morality and murder to be unfathomably sadist, how everyone deserved to live and no one had the right to make that decision when it ended on their behalf and other naive, idealistic bullshit he had garbled out. However, on a personal level, eventually some of Kaden's preaching planted into Orion's mind. It wasn't solely due to his benevolent arguments; a fraction of the human's beliefs were once property of Orion's, but a bellicose, vindictive universe jaded his own views.
It was those beliefs that made him turn his back on a fallen adversary and accept several gunshots to the back.
Orion wasn't an unreasonable, hate driven monster. Only partly. However, he recognised that some of the blame fell on his own shoulders. He allowed Kaden's septic words in without a thorough rejection, weakly desiring for his old mindset to somehow negate the cognitive dissonance that manifested with his current psyche. Yet it was the courier's incessant steadfastness to his beliefs and the inability to waver from them that had made them halfway convincing. Had Orion silenced the human before his battle with Balrog, perhaps he wouldn't have left the broken fool at his feet before turning heels. The saiyan envisioned how the fight would end if he was there now; towering over Balrog, saying a few choice, arrogant words before curbstomping his skull and ending his life.
But that was then, and this was now. Although Kaden's motor mouth raised Orion's ire faster than most, he still couldn't bring himself to blatantly hate the man. So some of his uninformed perceptions of life were child like and infectious like the plague, but the cyclopean warmonger saw a sliver of himself in the kid. Before the universe mercilessly stomped on his own understanding, he was, much to Orion's chagrin, similar to Kaden. Perhaps, if the human could cling to that hope ...
There were more pressing concerns, though. As Kaden pointed out, and as he realised long before him no doubt, the very room itself was morphing. The walls slid slowly at first, the movements so incremental that it wasn't noticeable, but since both occupants had caught the drift from their peripheral vision, they couldn't both be right. Unless they managed to hypnotise one another with the horribly uneventful staring contest, something lurching from Gamer's voyeuristic mind was approaching them.
Moments had passed since their mutual agreement on the status of the walls, but Kaden was the last to speak and must have felt the bothersome curse of verbal diahorrea prod him into speech.
"Well?" he questioned vaguely, before clarifying with, "any plans?"
"Not as such, no," Orion replied dryly. "Gamer's probably attempting to distract one of us so that we give him a reason to break the contest and kill us. Don't be fooled."
It made sense on paper, but the walls weren't just retreating from them anymore. From the edge of their vision, both contestants observed the walls quivering like a mass of jelly that had been poked. Orion tried to block out the obvious diversion, but his determination was stalwart. He had one chance to slit that nerdy bastard's throat, and he wasn't about to hand it over to Kaden, not while he was still in control of the outcome.
The red eyed courier, however, wasn't so sure. His eyes begged him to look, but he was just as certain as Orion to stay in this contest.
"Uh, Orion ..."
The saiyan had enough. "Can you please just ... shut the hell up?! It's hard enough to concentrate without your mindless babble."
"Fair call, but Orion, I think you should look behind you."
Orion grunted in frustration. Kaden wasn't the type to deceive anyone into a trap. He wanted to win, but his ethics wouldn't allow him a victory through dirty tactics. That meant only one thing; something was approaching from behind.
"If you can see it, then tell me what it is," the mustachioed marauder stated.
"I can't say I've ever seen tentacles grow from a wall, but I'd say that's the most accurate description," Kaden commented, observing with restraint as the writhing white tendrils inched closer to Orion.
"Hmm," Orion murmured. "You have a similar issue."
Indeed, a mass of eager wall worms squirmed towards Kaden. The news didn't help to abate the human's concern.
"There's only one way we can survive this without breaking eye contact," Orion commented, although it appeared Kaden caught on without an explanation.
"Got it," he confirmed.
"On the count of three ..."
"One ... " Orion drew out.
"Two ... " Kaden followed.
"Three!"
In unison, the two dropped beneath the table, at all costs retaining their locked gazes. Orion thrust a hand over Kaden's shoulder while the courier mimicked the same motion. Energy pooled in their open hands, bathing the hospital white room in the hues of their respective dark and light blue ki. The plan was going off without a hitch; Orion had perfect vision of the tentacles threatening Kaden via peripheral vision, while Kaden had the same sight of Orion's would be antagonists. The biggest issue here was the containment of their blasts; neither knew how resilient the energetic tendrils were to computerised energy attacks, so a heaping portion of power was needed to make the first strike the last. However, due to the close proximity of their ally, Orion and Kaden needed to restrict the beam to a fine column so as to not fry the other.
A resounding boom echoed in the featureless room as the two ki specialists unleashed their attacks. Orion instinctively ducked as he felt the heat of Kaden's ki radiate onto his neck. In any other situation, that particular signal meant that the saiyan was under direct attack; it was hard to will his mind to desist any evasive movement, but his extreme discipline ensured his stationarity. Kaden wasn't lying in a field of flowers either, squinting against the immense luminance that the dual beams forged.
The heads of the energy waves sheared through the tentacles like a hot knife through butter, obliterating the flimsy strands into dust. Orion and Kaden, perservering in the staring contest, gradually rose back to their seats, propping themselves up on their table. A wordless moment passed.
"So, d-"
"Do you ever shut up?"
But never in his life had he weathered such endless, mundane banter.
Kaden was like an attention deficient disorder mouse locked in a room of cats. He never seemed satisfied with the object at his attention, constantly letting his mind gallop free and subsequently taking him along for the spirited ride. Whatever arbitrary thought sprouted at the time of his boredom was taken hold of immediately and beaten until the human's interested died. It was probably acceptable and commonplace for Kaden, and quite possibly his entire primitive race, to act in such a fashion, but Orion saw it only for what it was; a weakness.
The blonde courier was exceptionally chatty compared to their initial introduction during the Friend or Foe tournament, but that was no doubt contributed to his lack of experience in dangerous and unfamiliar situations. Orion recalled his attempt to seize leadership of the Hunters, and while some of his suggestions held validity, he was in no position to command a ragtag crew of random strangers, that much was certain. Now, he wouldn't just shut the hell up for ten seconds. Every thought trickled unfiltered from his brain and barrelled out of his lips blithely. Orion wondered how Kaden put up with himself.
Still, his relentless impulse to converse dug up some intriguing gems that the cyclopean saiyan couldn't discover on his own. Judging by his fumbled apology about Orion's death, which was a completely different kettle of fish, he held feelings of detached duty, as if his current strength could have easily saved his life. That informed the veteran warrior of two things. One: Kaden was a firm believer in compassion and comradeship, opting to prevent harm occurring to anyone that he could intercept and halt. He figured as much during their Friend or Foe duress, since he stressed their roles as Hunters needed to be ignored for the sake of their prey. His comments merely cemented the conjecture as solid fact.
Two: Kaden presumed his strength had grown to a point where he could intercede on Orion's behalf. He was a vigorous, never-say-die kind of guy, but his abilities were severely lacking. He understood the basics of ki manipulation, and strangely enough for a human, took to it like a duck to water. Orion really wasn't cognisant of how much time elapsed in the mortal universe since his death, but Kaden already had tickets on himself, albeit modestly. To an extent, the disgruntled soldier was curious to witness the courier's newfound powers in action, but that would have to wait until an appropriate moment.
Beyond all of this, however, Orion had become suddenly fixated on Kaden's apology. Perhaps he had things of greater importance to dwell on since his assassination, but now that it was brought to the surface, the saiyan realised just how much he blamed the human. He recalled their exchanges, how the blonde referred to Orion's mind frame of morality and murder to be unfathomably sadist, how everyone deserved to live and no one had the right to make that decision when it ended on their behalf and other naive, idealistic bullshit he had garbled out. However, on a personal level, eventually some of Kaden's preaching planted into Orion's mind. It wasn't solely due to his benevolent arguments; a fraction of the human's beliefs were once property of Orion's, but a bellicose, vindictive universe jaded his own views.
It was those beliefs that made him turn his back on a fallen adversary and accept several gunshots to the back.
Orion wasn't an unreasonable, hate driven monster. Only partly. However, he recognised that some of the blame fell on his own shoulders. He allowed Kaden's septic words in without a thorough rejection, weakly desiring for his old mindset to somehow negate the cognitive dissonance that manifested with his current psyche. Yet it was the courier's incessant steadfastness to his beliefs and the inability to waver from them that had made them halfway convincing. Had Orion silenced the human before his battle with Balrog, perhaps he wouldn't have left the broken fool at his feet before turning heels. The saiyan envisioned how the fight would end if he was there now; towering over Balrog, saying a few choice, arrogant words before curbstomping his skull and ending his life.
But that was then, and this was now. Although Kaden's motor mouth raised Orion's ire faster than most, he still couldn't bring himself to blatantly hate the man. So some of his uninformed perceptions of life were child like and infectious like the plague, but the cyclopean warmonger saw a sliver of himself in the kid. Before the universe mercilessly stomped on his own understanding, he was, much to Orion's chagrin, similar to Kaden. Perhaps, if the human could cling to that hope ...
There were more pressing concerns, though. As Kaden pointed out, and as he realised long before him no doubt, the very room itself was morphing. The walls slid slowly at first, the movements so incremental that it wasn't noticeable, but since both occupants had caught the drift from their peripheral vision, they couldn't both be right. Unless they managed to hypnotise one another with the horribly uneventful staring contest, something lurching from Gamer's voyeuristic mind was approaching them.
Moments had passed since their mutual agreement on the status of the walls, but Kaden was the last to speak and must have felt the bothersome curse of verbal diahorrea prod him into speech.
"Well?" he questioned vaguely, before clarifying with, "any plans?"
"Not as such, no," Orion replied dryly. "Gamer's probably attempting to distract one of us so that we give him a reason to break the contest and kill us. Don't be fooled."
It made sense on paper, but the walls weren't just retreating from them anymore. From the edge of their vision, both contestants observed the walls quivering like a mass of jelly that had been poked. Orion tried to block out the obvious diversion, but his determination was stalwart. He had one chance to slit that nerdy bastard's throat, and he wasn't about to hand it over to Kaden, not while he was still in control of the outcome.
The red eyed courier, however, wasn't so sure. His eyes begged him to look, but he was just as certain as Orion to stay in this contest.
"Uh, Orion ..."
The saiyan had enough. "Can you please just ... shut the hell up?! It's hard enough to concentrate without your mindless babble."
"Fair call, but Orion, I think you should look behind you."
Orion grunted in frustration. Kaden wasn't the type to deceive anyone into a trap. He wanted to win, but his ethics wouldn't allow him a victory through dirty tactics. That meant only one thing; something was approaching from behind.
"If you can see it, then tell me what it is," the mustachioed marauder stated.
"I can't say I've ever seen tentacles grow from a wall, but I'd say that's the most accurate description," Kaden commented, observing with restraint as the writhing white tendrils inched closer to Orion.
"Hmm," Orion murmured. "You have a similar issue."
Indeed, a mass of eager wall worms squirmed towards Kaden. The news didn't help to abate the human's concern.
"There's only one way we can survive this without breaking eye contact," Orion commented, although it appeared Kaden caught on without an explanation.
"Got it," he confirmed.
"On the count of three ..."
"One ... " Orion drew out.
"Two ... " Kaden followed.
"Three!"
In unison, the two dropped beneath the table, at all costs retaining their locked gazes. Orion thrust a hand over Kaden's shoulder while the courier mimicked the same motion. Energy pooled in their open hands, bathing the hospital white room in the hues of their respective dark and light blue ki. The plan was going off without a hitch; Orion had perfect vision of the tentacles threatening Kaden via peripheral vision, while Kaden had the same sight of Orion's would be antagonists. The biggest issue here was the containment of their blasts; neither knew how resilient the energetic tendrils were to computerised energy attacks, so a heaping portion of power was needed to make the first strike the last. However, due to the close proximity of their ally, Orion and Kaden needed to restrict the beam to a fine column so as to not fry the other.
A resounding boom echoed in the featureless room as the two ki specialists unleashed their attacks. Orion instinctively ducked as he felt the heat of Kaden's ki radiate onto his neck. In any other situation, that particular signal meant that the saiyan was under direct attack; it was hard to will his mind to desist any evasive movement, but his extreme discipline ensured his stationarity. Kaden wasn't lying in a field of flowers either, squinting against the immense luminance that the dual beams forged.
The heads of the energy waves sheared through the tentacles like a hot knife through butter, obliterating the flimsy strands into dust. Orion and Kaden, perservering in the staring contest, gradually rose back to their seats, propping themselves up on their table. A wordless moment passed.
"So, d-"
"Do you ever shut up?"
![[Image: OrionAug11.jpg]](http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b187/captain_civic/OrionAug11.jpg)