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Post by Max on Jan 30, 2008 17:27:17 GMT -5
No, Max did not trust the strange convict. In a way she related to him. On the run, never a moment's rest, constantly having to be on guard. But he had killed. She had not done so yet. Plus, he was an active danger, especially with the guns. But she had those now. Still, she kept a bit to the back of him, though she walked enough to his side that he could glimpse her out of his peripheral vison. Max didn't want him to feel she was going to pull a gun on him. The rain fell in buckets from the sky, drenching her to the bone. Her wings, hidden as they were, began to stick against her, the damp feathers itching wherever they touched bare skin. Normally she tried to avoid getting wet. It meant an hour or two of preening all the feathers back in place. A most annoying hygeine issue that arose when you put wings on someone. Pity the scientists hadn't thought of that. Keeping her eyes to the heavens, ears straining for any sign of danger, Max followed Dante a bit blindly. Rapidly blinking away the drops that traveled down her lashes, she could only see water and a dark sky. "Are we almost there?" she asked, forced to raise her voice slightly to speak over the rain. She hoped so; this open road was too exposed for her liking.
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Post by Dante on Jan 31, 2008 5:20:41 GMT -5
Dante stopped at the edge of the road and glanced back to make sure there was nobody following them before saying, "Take out the 'almost' and the answer is 'yes'." He turned to the building to his right, walking to it and carefully opening the unlocked door. Dante knew this place well, he had stayed here often enough and as such he could trust in his safety here. The walls were made of old stone but had many patches of damp showing through. The wooden door looked like it was almost rotten through but Dante still took the key from it's hiding place behind a pile of dust inside a hole in one of the stones and locked it. "Oi, Aggie!" Dante yelled into the looming darkness of the room. He turned to Max, "It doesn't look like much of a hotel, does it? This is the back entrance, the front is more like a hotel but still isn't exactly a five-star one."
Suddenly, light blasted into the room as an old lady flicked a switch in the corner. She stood behind a table by the door that lead between this room and the next. Dante's eyes quickly adjusted to the strange modern light in the obviously old room and they darted about to see if anything else had changed. Once he had seen that the naked bulb hanging from the middle of the room was the only change since last time, he spoke, "Why've you added that thing?" Dante jerked his head in the direction of the lightbulb, "It ruins the murky medieval atmosphere."
Then the old woman spoke, "But it lets me see when bastards like you have brought young girls in to-" But Dante cut her off, "She's not going to snitch on your little secret back-door, if that's what you're afraid of, Aggie, and I'm not the kind of scum that would bring her in to-" "So why have you brought her in this side, where nobody will see you?" "Because, in case you haven't been watching, my face is all over every television in the country. She's my... Business partner." Dante finished, inspecting Aggie before continuing, "Anyway, I need a room so I'd like to see... What name does he go by now, is it still Harry?" "It was Harry when he died, so I suppose it is, yes." "He's dead?" "You heard me." "I'm very sorry to hear that." Dante lied, Harry was almost as bad as Aggie but he had been useful. "You need a room? We've only got one left." "You only ever had one." "I sometimes like to think this is a legitimate hotel." As Dante walked past her he said, "You can put the crossbow down now." "I'd rather not. Up the stairs, first on the left. Oh, and I'm called Dorothy now, not Aggie." She stared at Max with her percing blue eyes before turning and walking off. Dante went through the door behind the table and into the Hall. The Hall would have been the same as the previous room except that it had flowery wallpaper that looked like it had been stuck over the old house's walls with a child's gluestick. Dante walked to the stairs and, turning back to Max said, "Nice place, isn't it?"
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Post by Max on Jan 31, 2008 22:26:33 GMT -5
Entering the seemingly ancient 'hotel', Max began her systematic appraisal of the place. Perhaps it was an instinct borne of her avian genes, or perhaps it was her curiosity, but whatever the case she observed and memorized wherever she was. This meant that she was slowly building a cognative map of any place she had been to. Then the light flicked on. Momentarily her sensitive eyes were blinded, though within seconds her dark gray blue eyes adjusted. She saw the woman there, glaring at them, glaring at her, and instantly pinpointed her as a possible threat. Not once did she think of using the guns in the coat. But the slender girl did automatically pull her wings in tighter, not wanting this already hostile woman to discover her secret. Her anger nearly boiled over as the woman dared to insinuate that Dante would bring her back to seduce her. Like anyone could, or would, do that to Max. She may not look it, with her long blonde hair and deceptively young face, but she could take down men five times her size. Biting her lip, she tried to not say anything, figuring it would make it worse. But she did glare at the woman, her pinpointing, unblinking stare boring into her like ice. Only when she left, her footstep receding, did Max relax her tensed muscles. But only slightly. She still didn't trust this Dante. "Well, it keeps out the rain, I suppose," she finally commented, her eyes darting around the room, memorizing everything she saw. You never knew when you would need to find your way out again. Sometimes it paid to be genetically altered.
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Post by Dante on Feb 2, 2008 14:35:46 GMT -5
Dante walked up the creaking, red carpetted stairs with the stains like somebody had spilt red wine on it, towards the first room on the left, just as Aggie had said and just as Dante remembered. The room was actually farily large, the floor was carpetted in here but this carpet, fortunately, had no dark red stains on it. The bed was in a corner, wooden like everything else and with an old mattress on it but nothing else. "The rain, and anybody looking for you." Dante walked over to the only window and closed the curtains, "You can take the bed, I won't sleep."
Dante sat down in the corner of the room, resting his head on his knees and closing his eyes. For the first time he lost himself deep in thought about this girl. It hadn't been safe before, but now it was safe enough to stop and think. She was persued by the scientists who had created her and given her wings. Wings wouldn't be the only thing a genetically modified person would have been given. She would be more intelligent, stronger, better senses, memory and just generally better than any other human. Dante guessed she would be dangerous in a fight, especially with the guns he had given her but nevertheless, fear did not cross him; Dante was not an ordinary human either, he was not human at all. Dante had survived against much more potent foes than a genetically enhanced human girl. Still, she was interesting, to say the least, and at the moment they were both on the run, which made them allies of some sort, even if they were not great friends. Yet, Dante reminded himself that they had only just met and in the conditions they were both under, they could not be expected to like or even trust each other.
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Post by Max on Feb 3, 2008 11:48:52 GMT -5
This was a rather strange situation to be in, even for Max, master of strangeness. In a ramshackle hotel with an escaped convict on the run. Well, she was on the run too, but she didn't have her face plastered all over every TV for miles around. This guy no doubt did. In fact, few knew about Max, knew that she was possible. Any person on the street would no doubt laugh at the idea of an avian/human hybrid. Sadly enough for her, it was all too true. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Max looked at the man with her, blue gray eyes assessing him silently. She didn't feel comfortable sleeping if he wasn't. Trust wasn't built into her genes, nor had it ever been founded. He appeared to be thinking, resting sort of. She knew he wasn't sleeping. For one thing, his breathing wasn't slow enough, and his body was still tensed for action. His muscles didn't have that slumped posture of a sleeping person. Max would not sleep; not now anyways. Her wings were sodden and rather bedraggled under the backpack and coat of his. Taking off both, she let the coat drop between them. He had not shot her yet; there was no reason for him to start. Killing her would not gain him anything. Decided to feign ignoring him, she began the rather tedious task of arranging out all her black feathers. Shining with a slight iridescence from the water, each one had to be put into its proper place for maximum flying capacity. Max never knew when she would have to take to the air again. It was best to be prepared for anything these days.
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Post by Dante on Feb 10, 2008 11:18:45 GMT -5
OOC: Sorry for late reply, I'll hopefully be able to post IC a bit later today and I'll explain why it's been so long then, sorry!
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