• Graded • Orientation

[Robin Stark]

29th of Saun 717

He wore his blacks comfortably, untucked and loose. The rest seemed in desperate contest to see who could wear their uniforms tighter. They walked rigidly, cold and distant; Robin was their opposite. He smiled easily and too often, unconcerned with the assumed formality of his position.

The wind and earth accompanied him today. The stone floor warmed and softened under him, erasing the awkwardly loud footsteps that followed his fellows. It whispered, hushed rumbles that echoed below his feet. They built and they built and they built, but everything always fell. The wind lazed behind, bored.

“A different kind of partner,” Robin rolled his eyes, waving off a jealous gust. It blew angrily, unconvinced. Robin snorted, a chipped laugh, annoyed. The gust billowed around him, puffing out his shirt. He sighed, patting his uniform back down, leaving it untucked. “It’s a job. Unless you want to start blowing money my way, I have to work.”

There was an agenda. Introductions, a formality. Investigations, a possibility.

He wasn’t sure what to expect. It seemed mages were the norm out in Etzos. They didn’t practice like he did, he’d noticed, he’d judged. Most commanded where he asked, cruel and manipulative. Insane, because that was the result of power unchecked.

Robin sat on an old wooden bench. This was the assigned location. Quiet, he thought.

The earth burped and groaned underneath. “No, she isn’t like me,” he shook his head. “Some kind of craft magic, I think. She won’t be able to hear you,” They, cloak and dagger, hadn’t given him a name or a description or anything useful. A gender, female, and the name of a magic he hadn’t known.

At least the bench was comfortable.

Robin supposed a bit of wait wouldn’t be so bad.
-------------------------
A careful figure made its way down towards the bench. She, definitely female, possessed a determined confidence, sharp and stubborn. A pretty face, yes, but Robin was more struck with curiosity than attraction.

“I’m Robin,” he paused, biting his lips. His hands were deep in his pockets and he hadn’t bothered to stand, not yet anyway. He’d already introduced himself to three others and he was prepared to for another mistake. “And would you be-”

“A greeter. Oh god, he’s a fuckin’ greeter. Enough with the Ne’hearian pleasantries. Let’s just get this over with.”

And that, ladies, gents, and cunts, was how Robin Stark met Zipper.

[Zip]

She hated him so fuckin’ much.

She hated the way he walked, she hated the way he wore his guard uniform like it was a casual suggestion rather than the mark of authority that it should have been. She hated the the spring in his step and that callow way he carried himself, like there wasn’t a care in the world. Take all that away and she would have hated him anyway.

He was a defier.

Defiers. Always fuckin’ defiers. The go-to when it came to arcane firepower. The great club that made everyone else look like a scalpel.

She hated them more than Becomers. Hell, she hated them more than Aberrants. The former were animals, skilled animals perhaps, but still beasts that ate their own damn crap. Self-mutilators with a loaned heart and a borrowed spine. She didn’t need a Padfoot to usher in a carnival of freaks and rejects to fan that the flames of that particular ire. The latter were junkies; addicts. Slaughter is one thing, but to build it upon a thralldom of escalation? Weak. Weaker than cheap fabric. They had made unto themselves whores, and if some of the tidbits of information rang true, they performed rituals of bindings with beasts from the beyond to assuage thirst unending. They would barter shackles for a ball and chain… Only for the shackles to return in time.

Worse than Junkies then; ill-planned creditors too. The only thing worse than having no control was actually HAVING some measure of control but squandering it to mismanagement.

They were, ultimately, Victims with a capital V.

Victims with the alleged power to carve away at the world the likes of which her Corrosion abilities could scarcely dream of - but victims nonetheless. Even if the greatest of them could command rot enough to weather away a nation but they would always be, in their weak core of cores, a dopefiend with a fix that would never go away.

But Defiers?

Defiers were flat-out delusional.

They spoke to earth, cajoled wind, found more warmth in fire than mere physical heat, and sang to water. They were nuttier than a squirrel's cache of acorns, and they revelled in it.

And she had to babysit one as her partner. Yay.

Of course, there were other implications to this. She wouldn't deny to herself that she didn't like the possible insinuation, nay, insult that she couldn't take care of herself by attaching an element weaver to her.

"Presentation," she said coldly, her ith'ession harsh as the rocks he loved so much, "Is pretty fuckin' paramount." She pointed a finger sharply at the untucked abomination that was his uniform. "Tuck that in before I tuck you in, hobo." She didn't even respect the uniform, sure, but it was a useful hypocrisy, and there was no reason to ignore cleanliness just because you didn't like something.

[Robin Stark]

Robin frowned. There was something unsettling about his would-be partner.

Her presentation was flawless, but the effort was obvious. Her uniform was unusually crisp. Victor made Robin iron his clothes, when he'd been alive. The old man had been obsessed with his appearance. Every day, Robin had been made to wake fire, urge it alive and excited. He borrowed the heat to press the wrinkles out of the clothes. It lasted Victor a break or two, before the excess of his body uglied his clothes again. She, still nameless, didn't have the same problem, apparently.

The breeze quickened to a gust. It curled around his legs, a miniature tornado of leaves and dirt.

He allowed himself to smile, remembering he wasn't alone. The earth felt her, weighing her, sizing her up. Perhaps she felt it changing under her. Earth wasn't the most subtle of the four.

"I don't speak your language," Robin offering her another smile. Her words had been harsh, layered in loud judgment. The pointing hadn't helped. "Is there an issue with my uniform?" He asked, smile light and airy and his voice sweet like sugar-saturated fried cakes.

He also noticed her face.

He also noticed her form.

He pretended like he didn't.

Robin sighed, scratching the back of his head, flakes of white skin landing on his shoulders. He stood with an ease of someone with much better balance than he had; the earth made sure he would never fall. He stretched, yawning. "So, what's first? Besides finding a translator if you can't understand me," he wide smile curdled with sarcasm.

[Zip]

Zipper might have been somewhat okay in common once, but her nigh-monoreliance on Ith'Ession over the last 8 arcs meant that she was sorely out of practice when it came to speaking in the universal tongue. Her comprehension skills, on the other hand, were still sharp enough to catch that last part of his words crystal fuckin' clear: if you can't understand me.

This fuckin' shite.

He walked into her city from his backwater forest-infested piece-of-shit sinkhole he called home without knowing a single word of the local language, managed to snag a job as law enforcement, and had the audacity to ask her whether he could understand her.

She really, really, really hated Defiers.

So she said the words that came all-too-easily even in the common tongue:

“Fuck you.” No venom, no anger, no spite; just matter-of-factly stated. She had been through 4 partners in her 1 and a half arcs as a Black Guard, and let’s just say only 1 of them died. The rest quickly found that there were less… Demanding colleagues they could work with.

“So you do understand me,” Robin smiled, his head tilting lazily to the right. He shifted comfortably in bench; lounging, in a word.

“Not enough to adequately inform you that you’re a complete fuckin’ tool,” she said, switching back to the mother tongue for a brief and petty jibe. “Listen? Yes. Speak?” She shrugged. Okay, this was going to be a challenge on every conceivable level. “Shirt in. Name? Or have the elements claimed it and your manhood both. It’s a misnomer, really. You call it Defiance but you sit at the lap of your pretend two-bit cunt gods.”

She made hard eye contact with him all the way through, making sure that, although he had no way to understand what she was exactly saying, he knew the rough gist of the friendliness level in it.

[Robin Stark]

She clipped and sharpened her words against him, at him. The local language was soft and gentle, the few consonants cradled between generous vowels. She managed to turn each syllable into a weapon. “I don’t like to wear my shirt in,” he said, his smile souring with condescension. Victor had dictated his world with strange and spontaneous regulations. When he died, Robin hadn’t the slightest interest in replacing them.

Her response came quick and sharp: “I don’t care.”

He shrugged away her response. “My name is Robin,” he said, his tone bored. The wind picked up around them, spiraling. A breath into a breeze into a gust. It blew between them, uneasily. “Who are you?”

What was the word for it in common? 3 syllables. No, 4 syllables. Something about decorum. Hmmmm. “Presentation.” she said. Shite, even their word for that sounded like it wanted to attend a school. “Shirt.” She pointed at her own tucked in uniform very, very slowly, as if talking to a slow child, then pointed back at his sad mess of a uniform. “In Guard now.’

“I don’t care about presentation,” his eyebrows knitted in frustration. His lips stuck out, pouting, because sometimes he was a child. Robin crossed his arms, the ground stiffening around him because he was spiteful. They shared so much, him and the earth, but above all, they were both stubborn. Zipper’s expression never changed from that dead, blank stare she always had, but the air about her darkened a bit.

She needed to -no, not punch his face in, though that was certainly coming soon the rate they were going- formulate her next sentence in common to not sounds like a chimp with a vocabulary. This was like trying to herd cats into a pen. No, this was like trying to herd Finn.

[Zip]

She heard that Finn was back. Definitely this time, according to the source she heard it from. Which was what they said the last 5 fuckin’ times. They saw him come in with a man - and she was stuck finishing this before she could go see whether it was true. She didn’t dare believe it and it killed her not to know, but a job was a job. You just didn’t ditch because something in your life happened.

Compare and contrast Robin, who was going to have something happen TO his life in a few bare bits.

“You going to fight me on this, Defier?” She got the verbs right on that one, she hoped. This language was both annoying, needlessly wordy, and too keen on suffering redundancies. Kinda like this Defier, actually.

“Feeling lucky, partner?” Robin snorted, smugly. He wasn’t deaf to the rumours of defiance. They, meaning anyone not like him, talked. They, meaning those like him, were insane. They were broken and dependent on mirages they pretended were real. They were dangerous. “I don’t want to fight you on anything,” he pushed himself off the bench, the earth stirring and flexing beneath them. “Why is this even important to you? What the fuck is your problem?”

She left his stomach in knots and his fists clenched. Robin was suddenly very aware of the weight of his swords and knives. The wind bubbled between them, crying for space. Robin breathed, slowly, intensely, deliberately. The wind had shown him this, to learn calm. After every storm, peace was promised.

Which was, Zipper would have thought, the storm hag Chrien licking her wounds before launching her next assault on the land.

“Listen to me very carefully, you language-challenged shite,” She wasn’t doing this in common anymore. That was a brief courtesy she extended to him. A courtesy that he clearly had no regard for. A lot of Black Guard had no respect for the job. Frankly speaking, she didn’t either. But just because you didn’t respect something didn’t mean you had to suck at it. Everything she did reflected on the position and, more importantly, her. If you fail at even the most basic level of presentation, you fail at every rung you climb. The foundation was king. “I don’t know what you were back in the dump you called a home and I don’t know why you’ve come to Etzos. I say your so-called elements have pimped you out so much you’ve lost your wit, but that’s neither here nor fuckin’ there. You serve an institution: as its face and as its sword. You will conform to it, sir, and I should think you should be used to it by now, seeing as you’ve been a whore your entire life to imaginary elemental overlords.”

[Robin Stark]

It seemed to be a strangely universal truth: vulgarity comes before utility, when learning a new language. Whatever the equivalent of ‘cunt’, “fuck’, ‘shit’ and ‘whore’ was in the local language, he was beginning to recognize it.

The girl bitching at him seemed to used it every 3rd word.

“Who the fuck are you?” Robin snarled, wind rippling over his fists. His fingers curled into his palms. His heartbeat thumped, thumped, thumped. Her words echoed and his cheeks burned because he wasn’t sure why her words weighed like rocks in him. She, still nameless, irritatingly. She, her face calm and her uniform miraculous.

And then she said the words that set him off: “Your mom.”

“You --,” he scowled.

“Need --,” his shirt was still untucked.

“To --,” he decided to act.

“Stop.” He knew, as soon as his hand reached out, he’d regret it. He knew, as soon as his index finger pushed against her left shoulder, he’d passed a line. The earth cracked behind her, loud because it didn’t see any reason to hide. It wanted her to know that it was here, listening.

And she noticed.

There was no anger -well no more anger than she got out of bed with everyday- at the shove. No anger at the his little predatory display behind her, though she did have to hold herself from breaking eye contact and looking behind in surprise. No anger at at all when he decided to raise his voice. No, no, there was no rage at all.

[Zip]

Which meant she could have controlled herself when her arms whipped out, grabbed him by both shoulders, and drove a knee deep into his stomach, intended to kick him in the face when he dropped to his knees-

But that never happened.

To her surprise, he wasn’t the only one growling in pain. Her knee fuckin’ smarted - and not in the usual way. She had a long storied career of driving knees into tummies, and this was more than just a strong core. She rubbed her bruised knee tenderly.

“The fuck are you made of?”

She was quick. She reacted like the wind, grasping and pulling his shoulders, the whole of his body pulled down as she brought a knee up to meet him.

Robin felt the hit. She was trained, obviously. He grunted more in surprise, than in pain.

“I’m a fucking defier,” he smirked, holding his stomach. “You get four guesses.” A tremor spiked from the under, hitting the surface with a precise intensity. A promise, it said, of more to come.

“Water,” she said, defiant, hoping the phrase she used was right to convey the insult. “Wet Blanket.” Fuckin’ hell, she had to pick a fist fight with someone made of stone. No, not accurate. His skin felt like skin. Under? The muscles? The bones?

Robin laughed like a crumbling cliff. “That’s your magic? Bad jokes?” His body was ready; his knees were bent and his shoulders loose. He wasn’t trained, but he was a quick study. Robin had seen people fight before -- not against someone as vindictive as his almost partner, but still. “You talk enough shit about defiance I thought you’d know something,” he frowned, sucking on his front teeth. “My kin is earth. Good luck knocking me down.”

A challenge then.

And she responded to it.

Robin was a head taller than Zipper. He had the height, he had the reach and, as a guy, he had more muscle packed onto him than she would ever have. He was clearly not much of a brawler, pampered defier that he was, but that hardly mattered. Everything that could have made him inexperience a liability: his lack of a strong base stance, his unprotected chin, his clear discomfort in a straight brawl - all nullified by the simple fact that he was stone. Simply standing still was a defense she couldn’t beat even if she hammered him a dozen times over-

She wasn’t going to use magic. Not openly anyway. A fight between two guards? An ugly sight, no doubt, but not as dire as two mages openly trading spells in public.

Wait…

WAIT.

Was it the muscle or the bones? Or both?

One very simple way to find out.

Sorry, knee.

She came at him again, knees slightly bent, hands up as if ready to brawl, her pace cautious - before throwing all to the wind once again, her knee rising up again-

Only this time it smacked straight into his groin.

[Robin Stark]

Everything was slow. Robin remembered laughing as she readied herself. Knees bent and hands up, he thought she was stupid to try again. He’d smiled even because she was a joke.

Now he was on the floor.

His hands holding himself and his eyes watering.

Robin cursed through the pain. His speech was suddenly incredibly more colorful. He might have impressed himself, but the stomach-twisting hurt between his legs was more pressing. The earth had softened to sand, a cushion as he squirmed. He yelled.

He yelled in pain.

Then he yelled for earth’s power to take her.

Robin pushed out his legs, the earth solidifying at an angle. He kicked, desperately, angrily, the earth mirroring his need for violence, rising up in the form of a sword and lashing out at Zipper’s knees. She tried to jumped - and only tripped, stumbling forward onto him. She had violent brawls, she has downright vicious brawls, she had brawls where her nose be broken and she couldn’t move by the end of it-

But this?

This was downright embarrassing.

In the last moment before their bodies collided, she made sure her elbow was angled such that it smashed straight down on his face. Super bones or not, bruised elbow or not, she was gonna smash that nose bloody.

“Dick,” he hissed, watching as she danced over his spell -- almost. The earth was determined to hurt, to punish. It knocked her balance, what was close to perfect was cut in ruins. He would have laughed.

Instead, she plowed his nose.

There wasn’t a crack, but it hurt. She squashed whatever his magic hadn’t hardened into stone. His arms moved up in a too-late offensive and only caught air. “Get off me, crazy!” He awkwardly bent and squirmed, whatever he could do to move her.

The wind blew above them, a hurried panic. It whistled cheers and boos, but didn’t dare to interfere. It wasn’t the earth after all.

Robin grunted, his hands grasping for what he hoped was her hair and in perhaps the most undercutted move he’d tried since he was in single digits, he pulled.

[Zip]

They used to say she fought like a girl.

When she didn't punch hard enough, they sneered and said she fought like a girl. When she kicked ineffectually at their big, strong boy thighs, they laughed and said she fought like a girl. When she dared to go for the scratch over the blow because she didn't want to hurt her hand, they said she, three guesses, fought like a girl.

She hated that line. She really, really hated that line repeated like some kind of rallying cry for the boy's club. It triggered something fierce in her, something old and buried and especially ugly that she carried from the moment she could walk. that made her go for the jugular every single time because what else could one do when everyone else was bigger.

The point is: she thought she would never use it as an insult. She would never lower herself to a rudderless boy thug flaunting the advantage borne from an accident of birth.

Except...

Robin Stark fought like a fuckin' girl.

It all happened so fast: the crash that send them both into a heap on the ground, the downward elbow that smashed blood out of the Defier's nose and sent an impossibly sharp pain up her arm that could only very well mean a temporary smarting or a fuckin' bone fracture, the brief, messy struggle for control that led to her on top, pinning his chest down with her bum, and him on the bottom where he belonged and-

He grabbed her by the hair with both hands and yanked her down with all his considerable might, tugging like his life depended on it, her head touching the ground next to him, their heads only just inches apart. She turned her head to the side, as much as the tugging would allow; brief eye contact, broken by her trying and failing to bite him.

She could hear effort of his tugging, he could hear her whimpers of pain. She could feel the rise and the fall of his chest, he could feel the way her now sweat-drench hair strained at his grasp.

Fuck him.

The Jugular, right?

Not a lot of the places on the outside that didn't have the support of bones. She hit the groin, she could try for the ears, she could go for the nostrils-

But nothing beat a good eye goughing.

It was an awkward angle, but she managed to worm her hands onto her face, pressing against his cheeks, before slowly working up towards his eyes.

Thumbs in.

Thumbs fuckin' into delicate eyes.

When Robin screamed, the earth screamed with him this time - lashing out at her. She barely had her thumb in for a trill before the earth rose around them, about them, and above them, forming into a weird vaguely-formed hand that literally slapped her off and across, sending her skidding back bodily with a loud and painful-sounding thump.

Robin would, perhaps later, realize he hasn't done anything; his defier's Guardian had manifested.