thearena | (no subject)

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Who| Roland and Aang
What| a daring rescue
Where| main spaceport area
When| week one
Warnings/Notes| violence? Probably nothing graphic, will update here if so.

Being hunted isn't a foreign thing to Roland, not by beasts or by men. That experience has served him well, because some of the creatures of this place - the tall, hunched ones, with the tails and long, stretched heads - seem to be a little of both, at least so far as intelligence goes.

Rather, that experience has served him well until now. He can't shake this one. It's only one, but even if he had a better weapon than this single twisted piece of metal, one of those creatures would be more than enough. Each turn along this hallway is taken without much thought now, decisions to go here or there made with a process more like instinct than conscious calculation. There's no use trying to lose the thing now. Far too close. But something keeps telling him that it isn't time to fight. Not yet, not yet...

Here. The room next to him is just like most of the others, door stuck halfway open, flickering light shining off the metal table visible just inside. Nothing unique here, but it doesn't occur to Roland to question that this is the right place. It might as well be here. He keeps that one weapon in the more secure grip of his left hand, ignores the hallway off to one side in favor of facing the way he'd come. The sound the thing makes isn't a roar, not really, and is all the more frightening for it.

Roland stands still, muscles loose and posture ready, and waits.

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Aang, despite his constant energy, sometimes runs himself down and needs to sleep. There aren't many places to safely nap in, but he has taken to finding little hidden corners to recharge. Places out of sight where he can easily hear if someone is coming.

He's sleeping inside a cabinet in the room when he hears the commotion in the hallway. It wakes him up immediately, and he hears human footsteps coming into the room.

He cautiously peeks out of the cabinet to see who's there. Roland. Looking ready for a fight. That can't mean anything good.

The boy swings out of the cabinet, landing lightly on his feet. He's looking much skinnier than before, but he's still strong from the nutrients he pulled from the air. "Hi, Roland." He doesn't know what's chasing the man, but he's ready to fight with him.

"Not the time, Aang." He gives the boy a glance over, assessing him. That unfed look is noted, and that he looks so this early into this latest arena is filed away, but of course - more urgent problems. "Go back in," he says, jerking his head the way Aang'd come. "I'll draw this thing off, but you'll have to hurry."

Roland takes a step forward and to the side, expecting Aang to move back into his hiding spot and meaning to block the creature's view while he does it. He adjusts his grip on his 'weapon' - might help to try and cut the thing somewhere, make it angry, but it shouldn't be too hard to keep its attention.

"What? No!"

Aang does not go back to his hiding place. In fact, he seems a little offended that someone would tell him to when he isn't visibly wounded or impaired. Once again, he's working under the assumptions from his own world, which were always "if they can bend, they can help" regardless of age.

"Those things are dangerous. It's better if we fight it together!"

Roland's head jerks up. You never, ever look away from an approaching enemy but he half-does now, grimacing at Aang, then looks back toward that bend in the hallway. Something's poking around it now, maybe the tip of a nose, or some sort of snout.

Too late now.

"Spread out, then. So it can't take both of us at once." But even as he finishes saying it, Roland knows that's not going to be possible. Even if they spread out in the one direction the narrow hallway affords them they'd still be too close together. It's that tail. That's going to be a problem.

It's moving slow, still stalking. If it thinks like the animals of his world, it'll keep doing that until one of them moves - his only hope to use the weapon he's got is to get it close. Very close. Closer than he really wants to. Close enough that he can almost feel the vibrations from the noises it makes, enough that he's holding his breath in case the feel of it prompts the thing to attack.

Then, with every bit of his old speed, long unused but thankfully not rusty, he moves. His hand goes under that mouth, shoves the metal up into its throat and pulls, tears as much as he can before he has to throw himself to the side and roll, hoping vaguely that Aang has enough sense to get out of the creature's way.

Aang does indeed have the sense to get out of the creature's way, but he doesn't seem to have the sense to avoid it. In fact, he slides along the floor, deftly avoiding the mouth and tail and instead going for its stomach, aiming a kick at it. There's a rush of wind, and his foot never quite connects with the alien's belly, but it's still lifted off its feet momentarily.

He intends to land it on its back. That way, Roland could have an easier time dealing with it.

It almost gets there - then those spines on its back hit the wall and it rebounds, rolls, finds its feet with another one of those sharp, echoing noises and moves toward the closest target. Which happens to be Aang.

But Roland's been moving, too, and even as it reaches out with those claws, even as the floor below it hisses as spots are eaten through with the thing's blood, Roland ducks under its swipe and shoves. With luck that shove will send Aang well into that little room he'd come from, but Roland does not look around to see. He just spins, grip tight around his one weapon, and finds himself alone with the creature, and alone with its rage.

Edited 2015-01-11 02:24 (UTC)

It does send him back into the room, but it also sends him right into the corner of a table. One that drives itself deep into the scar Azula left him.

It feels like the lightning all over again. The energy blasting all the way through each chakra, all his past lives waking up at once, Roku Kyoshi Kuruk Yangchen was that all he needed a good thump in the back--

His tattoos are glowing. So are his eyes and mouth. He brings his arms down and water bursts from the piping, shooting out of the walls and swirling in the air before going right for the alien, intending to freeze it to the ground.

It's moving as the water hits it, and moving when it freezes. As Roland watches the creature reaches out, and ice hardens over its claws. It snarls, and the water freezes and cuts off the low, rippling noise.

Roland turns, gaze flickering over Aang's glowing tattoos and settling on his eyes. "If you're able, we'd better move. That may not hold it for long. Are you going to be alright?" Hopefully whatever's happening to Aang now is reversible. Handy as it was, he knows next to nothing about what is and isn't normal in the boy's world. If this is bad news, too, he'll deal with it.

Aang--or, well, whatever it is now wearing Aang's face--turned briefly to look at Roland. Its expression was all wrong and different from Aang's. It's angry. There's rage written all over its face, even when its eyes are blotted out by light.

Then it turns to face water now leaking from the hole in the wall. With a graceful motion of both arms, all the water freezes solid, creating arches of ice hitting the opposite wall and icing the ground, catching the alien in a network of pillars and slippery floor should it escape its block.

Then the glow fades from the tattoos and eyes and mouth. The anger is gone from the face. Now it's Aang, and Aang turns to run from the frozen alien, tugging Roland's sleeve gently so he can come along. "I think we should go."

Roland's tense, wary, because he'd held himself very still through all that, very ready. Aang's power had been obvious, as had the fact that his reactions could no longer be predicted. A single expression might not be considered much evidence of that, but it's an expression he never thought to see on that particular face. The expression of someone not just willing to kill, but maybe eager for it.

Roland knows that feeling, or some version of it, and is sure he can recognize it well.

Nonetheless, Roland (carefully) allows himself to be led along, because Aang hasn't given any direct evidence they're no longer allies, and because the expression that'd gone along with that light has gone. "After a few turns it should be safe to stop."

He eyes Aang as they move, looking for any hint of - well, of anything. "Though it'll be a long time before it escapes from that." It isn't phrased as a question, but a look at Roland's expression may make it clear that it is one, anyway.

Aang's not quite as steady on his feet as he should be. He stumbles and drifts to the side, as if he's trying to run while coping with a light head, which is in fact the case.

"Yeah. The Avatar State is effective like that." It doesn't occur to him to explain it, because even after months of the Capitol, he still finds himself assuming that everyone knows what an Avatar is and how it works. He stumbles again, shaking his head to try clearing it before straightening out his path. "I didn't know that all I needed was to get hit in the back. I would have done that forever ago if I did."

For all Roland's caution, for all his newfound wariness, Aang looks like little more now than a child who's tried to stay too long past his bedtime. Roland puts a hand on the back of one of his shoulders but doesn't let it land there - keeps his grip light, careful, and watches Aang's face for that other, alien expression.

"Here, in this room." He nods at a nearby doorway, heading toward it and trying the pad beside the door. For the most part the ones in this station work, and this is no exception. "You can sit down before you fall. Your, ah, avatar state. Is that something I ought to be concerned about?" He likes you, Aang, but not enough that he is going to tiptoe around the practical questions.

Aang follows Roland not unlike a sleepy child being led to bed. There's no hint of the rage that had defined his expression before.

"Concerned?" He shakes his head, trying to clear it again, but it feels like all the muck in his chi paths and chakras is being cleared all at once and it's disorienting. "No, it won't hurt you. Not unless you try to kill me."

Aang thinks at this point it's a safe assumption that Roland won't try to kill him.

"Hm," he says, noting that. He's got no intention of killing Aang, not remotely, but that isn't to say this information might never be somehow useful. "Come lay behind this table, I'll keep watch while you sleep."

He pauses, closing the door behind them before he continues. No way, of course, to lock these doors, so this will have to do. "'It' will come out whenever you're in danger, then? Now it's been woken up by a hit to your back? ...I cry your pardon for that, by the way. I ought to've paid more attention to where I was throwing you."

"Thanks." Aang curls up behind the table, his head spinning with all the connections being reestablished. Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk, Yangchen...

"Someone hit me with lightning and locked up my chakra. I guess it just needed a hit to unlock again." He yawns, resting his head in a cradle made from his own arms. "It's not so scary once you're used to it. Actually, that's a lie. It's always scary. But it only comes out when I'm in a lot of trouble or get really angry. I think I might be able to control it, but last time I tried that was... nine months ago?"

Another yawn. His eyes flutter shut. "I've been here too long."

"Better than the alternative," he murmurs, and watches the boy a moment. He still doesn't understand what happened to Aang just now, can tell he has nothing close to a full picture of whatever that Avatar State actually is, but perhaps he doesn't need to. Roland walks closer, settling himself against the leg of the table nearest Aang's head, and stops looking for a trace of anything other in Aang's expression. He isn't going to find it. All he is going to find is a boy who must have been afraid, not too long ago. A boy who is tired.

"Never mind that now," he says, and puts a hand on Aang's back. "Go to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."

Edited 2015-02-13 16:48 (UTC)

Aang nods, comforted by the contact, and shut his eyes. He falls asleep quickly, and will sleep peacefully as long as he needs to.

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I believe this is the end.