The Park, Sunday Afternoon

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

Anemone was in the Park to feed the ducks.

Well, also to use the playground -- especially the swings -- but mostly to feed the ducks.

However, there didn't seem to be any ducks at all today, which was strange, so she was contenting herself with trying to coax Gulliver to use the seesaw with her. It wasn't working very well, especially once a small green creature flung itself at Anemone and started biting her leg.

Anemone stopped and looked at it blankly. Gulliver stared too.

And a few moments it was skittering backwards, making faces and spitting as if it had just eaten something sour.

"You totally deserved that," Anemone pointed out. "You shouldn't bite people you don't know, you might catch something. Now apologize, and you can play with us."

The gremlin hissed at her. Stupid icky weird person-not-person meat. It was her fault for not tasting good!

Anemone sighed, got up, and proceeded to start kicking it in the head. "Fine. Then we're going to play a game I like. It's called soccer, and you're the ball."

It was possible she was going to be at this for awhile.


[So totally open!]

Comments

[unborn-renegade.livejournal.com]

Jak wasn't much of a soccer player.

But Jak had a gun and a couple of gremlins. Okay, gremlin, singular, because the last of the couple had just gone soaring across the park with a yellow eco bolt embedded in his guts.

The last one quickly met a similar fate. "Hey!" he yelled. Just out of courtesy. Kind of.

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

Anemone drop-kicked her new 'friend', craning her neck up to see how high he was gonna go. "Hey!" she replied cheerfully. "Do you want to play too?"

[unborn-renegade.livejournal.com]

"Depends on what we're playing," Jak said, kicking his rifle up to get the scatter barrel back on. "Kill gremlins? Sure."

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"Is that what these are? I kinda figured, but I wasn't sure," she admitted. "Mostly I'm playing 'how far can they bounce,' since I'm supposed to be working on that whole killing people impulse, but I think for gremlins I can give myself a pass for the day. Killing them might qualify as community service."

[unborn-renegade.livejournal.com]

"They look like gremlins."

Jak... didn't need more of a hint to call 'em that.

"What else would we do? Staring's not going to make them go away."

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"They don't like playing soccer, or chase, or basketball," Anemone replied, ticking off the games she'd tried so far on her fingers. "They go away pretty quickly once I start playing."

"Besides, I've never seen a gremlin. How should I know what they look like?"

[unborn-renegade.livejournal.com]

Jak shrugged. "Small. Green. Bites. Doesn't take a rocket scientist."

Which Jak wasn't, so hey, score.

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"Could be aliens," she pointed out, totally unperturbed by the mild dig at her intelligence level. "Around here, assumptions are short-sighted and stupid."

[unborn-renegade.livejournal.com]

"They're trying to kill us," Jak pointed out. "So we kill them. How's that for assumptions?"

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

Anemone rolled her eyes. "It bit me," she said slowly, as if speaking to a small child. "Once. And then it stopped." Because it didn't find Coralians appetizing or whatever, but still. "Clearly they're agents of evil or whatever."

And she used to bite and punch people as a form of saying 'hello.' Anemone didn't hold casual violence against people. Or gremlins.

"But if you wanna play who can kill the most in under an hour, I'm game."

[unborn-renegade.livejournal.com]

"They tried to kill me and Jono yesterday."

What? It's not like Jak got grammar lessons anywhere. "If that helps." Beat. "But sure. Start the timer." He wasn't going to turn this into an argument.

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

Anemone grabbed her shoulder bag off the ground and started stuffing an unwilling Gulliver into it. "Come on," she coaxed. "You can't stay here while we have all the fun. You'll just find someone to give you treats, and you'll get fat."

Gulliver eyed Jak and gave a disgruntled burble, as if he knew who's fault it was for giving His Girl this idea.

[unborn-renegade.livejournal.com]

Jak shrugged at the... whatever it was. Not his problem.

"Think we got incoming," he said instead, stuffing a few more red eco pellets into his morph gun.

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

She hung the bag off the monkey bars of the playground, leaving poor Gulliver hanging.

"Timer starts now!" she whooped, taking a running start so she could take a leap and land on one that had been skulking about some bushes, its ribs making a sickening crack upon impact. "That's one!"

[unborn-renegade.livejournal.com]

"Hey!"

Oh, fuck it. Timer was on. He hurled himself forwards, too, Morph-gun-first, shoving a whole truckload of red eco into some gremlin's face and watching him explode with it.

"Even."

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

No one had ever accused Anemone of playing fair.

"That's cool," she said admiringly, reaching out to snap the neck of another one and throw it in a pile with her first. "Energy gun or explosive ammo?"

[unborn-renegade.livejournal.com]

"Eco ammo," Jak supplied. "Comes with a kick."

He leveled his gun at a shadowy patch of noise and fired, rushing forward to break a skull with the blunt end of his weapon. Multitasking was fun?

[bloody-luck.livejournal.com]

"I don't like these things any better than I did yesterday," Mat commented, making a face as he smacked one with the butt end of his ashanderei.

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"They aren't that bad," Anemone objected as she punted another one over the swings. "At least they make funny noises when they bounce!"

[bloody-luck.livejournal.com]

"They keep trying to eat my boots," Mat complained. "I only have this one pair!"

They were trying to do a little more than that, Mat.

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"Only your boots?" Anemone looked impressed. "One tried to eat my leg, but I'm afraid I disagreed with him."

[bloody-luck.livejournal.com]

Mat paused for a second, reconsidering. "Maybe that makes more sense," he admitted. "My boots are much too big for them anyway."

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"They might make good boots!" she suggested, reaching out to snag one that was charging her and flinging it against the playground equipment. "At least the green is an unusual color?"

[bloody-luck.livejournal.com]

"That is an excellent point," Mat said, slicing one in half. "Since the blue deer are off limits, maybe I could make a--what are these things, anyway?--belt."

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"I was informed earlier that they're gremlins, but since one bit me and I'm not making an idiot out of myself, I'm not sure that's entirely accurate." Oooooh, curb-stomp to the ribs! That one wasn't getting up again soon. "I thought they were supposed to make you hallucinate things."

[bloody-luck.livejournal.com]

"Yes, I have a coat that needs to be stitched back together," Mat said, making a face. "And blood is hard to get out of silk."

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"Cold water and hydrogen peroxide," she replied absently. "Leave it to dry in the sun, and then repeat if you have to."

Anemone wore white. A lot. She was very good at getting the blood stains out.

[bloody-luck.livejournal.com]

"Thank you," Mat said, bowing graciously and using that motion to smack a gremlin in the head with his weapon.

[bamf-tastic.livejournal.com]

After a bit of rustling, Kurt fell out of a nearby tree. The stream of German cursing wasn't doing much against the gremlins chomping on his fuzzy blue tail.

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

Anemone scooped up a few landscaping rocks and threw them at the gremlins attached to the blue boy. "You're gonna have to kick them or something," she supplied, "Nasty words don't do much."