milliways_bar | (no subject)

Autor tilts his head. Clearly the gears are spinning. "Good point. Aside from creating a tiny"--there's that word again--"fuse, I haven't made any progress towards grenades that explode before impact. Hmm. I'll think on that."

Autor turns his back on her and feels his heart speed up in the process, lest she change her mind and blow him up from a distance. He walks about five feet away and gingerly--strange, I didn't have a problem handling this before--lays the grenade on a dry-ish patch of earth.

Then he jogs back to her and stands closer than before, with his hands resting on his hips. Marginally closer.

"Your move," he says, gesturing with the hand he's not using to adjust his glasses.

Punie hums thoughtfully. The explosion will be much smaller than that from the heavier shell, but she can still harness its energy.

This time, she brings her wand down in a sharp slashing motion, so quickly that there is an audible zip of displaced air. It seems to have a ripple effect, as the flash-bang grenade suddenly leaps into the air, spinning upwards as if struck from below.

When it explodes a moment later, a few feet above the ground, the entire force of the blast is directed down at the exact spot where Autor had placed it.

...for the amount of powder involved, the resulting crater is impressive to say the least. It is barely a foot in diameter, and almost as deep, but it is as neat and perfect a circle as if Punie had drawn it with a pair of compasses.

This time, her hum is short and satisfied. "It helps to have a target," she says, glancing at Autor. Deliberately.

Autor glances back, just as deliberately, and raises a brow. "I presented my back to you while I was holding the bomb. Why didn't you take advantage of that?"

You can take me out at any time, he thinks. Why not now, with a weapon and vulnerabilities of my own devising?

Showing his back to her yet again, he smirks and saunters to the new hole in the ground. "I'd hate to think of you as going soft," he says, looking for a stick to explore the smoothness of the packed-earth.

Once there, he tilts his head and offers her a lop-sided, nearly-but-not-quite-gentle smile. "You probably don't need any of these, but if you have an interest, I can make some for you the next time, when you're, er, when you watch..."

Trailing off, Autor clears his throat. He resumes poking at the hole with his stick, thoroughly impressed with her scalpel-like precision.

"Why should I want to take advantage of it?" Surprisingly, Punie almost looks hurt, or at the very least disappointed. If it's an act, it's a convincing one, as she scuffs the earth with the toe of one shoe. "Do you want me to? It's not a very nice thing to tease someone about, if you don't. You don't need to make things easier for me."

There is a moment's pause before she adds, with careful emphasis:

"I wouldn't want you to make things easier for me."

In a twisted way, this is as near to a confession as Punie is likely to come.

The change in her demeanor punches him in the chest. At first, Autor blanches, and his jaw drops. Then his cheeks burn hotter than the powder keg, and darker than the reddest of his smoke bombs.

"Really? That's funny," he murmurs, dropping the stick as he moves to her. "I thought you'd say something like, 'I wouldn't get to hear you scream'."

Autor stands before her, bowing slightly as he folds a clenched fist behind his back. His gaze smolders with jealousy, hatred, and a competitive flame.

"You're creative," he says, offering his hand. "So surprise me. But yes, I will fight you every step of the way."

He hopes it's a long way.

The color is high in her cheeks as well, healthy and pink with a maiden's flush of youth. She couldn't look more delighted.

"I'll do my very best," she promises him -- and then her expression shifts as she adds, suddenly cold and serene, "If I don't have a person or two by my side who wants to kill me, how can I call myself the Queen?"

She still has her wand in her hand, but magic won't do here. Not with the incendiary he surely has primed and waiting for her the moment she starts to reach for his hand.

However, a swift strike of her right foot to the sensitive spot just above his left kneecap -- not hard enough to break anything, but forceful enough to send white-hot pain shooting up and down his leg -- may do quite nicely for a start.

Her tone cools his belly, and prepares him for the coming pain, but not nearly enough. Autor doesn't give her the satisfaction of his crying out, though she may catch the sharp intake of breath through his teeth.

Still glaring through his pained smile, he drops to one knee as gracefully as he can manage--pretending, of course, that it's not the buckling that causes him to bow before her for a second time, but intent. He snatches her hand while he's falling, drawing her knuckles to his lips, but only for a second--tiny bombs with tiny fuses tend to explode mightily, he's learned.

And, of course, just after he captures her fingers, he lets loose the expected grenade at her feet with his other hand.

She can't deny that her heart skips a beat when he takes her hand, which only adds to her excitement.

The live grenade between them is no small part of that excitement as well.

Autor's already in motion, so part of her reaction is made a little easier. It's the work of a moment to flick her wand and send the grenade flying in the opposite direction, then yank him forward, leaping back to put them both mostly clear of the immediate blast radius. She can feel her shoulder dislocate from the sharp motion, but she had expected as much, and the most important thing is to avoid the shock wave from the explosion.

(She has years of training, and any number of brief shielding spells. He has neither.)

Punie manages to land on her feet, skidding briefly before coming to a half-crouched stop. Autor lands with far less grace -- mostly on his side, partly on his stomach -- several feet behind her, having skidded much farther than that.

Okay, now he's never laughed so hard in his life. Apparently abject terror is the best way to catapult him into a giggle-fit.

He pushes himself into a sitting position, and tests his leg before standing. It hurts--oh, everything hurts, so very much--but facing her down on his own two feet is more than worth any pain. Carefully, he pats down his hair and brushes what mud he can from his blazer.

"Your reflexes are about what I expected," he says, smirking.

Though why take me with you on your flight, young maiden? he wonders, tilting his head. You'd prefer I had bruises rather than burns?

He has flash bang grenades in his pockets if she wants to give it another go, but then he'd not be surprising her. He'll have to come up with something else.

Punie turns, enough for him to see her right arm hanging mostly useless at her side. A quick push sets the shoulder back into its socket -- with a sound that shoulders should not normally make -- and she rolls it gently to secure it in place.

"It was easier because you were moving." And because you were holding my hand. Her skirt has a bit of dirt on it as well, near the hem; she dusts it off as best she can. "You didn't think I'd let you get blown up into little tiny bits, did you? I still want to watch you make some more of your explosives."

And give him some more time to plot his next move.

Autor's eyes widen at her arm; he didn't actually think she'd been hurt. In fact, he still can't picture her damaged, as immortal as she is. He finds the dust on her skirt fascinating.

That he didn't do any of that is terribly irritating.

Ah, so she does know I'm not a fighter! Autor thinks. A frown supplants his smile, but only for a moment. Of course she knows. My stance gives me away. Well, I'll have to work within those limits, until I break them.

"That's very generous of you," he says, holding his hands out, palms up, as he crosses to her. He sighs, closing his eyes. "I'll try my best to make you regret the kindness you bear me."

Her cute fluffy mascot has sworn a bloody oath to never give her a moment's true peace. Her adorable little sisters would try -- have tried -- to remove her from the line of succession without a second thought. Even her beloved mother is eagerly awaiting the day when the heir to the throne will step forward to claim it, and only one of them will survive the outcome.

All the same, Punie has been looking for a new challenge. She may have found one.

And he blushes easily.

With her free hand, she takes one of his outstretched ones. "It's not kindness, silly," she says, with just a hint of teasing. "It's patience."

In fact, he's blushing now, as bright as a flame laced with strontium chloride. The boy doesn't wince, fearing reprisal for the grenade trick, but he does bite his bottom lip at the feather-light pressure of her fingers.

She has such delicate hands, he thinks, running his thumb over her knuckles. Delicate, and able to break my wrist in a heartbeat.

"Oh?" he says lightly, curling his lips into a fierce smirk. He doesn't notice the way his voice dropped into a rough timbre. "What a rare gift I've been given, then. Is your patience often rewarded?"

He's pretty sure he knows the answer to that, but... Surprise me.

She nods, smiling up at him. "And I can be very, very patient..."

Still holding his hand, she brings her other one up between them, to her eye level. Her candy-cane-striped Princess Rod is tucked against her palm, held securely by three fingers -- but pinched between her thumb and forefinger is one of Autor's remaining flash-bang rounds, picked from his pocket in his moment of distraction.

"...when I want to be."

Autor doesn't dare jerk his hand of her hold; she'd snap his fingers with little effort. His heartbeat slams his inner ears.

She managed to pin him, disarm him, threaten him, insult him, and embarrass him--all in a move. That she needs patience to deal with him, that she's waiting for him to catch up is just...

Oh, how he hates her.

"Cute," he murmurs, grinning fiercely. With his free hand, he reaches out, slowly, and--if she lets him--flicks her gently on the ear.

Remarkably, Punie does let him -- and she giggles softly, because it tickles.

(He has a lot of promise, and a lot of hatred, and she likes both almost equally.)

It doesn't stop her from immediately hooking a foot around his ankle and knocking him off-balance, of course. But the maneuver isn't to throw him to the ground, or pin him down, or do him (further) injury in retribution. Instead, still holding his hand, she twirls them both around until they're facing the direction of the bar.

"We should go and clean up," she declares pertly. "All these yucky powders on our hands and clothes might make the tea taste bad."

Autor probably also needs a bandage or six at this point.

His eyes widen, his lungs fill with air, and his teeth clamp down on his bottom lip. Her pretty little spin tweaks the pain in his leg which he'd been so valiantly ignoring. Now that he's not feeling an immediate threat--ha!--every bump and bruise and abrasion flares up anew, as if she'd flogged him.

Despite all of that, he is thankful she didn't break any bones or give him any sprains. He has weak ankles, and--at the moment--weaker knees.

"We will," he says, annoyed by the fact that his voice has gone breathy, "after I secure the explosives."

Dizzy, he tugs on their hands towards the bomb bag. Regardless of whether or not she follows or releases him, it only takes a minute or so to gather the bombs and encode them in his sylladex: "She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby, thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die."*

He stands carefully, and places a hand on his hip. Tilting his chin up, he gestures to the bar. "Shall we?"

*Shakespeare, Sonnet 11

She follows, letting go of his hand to allow him to collect his explosives. (She even adds the one she stole from him to the bag -- after the time and effort he put into making it, she wouldn't want to leave him without it.) She watches with no small amount of interest as he encodes everything, and uses the opportunity to return her Princess Rod to its pendant form, leaving both her hands free.

"Certainly!" she replies, bouncing a little on her toes. "Should we have cakes as well, or would the tea be enough?"

Autor, noticing her interest, holds the sylladex out for her inspection. It looks like a simple, leather-bound journal, and on each page is a drawing of, say, feathers, or bags. "A gift," he says, and then stores the inventory system in his pocket. "A useful one."

Then he grins, sauntering--in so much as he can saunter, now--towards the bar. "Cakes sound lovely. Thank you for the invitation to tea, Your Highness."

Holding open the door, he politely inclines his head. "After you."

It does look like a very useful gift -- and she'll have to keep in mind that he has it on his person.

"It's my pleasure," she says, as they approach the bar. "It's nice to have someone to share them with, don't you think?"

And then, on a whim, she reaches out to take his hand as they walk through the door.

[OOC: And yours to wrap, I think!]

Autor manages to contain his flush as she wraps her fingers around his. "Depends," he says quietly, smiling. "So far, it has been."

He really shouldn't get used to the feel of her hand.

But cakes are nice.

[OOC: Ah, these two. Thanks for the thread!]