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Skyfall (12): Giant walls of clouds hover low above Destiny City, as if weighed down by the immense amount of water they are carrying. The air is cool, electric, and ominous, churning more like the ocean than the sky. And then, the clouds seem to collapse under their own weight. Dark masses spill from the sky in great, twisting columns of mist, stretching down towards the streets below. They descend like hands stretching from the heavens, enormous enough to swallow half a city block. Anyone caught within the descending clouds will find themselves surrounded by a frigid mist and powerful winds pushing down upon them. Visibility drops to almost nothing. The clouds spill over you, around you, like a waterfall, tugging at clothes and disrupting all sense of direction. Most people stumble out cold, soaked, and disoriented--and, sometimes, they don't even come out at the same place they went in. More than once, someone has disappeared in the cloud, only to wind up across town. Within minutes, the cloud pillars shrink, twisting like dying tornadoes, and drift back into the sky as though nothing happened at all.
Now those, Ilmare thought, are some nasty looking clouds. She’d chosen a half rusted fire escape for a perch while her patrol partner was nearby. Lips twisting into a brief grimace, the corrupt wondered how on earth she’d been saddled with a partner. Only, she suspected she knew how. It was just one more way for the officers to keep tabs on anyone they weren’t completely sure about. And her partner was only a lieutenant, still new enough to not have earned total trust.
Glancing over at the blonde, Ilmare cleared her throat delicately. Whatever she might think and feel, it had to remain on the inside. Therefore, the weather was a perfect subject. Especially with how heavy and electric the air felt.
“You ever seen anything like this before?” she asked, waving a hand in the direction of the cloud bank above them. “I’m not sure the clouds looked this crazy even when the Hallow was running loose.”
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Dzhalindite looked up at the fat clouds and she was annoyed that she couldn't just summon an umbrella. She bet that senshis could do that; after all, they were perfect and got whatever they wanted. Dz was just walking along and happened to walk under the place where she sensed the energy of someone else. She highly doubted they were supposed to work together unless they agreed to help sell fake Star festival charms that would steal energy, which was actually a pretty good idea. "So do you want to work together to gather energy?" She wanted to make it clear that it was an offer to work together, not being forced. They got rewards for working well after all.
Gathering energy for the negaverse was like their top thing after all. Dz shook her head and said, "No, but it's likely normal for the season. This city can't do a holiday like a normal place, but whatever, it makes things interesting after all." She paused and said, "I'm Lt Dzhalindite." She said by way of introduction.
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Normal for the season?!? There was nothing normal about what they were seeing. Closing her eyes briefly, Ilmare forced herself to take three deep, measured breaths. To remember what she was like before she’d become so disillusioned. She’d been just as cocky and sure. Dzhalindite would learn. Everyone did, eventually. And when she spoke, her tone was all soft politeness. “Ilmare. And as a native of this ******** weird city, I can assure you those clouds ain’t normal. For any time of the year.”
She continued to watch for a moment, finally shaking her head though it was hard to say if it was with admiration or complete confusion. “Gods, they look like they could literally split wide open, don’t they.”
Her fingertips tapped nervously against the metal of the fire escape as she considered everything, brushing up against an opal star charm that she’d picked up on the street on her way here. No, she didn’t like this. The air was too heavy. No one in their right minds would be out. Not after last year’s series of lightning storms. She’d opened her mouth to say as much when the sky got even darker and the clouds began sending down great ribbons of thick.. Well? It wasn’t rain exactly. More like a thick mist. But it was cold and Ilmare jumped the moment she realized that her partner was nearly hidden by the mist.
“Dzha!,” she called, shortening the name, voice alarmed. “Don’t move, I’m coming down!”
She might not be a fan of the Negaverse, but the Lieutenant was, in a way, her responsibility since she was the more powerful. If she lost a lieutenant, she’d never hear the end of it.
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Dz frowned and cocked her eyebrow. "This city has thrown all sorts of weird stuff at me, you know, like a giant chicken, why not weird storm clouds?" She paused and then said, "Halloween and Christmas are never normal," she said, rolling her eyes it seemed this person thought they knew better than her about this city being freaky or they just weren't seeing eye to eye. Dz nodded and said, "Yeah, and I don't have an umbrella." She grumbled in an annoyed tone. She made a face. "Call me Dz if you want to shorten my name." She figured that the other person was not a nega soldier, likely a corrupt, and she found them annoying since they were pretty much just a senshi.
She waited for them to come down to talk to her. She wanted more power so she could hold it over this person who was annoying her. She rolled her eyes and did as ordered and waited for them to come down.
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The icy wind that accompanied the stupidly thick mist nearly made Ilmare’s descent much faster than she would have liked. Even so, when she let go of the fire escape to drop to the ground, it felt like the wind blew her off course by a few feet. And she couldn’t see anything. Shivering from cold and nerves, the corrupt senshi stood still for a moment and listened. She needed to find her partner. Because if Destiny City had taught her anything, it was that monsters could and often did exist within s**t like these clouds.
And she did not want to deal with cloud monsters. Not today.
“Dz!” she called, pausing to listen. “You okay?”
Maybe it was a stupid question, but since she couldn’t see and was being buffeted about by wind, it was a sadly logical question.
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Dz was caught off guard by the storm coming on so suddenly, it was windy and icy cold, which was pretty weird even for this city. She squinted her eyes and yelled back, "For the moment, but I don't think we are what I would call safe. This is weird even for Destiny City." As soon as she said that, the rain started to pour down, and it was like she was in a cloud. She tried to find the other person she had been talking to. "Are you okay?" She shouted over the pouring rain. She couldn't really see, and she didn't know how far this magic reached. For the moment, she decided to stay where she was in case the other person was able to find her, and they could get out of this together. She had heard of huge monsters in storms, so she wasn't messing around with a storm like this. Dz was soaked and annoyed as hell.
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