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| A Breath of Fresh Air; Jondor as a Kid | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 15 2016, 04:48 AM (197 Views) | |
| JondorHoruku | Aug 15 2016, 04:48 AM Post #1 |
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The King of Alliteration
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This is mainly because I got tired of writing grimdark woeisme curse fate and fortune etc. Jondor, and wanted to write the person he could've been... or more accurately was. He was given the name Érmis by his first gang, which I might introduce later, from the Celestial constellation equivalent to Hermes, the god of theives, tricksters, and travelers. He chose the name Jondor when he started interacting with gangs more. Kinda a defensive front. And he thought it was cool to have a codename. OH, I did get permission/approval from Xalk to use Janus. Thanks Xalk. Enjoy Érmis ducked around a corner, a massive grin plastered across his face. He hiked the makeshift satchel higher on his shoulder and glanced back around the corner, quickly withdrawing at the sight of his pursuers. His smirk grew. Just some Black Rats, a low level gang. He glanced at his arm, shifting the wraps to reveal a rat tattoo, tail coiled around his arm. He tossed his loot onto a fire escape above his head, and sat down quickly, ducking his head as if he were asleep just as the patrol rounded the corner. “GOTCHA PUNK!” one shouted, grabbing Érmis by his hood and lifting him to eye level. The eleven year old looked the massive man in the eye with a tired smile, “I’m sorry,” he feigned a yawn, “what seems to be the problem officer?” The man tossed Érmis back into the gutter, “I ain’t no ‘officer—” Érmis rose, smiling brighter, “Well, that’s good, who are you then?” “I’m an enforcer, Black Rats, and y—” “OH!” he cried, giddy, raising his arm, “I’m a Rat too!” the man grabbed the tiny arm, twisting it to see the rat right-way up. He tossed Érmis his arm back, “Be that as it may, I’m looking for a punk who—” “I just saw him, he splashed me right on top o’ the head he did!” he gestured to a mud splat on the top of his hood, received by the recent dumping in the gutter. The big man needed a little more convincing, however, “Here,” Érmis called, running forward, “He went this way, come on!” The man, not to be shown up by a ‘punk’ to his own men, shoved Érmis behind him and jogged off, “We’ll take it twerp,” he snapped, not looking back. Érmis bowed with a flourish, “my pleasure, your majesty,” he stuck out his tongue and hopped up onto the fire escape. He grabbed the napsack, rifling through its contents, a packet of gum, a deck of playing cards, a packet of crackers and a few apples he had swiped this morning from a vendor’s cart, and wrapped in cloth in the middle of his pack was his prize. He was nearly giddy as he flung the bag back onto his shoulder and shimmied up to the top of building. He stood on the edge of the roof, overlooking the twisted metropolis. He grinned, breathing in the smog and smoke of the undercity of Zaun. He took a few paces back into the middle of the roof, got a running start, then began leaping from roof to roof, whooping with each successful bound. He stopped making noise as he approached his hideaway. He slipped down a gutter and glanced around. There were no prying eyes nearby, he whistled a trio of trills, which was answered by a matching quartet of trills. He grabbed a bar over a culvert and slung himself down the hole, arms crossed over the pack he had moved to his chest. His feet burst through a mat and he tumbled into a brightly lit chamber. He slung the pack back onto his shoulder and tapped a button near the entrance. He glanced at an indicator, still green. He punched the panel, and the light turned red, and the mat sealed the room with a hiss. “Be nice to the Hextech,” Janus called from across the room, “It breaks because you hit it.” “I dunno, it seems like I fixed it to me.” Janus rolled his eyes, sliding over on a chair, propping his elbows on a desk and staring at Érmis. “You get it?” “Heck to the yes,” Érmis replied, producing the carefully wrapped piece of equipment with a flourish. He placed it on the desk and held his hands out from the sides. He looked at Janus with a raised eyebrow. “OH, just open the darned thing,” Janus chuckled. Érmis pulled the fabric off with a swish, revealing… a thing. It was very shiny, had several ports, and was obviously valuable, but Érmis didn’t have the slightest clue what it was or what it did. “I PRESENT, YOUR DOOHICKY!” He proclaimed, gesturing to the large cylindrical object. “It’s a Hextech power converter, you idiot,” Janus replied snatching the contraption off the table. He lifted it, turned it upside down and jiggled a switch. Four lights came on: green, yellow, orange, and red. He set it on the desk and plugged two cables into it, “See, this cable draws in plain, boring energy from batteries, and my—” “Potato Zapper!” Érmis interjected excitedly. “—my Organic Energy Converter,” Janus supplied dryly, “And it turns it into more powerful and versatile magical energy for these hextech devices. For example, you don’t need to steal cells for your rebreather anymore, I can charge it with this.” “Prove it,” he replied, pulling the mask in question from his bag and tossing it to Janus. As Janus plugged it into the converter, he ducked behind a blast shield he had put together from discarded scraps of metal. “Come on, when was the last time I blew something up?” “Yesterday. You don’t have eyebrows, remember?” “Oh… yeah…” He rubbed his forehead absentmindedly. The twelve year old was a hextech wizard, but no progress came without cost. Mostly hair. “Well, here goes,” he plugged the converter into the traditional power source, the machine began to hum, a dial wavering at the bottom end of black. “What does that mean?” Érmis called from across the room. “Not enough juice.” “Give it some Oranges!” he ducked, chuckling, as a wrench flew across the room. “Maybe if I,” Érmis ducked lower and plugged his ears, nothing ever good came after the first ‘maybe if i.’ In a matter of seconds, a massive SNAP BOOM shattered the ‘Organic Energy Converter’ and shot the mask across the room, shattering it on the opposite wall. “Well that didn’t work,” Érmis observed leaning on his blast wall. He ducked and yelped as a series of bolts, tools, and parts zinged across the room. He pulled open the entryway, “I’ll make sure and bring some Organic Energy Cells,” he taunted, slamming the door shut behind him as a drawer of screws was thrown at him. “Get out!” Janus chuckled as he turned back to the power converter. He’d get the damned thing working. Eventually. Érmis climbed out of the hole, chuckling. He glanced upwards, he still had several hours of daylight left. Not that night and day were much different. The smog blocked most of the light of the sun, and the streetlamps lit the street like lighthouses. But the rats, monsters, and thugs prefered the streetlamps to the sun for some reason. He slipped through a narrow alleyway. Janus might be a wizard with the tools and such, but Érmis knew the streets better than the back of his hand. He climbed the two buildings and dashed along the rooftops. He needed a new rebreather, and he had a good idea where to get it. He leapt clear of a few ratty pigeons and rolled onto the roof of a warehouse. His smile was replaced with a thin line of determination. The warehouse in question belonged to the Wasps, a particularly nasty gang that had taken over from the Rats about a year and a half ago. They had expanded from a different part of town, and were, as far as he could tell, the largest gang in the city. The street rats, like Janus and himself, prefered smaller groups—no more than five or six. Grifters, pickpockets, and thieves mostly. He liked the term ‘Flitter,’ the Serpent’s name for the motley crews. It reminded him of moths, flitting in the gloom. Fast enough to avoid getting caught, but there just long enough to let you know they’d beaten you. Janus thought it sounded stupid, but that was because he lived in a cave most of the time. Érmis cracked open the rooftop window of the warehouse looked down, popping a piece of gum in his mouth. He grabbed the railing and slipped inside, hanging from the steel girders that made up the ceiling. He climbed hand over hand until he reached a thin catwalk. He swiftly descended to the ground floor, snatching a bright yellow hood and readjusting his wraps. He donned the hood over top of his green-black hood and, straightened, joining two dozen or so Wasps moving weapons and equipment. He saw the glint of a really fancy looking gun, Janus would’ve been able to identify the make, model, power source, output capacity, and charging frequency, but all Érmis saw was a big shiny gun, with a nice trigger. He shook his head, not the goal. He snatched up a big bundle of miscellaneous smaller devices and hefted it onto his shoulder, moving toward the back of the warehouse. He knew the Rebreather would be somewhere back here. He dropped the bundle and began sorting, or at least pretending to sort, the devices while he looked for the mask. He arranged them by size and color, moving the ones that seemed to like or dislike each other a bit too much farther apart. He found the rebreather, and pocketed it. He was having fun sorting the devices, so he worked his way to the bottom of the bag. He had about half a dozen strange rounded cubes that he couldn’t make heads or tails of when he was interupted. “Hey!” Some kind of floor boss, wearing a yellow leather jacket, and carrying a clipboard approached him. “How’s it hanging?” Érmis said, leaning against the shelf, making sure the rebreather was safely stowed. “It’d be ‘hanging’ a lot better if you weren’t putting an experimental Void grenade next to the Celestial fixation orb.” he said, moving the two devices in question to opposite ends of the shelf, he glared at Érmis, “Who are you, anyway? I haven’t seen you around before.” “I’m Jondor,” Érmis replied, glancing up the shelf and appraising its climb, “I’m small.” “The hell kinda an answer is that?” “I dunno why you haven’t seen me. Maybe it’s because I’m small.” The man glanced at him again, “Wait, I have seen you…” “Really, cool! Nice to meetcha again.” “Heh,” the man grinned evilly, “very nice indeed. You wouldn’t happen to be the same little pipsqueak that snagged my Elemental Fixator last week, would you?” “What’s an ‘Elemental Fixator?’” he moved closer to the shelf “It’s about yea big, has four cylinders, and makes a weird high-pitched whine when you turn it on.” “Like eeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooooooo?” Érmis demonstrated. “Exactly. Where is it? That thing was brand new!” “I’ve never seen it. And I think it blew up. I’m not sure though.” “YOU LITTLE—” The man dove at Érmis who climbed the shelving like a cat. He perched on the edge of the shelf like a monkey, “I’ve got two things to say, one, I sorted all these thingamabobs for you and this is how you repay me? And two—” he dodged a contraption that exploded into a net behind him, “Don’t interupt me when I’m talking, and TWO, this purple doohicky is supposed to touch the glowy star ball, right?” He tossed the grenade at the Celestial Fixation Orb. The moment they touched, time seemed to freeze for an instant, then the two balls exploded, creating a massive vacuum, sucking all nearby hextech into the rapidly expanding black hole. The man ran off screaming about a stabilizer and telling his associates to catch the blasted sewer rat. Érmis flipped a lazy salute and ran atop the bookcases, climbed a ladder to the catwalk and slipped out his entry point. He slapped on the rebreather, pressed a few buttons on the side until the air tasted different and slid down the gutter into a nearby sewer drain, waving cheerfully as he disappeared into the toxic gloom. He ran for about a dozen yards, took two lefts, then climbed out of a sewer vent. He turned of the rebreather, it was a slightly nicer model than his old one. He stuck the contraption in his back pocket and trotted back to ‘the lair,’ as he liked to call it. Again, Janus found the name childish. He flipped through the tunnel, whistling thrice. “COWABUNGA!” Thunk. “JANUS OPEN THE DOOR!” “Meh,” a slight rustling. The door opened suddenly and Érmis tumbled onto the floor. “Smooth, oh, I got a new mask.” “Let me see it!” He took the rebreather and plugged it into the converter. “I think I got it.” “Literally nothing is happening.” “If I just…” Edited by JondorHoruku, Aug 15 2016, 04:49 AM.
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7:15 AM Jul 11