A soldier on my own, I don't know the way

[sirnyxalot]

Who: Nyx Ulric and YOU
Where: Nyx and Luna's house, Crossbones Boxing, around town, etc
When: Late April into May, dates applied where necessary
What: Open Catch-all for various non-plot going ons
Warnings: Blanket warning for potential Ibaraki, but other than that we should be good. [Thumbs up.]
[Open]

A. Papa War Chicken has arrived!

[He knows there are chocobos in town. He isn't sure how they got here, since there don't seem to be any wild nests, but here they are. They're small, adorable, and only a minor handful all things considered. But current digs aside, Nyx has lived all his recent life in a city. He hasn't owned so much as a cat since he left Galahd. And apparently a small child or two if his fake memories were any indication.

So why is he stepping outside one morning to see a fully grown, green chocobo trying to dig up all the grass around their mailbox?!

Nyx stops short, not yet comprehending just what he's seeing. The bird is huge, clearly big enough to ride,
and seems momentarily content to remain tethered. He steps back into the house, closing the door behind him. He needs to make some calls.]


B. For all your ogling needs~

[Five days out of the week, sometimes six, Nyx spends hours working for Rumlow. It's not nearly as exciting as being a Glaive, what could be? But he's hauling weights, wiping down bags, and maintaining equipment, and in his off moments he gets to use it all. It's enough. Most days.

He'd had to adjust some old habits: learn how to tape his knuckles and turn his body into armor in the absence of leather and steel. This wasn't bar brawling by any stretch of the imagination. It was a focused style of combat that resulted in him on his ass more times than he'd like to admit, but there's a thrill in his blood every time he gets up in that ring that isn't tempered by a quiet knowledge that death could be around the corner.

Even without a partner to fight with, Nyx works out hard; pushes himself to regain what strength he'd lost coming out of the hospital. Making sure he's ready, but for what he wouldn't be able to say.]


C. Why bother locking the door when no one pays attention to it anyway?

[Before Luna arrived, Nyx had done very little with his house. He'd taken the main bedroom and then spent the majority of his time there when he was at home at all. Couldn't remember why until he started getting his memories back and realized he missed his stupid apartment in Insomnia. The house was just too big for him.

Now, though... now it's practically lived in. There are flowers decorating tables, and new things on the wall, and most of the rooms are even used for one thing or another. Nyx still spends most of his time in his room, but the rest of the house no longer feels empty. So he keeps the kitchen stocked with whatever gets put on the list on the fridge, keeps a list of numbers for whoever needs to be called if something goes wrong, and somehow manages to carve a life here.

It's weird, and somewhat wrong, but it reminds a part of him of Galahd, and every day it's just easier and easier to fall into an old routine that the soldier in him had long forgotten. He's even getting used to the regular company he gets, so whenever he's home he ends up just leaving the door unlocked so that he doesn't have to worry about someone parkouring through a window.

And sometimes, when the nightmares get too bad, one can find him sitting on his front step, staring up at the stars in the middle of the night.]


D. Choose your own adventure!

(ooc: Feel free to ambush him anywhere about town or use this to establish specific threads that might not fit into the above prompts. Otherwise, please question him about his overgrown green chicken or catch him working out in the very very rare times he's ever close to shirtless in public. Or hell, just walk in and say hi and steal his hot pockets. He'll only complain a little.)

Comments

b!

[unweaving]

[ There's a lot to think about, and Aranea's comfortable with precisely none of it. The constant surveillance, the wreckage, the memories that still nest in the back of her brain like they belong there. Aranea prides herself on knowing herself, on her drive and self-determination, and having that toyed with feels like a violation.

All of that adds up to a lot of frustrated steam to burn off, and a really good reason to head to the gym. It's that or taking her lance out into the woods to murder some trees, and that seems like it'd draw a level of attention she doesn't want. She's planning on pounding punching bags until her arms feel like jelly but then Nyx is there, and the memories she knows are false still pipe up and tell her he's a friend, and that's a hell of a lot less depressing. She greets him with a motion that's more a jerk of her chin than a nod, stretching her arms behind her. ]

Need a partner?

[sirnyxalot]

[A grin spreads across Nyx's face. It isn't very carefree. One may consider it a little dark, even. There are too many questions and unspoken conversations for Nyx to be even close to comfortable. Hell, with everything that happened during the flood, Nyx has only gotten more restless. So far he hasn't collapsed, sleep deprivation or not, so pushing himself harder only sounds like the best idea.]

All this time I've known you and I didn't know you could box?

[He digs a pair of gloves out of his pocket, tugging them on as he joins her. It's a tease more than a complain. Boxing, knives, street brawling.He's not picky about what they use as an outlet. His memories are fond: vague implications that they've done this before, and having a different partner besides Rumlow would be a great change of pace.]

[unweaving]

Box might be pushing it.

[ It's been a long time since she fought without her lance, but her time before the military included plenty of scrapping - most of it dirtier fighting than she'd get into with a friend, but enough to hold her own. She stretches briefly, grabs some wrappings and sets to work on her hands. Blowing off steam is all well and good, but split knuckles are no fun. ]

I can tussle. Maybe you can show me a thing or two.

[sirnyxalot]

I'll make sure not to go easy on you.

[He seems to recall her being more than enough to handle tussling with him, though those memories didn't involve any of the strike fighting the Glaives were known for. How much of the Aranea in his memories is real?]

[unweaving]

Sweet talker.

[ And with a savage little grin she squares up and throws a jab at him. It's an easy opener, something she expects him to block without trouble, but she doesn't exactly know how you're supposed to start these things when someone's not going for a gun or smashing a glass over your friend's head. ]

[sirnyxalot]

[It's good enough and he slaps the jab away with the back of his hand as he steps back into the stance Rumlow's been trying to beat into him. It's less and less unfamiliar every day he practices and he matches her grin before countering with a strike towards her ribs.

It's slower than he's capable of, but what's a proper spar without a vicious warmup?]

If that's your idea of sweet talking then I've been doing this all wrong.

[unweaving]

What can I say? I know what I like.

[ A little stilted, considering she's twisting away and blocking the strike with her forearm as she says it, but hey.

Slow as they're starting, it's enough to get her blood pumping. There's been too much going on to drag her down since she got her memories back for her to even notice how much she missed this, but her body remembers. She kicks out towards his knee, aiming to throw him off balance. ]

You give lessons here?

[sirnyxalot]

I could be persuaded.

[Technically no. He's hardly a boxer, even as he quicksteps to the side to avoid her kick. He couldn't teach it, but there are other things if she was interested. She's already got some kind of combat training. Trade a few hits and he can recognize a soldier when he sees one.

It's a beautiful push and pull and does a lot to ease how stir-crazy he's been.]

Rumlow's the actual trainer here. Holds classes twice a week.

[Changing tactics, Nyx throws a feint, bracing himself to take her next attack.]

[unweaving]

I can be very persuasive.

[ Which is too much faux-flirting and filing away the info about Rumlow's classes, and not enough concentrating, because she falls for the feint. It both throws her balance off a little and makes her overconfident, aiming her fist at his ribs as she's chatting away. ]

That where you learned?

[sirnyxalot]

I've been taking lessons. Gotta keep myself sharp and don't want to kill anyone doing it.

[He takes the hit to his ribs in order to capture her arm and sweep a leg behind hers.]

[unweaving]

Good - oof.

[ Where the oof, of course, is Aranea falling over backwards. She knows how to fall - suicide not to, when you've made a career of jumping out of airships sans parachute - so she rolls, and rises to her feet again with her grin a little less cocky, a little more sheepish. ]

Guess they're paying off. That's a hell of an endorsement.

[ Fists up again, circling, watching him properly this time.]

So you're ex-mil, huh?

[ An educated guess. It's in his style and his bearing, and if her fake memories put her in the army to explain away things from her real life, why wouldn't his? ]

[sirnyxalot]

If waking up in the hospital with a head injury counts as 'ex'.

[There's a quirk about his lips as he sizes her up, but he amends his statement.]

Retired years ago. Ended up having to take care of someone, couldn't stay active.

[He takes the offensive this time, stepping into her space for a series of quick strikes.]

[unweaving]

Bitchy sitch.

[ She means it. She knows how tight units can get; she'll never regret leaving the Imperial army, and she's taken as many of her unit with her as she could convince to leave, but it'd still stung to leave some of them behind. Straight-up vanishing on them would have been worse. Of course, she's too busy trying to block and dodge that flurry of strikes to put the empathy into words. She grunts when one lands, backs off and rolls straight in again, throwing her weight behind her fist. ]

What kinda unit were you with?

[sirnyxalot]

[He doesn't pull his guard back up in time, and has to backpedal out of range to shake off the punch. She hits hard. He's impressed.]

Think of it like a mobile strike unit. We cut their knees out from under them to keep the enemy from advancing.

[Present tense.

He changes tactics, dropping the boxing stance entirely to go for something more familiar. He comes at her again, this time abandoning defense in return for speed.]

[unweaving]

Best defense is a good offense, huh?

[ Speaking of. With his size advantage, if he charges her and connects she's fucked. So she plants her feet and drops down, aiming to push her shoulder up into his midsection and use his own weight to throw him. It's singing in her now that things are picking up, the savage joy of it flooding her veins with every pump of her heart, filling a need she hadn't known was there until that first hit he landed on her. ]

Least that's one thing we've got in common for real.

[sirnyxalot]

[It's like riding a bicycle. Muscle memory snaps into place in ways that sparring with his fists alone just hadn't fulfilled. Nyx grunts with the impact when she connects with his midsection and he pushes his legs off the ground, putting more momentum into the throw. He's almost more at home in the air (a couple feet still counts) and it's nothing to twist his body to grab her in return in order to bring her down to the mats with him.]

Defense doesn't mean a whole lot when your enemies have better equipment.

[unweaving]

[ Oh, he's good. She's pulled the old brains-over-brawn trick often enough and with enough ease that she forgets he has both, and being plucked off her feet and re-introduced to the mats is the last thing she expects.

It's pretty hot.

It's not like she's never noticed how good-looking Nyx is, and he's off-limits besides -- friends always are, right? It just complicates things -- but it is a contributing factor to the way she hooks a leg around his and rolls so she's on top of him. ]

I have absolute faith in my equipment.

[sirnyxalot]

[Well, he'd had the advantage for all of two seconds, but she's as slippery as he is and has him pinned in a maneuver that would be dirty if he had a mind to think of her like that.

He might have, if he didn't have conflicting memories of a wedding and being almost equally as fond of her not-actually-husband. ...it would probably sound like a good reason if their entire conversation hadn't been full of fake-flirting. He's a little disappointed these memories aren't somewhat real. She would have fit right in with his unit.]

Oh, I'm sure you do. It's an incredible...asset.

[He's never tried to do this without an anchor to bind the magic to a destination, but she already knows he can cast a little so it's technically not cheating if they hadn't laid down ground rules. He reaches inside himself and focuses, thinks 'away', and is rewarded by the familiar dizzy feeling of his body breaking down in a shower of blue and moving.

Sure, he only moves about a foot before he's materializing, but it worked. Nyx regains his feet, skin buzzing with exhilaration as he looks down at himself to make sure he's all in one piece.]

Well, how about that?

[unweaving]

[ There's really no excuse for the fact that she doesn't put it together immediately. Maybe it's the sheer surprise of it, or the fact that she's spent about a month trying to put Prompto so far out of her mind that his best friend (and more importantly the magic he'd used so effectively, first against and then alongside her) is temporarily forgotten too. Maybe it's just the sudden and unexpected rush of blood to her... libido, but she's too busy laughing in delighted surprise and getting back to her feet to think of the king's magic.

Instead, she's moving again. Grinning at him, still in a fighting stance but openhanded now that the rules have been mixed up. ]

And here I thought we got good toys with the Imperial Airborne.

[sirnyxalot]

[He frowns slightly, head tilted to the side.] Im..perial Airborne?

[He's distracted going into the next round of the spar, gears working in his mind. He knows what that is. But that's impossible. She can't be an Imperial. He left Niflheim behind when he woke up in the Wayward Pines. But that's not necessarily true...is it? Luna came from home. Ignis and Prompto were both from Insomnia. It only made sense that someone would come from the other continent too.

Nyx doesn't realize when he starts striking harder. He's not carrying kukri but he fights like he is, hitting with forearms rather than his fists.]

[unweaving]

Captain of the 86th, for my sins.

[ Maybe she'd add that they were good men, and that it was a crying-ass shame she couldn't get them all out, but her focus goes immediately to the way he steps it up; the speed of each strike, the force behind them. She blocks one, two, and when the third hits her hard enough to make her stagger back she realizes he's fighting like he means it. ]

Fuck, okay.

[ No point practicing your skills if you don't actually use 'em, she guesses. Back to blocking, and she's looking for an opening to get in with a knee or an elbow when she catches the look on his face. It's all wrong for the situation, none of the cockiness of before. He looks like he's in the field. It's too far. She drops her hands. ]

Nyx, hey.

[sirnyxalot]

[The confirmation only makes it worse. A part of him shuts down, clamps down on the camaraderie he'd had only minutes before. It's a good thing this wasn't real. Only a spar means he isn't prepared to fight like his life means it. He doesn't turn to magic to settle it before she has a chance to get under his guard, only tries to break hers.

He almost tosses all style out the window, tries to change tactics again to catch her by surprise but instead he's the one who stumbles. Aranea drops her hands, probably trusting that he'd recognize the motion and pull his punch, only he doesn't. It's after he actually connects that he falters and stops pressing the attack, breathing tightly through his nose.

He can see a much younger woman in his mind. Laughing and sparring and joking. A friend. Someone he trusted.

He trusted Drautos too, and look how that turned out.

The difference being that Aranea never did anything to break it.]

Shit.

[unweaving]

[ She can tell she's made a mistake as soon as he throws that punch, too fast and too real for her to avoid. And then the next thing she's completely aware of is the sound of his voice, her position and how she got there - a crouch, one steadying hand on the floor, one raised open-palmed to ward him off - all background noise to the throbbing, dizzying pain radiating from her cheek. The kaleidoscope shifting of the room tells her she's damn lucky it didn't knock her out cold.

The pain sharpens things, the sense of danger making her think the way she used to, before a life of selling frilly panties and pretending everything's fine. The way he'd repeated Imperial, the cold fury in his eyes. His hair, his tattoos. ]

Galahd?

[ Reason enough to hate the Empire, but... the magic. ]

Fuck. You're a Glaive.

[sirnyxalot]

[Galahd. He'd stepped back away from her, jaw tensing, and he paces two steps to either side to try and burn off the sudden need to do something. She knows Galahd. She knows who he is as a soldier...and also as a person?

Nyx makes a confused sound in his throat and locks his fingers together behind his head. Thinks of Luna, back in Insomnia, talking him down in the aftermath of the King's death when his rage had been overwhelming. Taking that anger out on Aranea now goes against everything he believes in.]

And you're Niflheim.

[There's a wealth of loathing all packed into the one word and it hurts. His head's telling him he should be used to betrayal at the same time reminding him that she'd done nothing to deserve his wrath. He's better than this.

It's slower than he'd like, but his breathing steadies' the tight knot in his chest loosening.]

[unweaving]

[ The way he paces is enough to have her scooting back a little before she pushes up to her feet. It makes the room lurch in a nasty way and really she should be sitting, icing her damn face, but the hate in his voice is enough to make him her primary concern. ]

I'm told I lost the right to call myself that when I defected. Seems fair.

[ It's said in as much of a wry drawl as anything she says is. A poor cover for the fact that she's afraid to turn her back on him. ]