Odd Jobs (Open to all)

[Tayva Aschaund]

The night had not treated Tayva well. With a slight bitter cold in the air, it made for an uncomfortable walk toward the city limits, where she was to meet her companion Talos. He had gone ahead to do some evening hunting, the meals eaten in human form barely enough to satisfy his hunger. This meant for the girl to travel solo, but only for a little while. She figured in the meantime she could get a little training done once she was out into the wilderness.

It was not often that she used a weapon, let alone wielded one. Not since the Gorgon incident over a year ago did she ever find a need to use a weapon, not with Talos always within her presence. And rarely did the two ever separate, removing all need to even be armed in the first place.

However one could not be too careful, and it made her feel a little better being alone at night when she knew that she had some method of protecting herself. Perhaps she could wring out a few shots in the wilderness to test her accuracy, or try to build up some upper body strength to make better use of the combat knife hidden on her person.

At a glance though, it seemed almost irregular for one of her appearance to be so armed. Looking to be about the age of 19, the girl almost seemed out of place in the setting. Yet she was apparently confident enough to make her way through the streets alone, in the middle of the night.

[Tayva Aschaund]

Her hopes for a quiet night appeared to be dashed the moment the man stepped out from the shadows, encircling her and prying into her activities. A shady man indeed, though the apparent conjuration of fruit before her was a dead giveaway. The man before her was no human, nor no draconian, for neither race possessed such capability. Though the question as to what he was would be open for debate, as it left many options. So long as he was not a Gorgon though, the very thought of which made her shudder to her core.

"I'm simply going to meet a friend, and nothing more." she replied, trying to make herself seem perhaps just a bit braver than she really was. A hand in her pocket to caress the barrel of her concealed pistol, she made sure to keep an eye on this man, in case anything were tried during his speech.

"All I wish is to get to my destination in a timely manner, rather than meet these supposed stalkers of the night. " she replied simply, reaching out to Talos, and mentally tugging on the telepathic strings of his mind, only to ensure that he would be ready to come to her should something escalate out of hand.

Not too far away, something did begin to stir, drawn by the sensation of warm bodies not far away...

[Tayva Aschaund]

Tayva quickly became distracted the moment their attackers descended upon them, quickly jumping off to the side. Despite the distance, Talos could sense her danger, and would quickly be hurrying out toward her. In the meanwhile however, she was quick to drop down to her knee, pulling the combat knife that was concealed from under her pant leg before springing back up onto her feet.

She pressed one arm over the other, gun pointing outward while keeping her knife close to her side. The first being was quickly felled by a knife-punch delivered from the man, and despite the strange wording of his proposal, she knew that she could not fight these beings alone.

"Fine." she replied, reaching out with one hand to shake, but before their hands could touch she felt a strong shove into her side, throwing her to the ground. Tayva felt the hot breath of the vampyre on top of her, ready to slash with elongated claws. In reaction, she swung out with her knife, catching the creature in the side of the throat. Warm blood rushed upon her figure as a sharp shriek was emitted into her ears, and in the short moment of panic she attempted to shove the creature off of her.

[Tayva Aschaund]

Thrashing about in a wave of vampyres was not a place that she had expected to be that night. Apart from the hissing and clawing she struggled to fare for herself, waving her knife about to try and find the chest of whatever one of them got close enough, while trying to get clean shots with her gun to knock them off. However in a strange turn of events the vampires began to brawl with one another than go for the fresh meat before them.

Tayva took the chance to roll out of the mess, looking quite beaten up from the attacks. Watching the mystery man and her attackers, she just couldn't help but think that he was somehow behind their sudden change in behaviour. The draconian struggled to get back onto her feet, looking quite exhausted from her endeavor.

She looked too tired to even continue on, and as her hand just barely grasped his, a sudden shock in the ground followed by a loud snarl caused her to jump and turn, though this time with a look of relief rather than fear. For before them stood a fifteen-foot tall dragon, clad in red scales, and a maw full of razor sharp teeth, which quickly took to grabbing three or four of the frenzied vampires with a single bite, every last bit vanishing down into his gullet.

[Tayva Aschaund]

Tayva's eyes widened, the very idea that her own survival was being turned into a game by the man a mixture of disturbing and disgusting. Yet this was not the time to think so heavily on such things, as she now found herself the target of about six or so bloodthirsty vampyres. Her heart racing, and her decreasing amount of blood catching up to her, the Draconian froze in place as they proceeded to approach, ready to strike.

Talos wasted no time in sprinting forth. Crushing one unfortunate soul under one of his claws, he carefully but quickly grabbed Tayva by her torn shirt with his teeth, tossing her up quickly so that she could cling onto his head. The creatures of the night that soon realized their new obstacle proceeded to swarm on top of Talos, teeth and claws striking at armoured scales, which would provide the dragon with needed defense. Rather than focus on trying to strike the creature's underside though, they continued to focus upon Tayva, who was clinging onto the dragon's head for her life.

A quick flap from Talos' wings would dislodge four of the vampires, knocking them onto the ground as well as knocking over a number of various street obstacles, such as trash cans and litter. Light brimming from the dragon's mouth, a super heated stream of flame engulfed the four that had been knocked to the ground, pained shrieks crying out into the night as their very skin charred and melted from the heat of the dragon's flame. Wearing tattered simple clothing, they had no protection from the fire that soon engulfed him.

The other vampyres that were still lodged on proved to be difficult to remove. The only option was to roll over, but he could not do that with Tayva clinging onto him. Still somewhat conscious, she struggled to pull herself up, when one of them grabbed hold of her ankle, claws beginning to dig into her flesh. With a cry of pain, she nearly let go, if not for a single lucky kick to the cretin's face, crushing its nose into its head. Pain and disorientation would force it to let go, where it would fall to the ground and be sliced up by the dragon's claws. The last two went toward Tayva at once, both of them having to fight for her lower half as the three fell to the ground. Talos encircled the grouping, trying to pick off one of the two vampyres without harming Tayva, a rather difficult task in their entanglement.

In her last spasm of a struggle to get the two vampyres off of her, Tayva swung one last time with her knife, her gun having fallen somewhere else in her attempt to remain clutched to her dragon earlier. As one of the vampyres raised their claw in an attempt to strike the heart, Talos quickly clamped down with his jaws, literally biting the arm off of the vampyre that had made the attempt at the strike. The creature rolling around in agony, the other took little notice of its comerade's missing limb as it continued its assault. Clawed from almost head to toe, Tayva only had the strength to roll away from the creature, though in the process lost her consciousness to blood loss. Unable to take the chance of waiting any further, Talos took a single claw, and speared it right through the last vampyre, lifting it up, and literally sucking the humanoid off of his claw.

Ensuring that there were no moving surviviors from the combat, the dragon quickly scooped up his companion in one claw, gently cradling her as he glanced up at the daemon responsible, large eyes narrowing and glaring at the daemon as he let out a snarl.

[Tayva Aschaund]

As much as Talos hated to agree with the creature, he was right in the sense that Tayva needed help right away. Talos glanced around, finding the girl's fallen weapons in combat, and with a gentle sweep of his tail collected both of the items. While keeping his claw gently wrapped around Tayva, his figure began to shrink down, becoming smaller and smaller until he stood before him as a human, black messy hair obscuring his eyes. Still maintaining his draconic strength in his disguise, he gathered her things on the ground while still holding her, and placing them upon her being he set off toward the streets, in search of the nearest hospital.

If it were not for the fact that he had flown here to begin with, navigating to the hospital would have been nearly impossible. Of course he only knew the general direction from the streets, not the exact location. At least not until he got closer and began to see signs that pointed him in the direction he needed to go. There was something about humans using letters to display certain buildings rather than the words, because of differences in language or something like that.

Literally bursting through the door as he arrived in the emergency room, it didn't take the workers long to spot the man, panting lightly with the unconscious and bleeding girl in his arms. Fortunately it had been late enough at night that most of the normal traffic in the building was not flowing, and she would receive medical attention sooner than later. Being taken from his arms to be treated somewhere else, he refused to leave her side at every step, until absolutely necessary to wait outside of one of the treatment rooms.

[Tayva Aschaund]

Talos glared back up at the demon who had followed them, seeming unwilling to leave them be and instead prod them further with questions. Tayva hadn't even awoken yet and he had the nerve to continue prodding them for information. He let out a huff, the equivalent of a draconic snort, before noticing Tayva's bag of belongings. He had recalled not long ago the restaurant in which the man Kyrian had given her some kind of a number. He wondered if she had done anything with it since they last saw one another.

He pulled the device out, obviously still a bit clumsy with human hands as he dumfoundedly began poking at different symbols with the tip of his finger to turn the device on. Eventually he found the red icon on the phone appeared to do the trick, but left him stuck in a maze of different options. Caught in his inability to speak, he had to find some other way to contact the Elemental without speech, so he continued to prod the arrow keys until a little mail icon appeared on the phone.

Though Talos didn't fully recognize the symbology, he could recall the few days spent at Tayva's parents, her folks bringing in objects similar to these, which contained messages within them. He clicked on the button in the middle of the arrow ring, successfuly accessing the text message area of the phone.

Getting a little more used to using his fingers, he found an option to create new messages when he found an option that popped up with a blank screen to enter a new message. Despite his best efforts whenever he had the chance, his knowledge on the english written language was minimal, but enough to spell out "come to H, in trouble", not knowing how to spell hospital. The hardest part now was to find out how to send it to Kyrian.

It was at that point he noticed the small icon of a person's head and shoulders, navigating toward it with the arrows. Upon selection, it revealed a fairly small contact list, with Kyrian's name standing out as the only name with a 'K' in it (fortunately for Talos). Selecting it, he then continued to hit the center key until the message was sent, greeting him with a small rumble in his hand, before he closed the phone with both hands, and placed it on the table.

[Kyrian Tidus]

Kyrian groaned groggily as he flipped over beneath his satin sheets and pulled his cellphone out from beneath his pillow, having been obstructed from falling asleep due to its loud vibrations. The elemental saw that he had a new message from Tayva and decided that it was more important than sleep for at least a few minutes. Opening the message, Kyrian was confused by its contents in his half-sleep state and it took him a while to realize that something was wrong here. "come to H, in trouble" was what the message read, and Kyrian wondered for a second what the hell that could mean... Then he though about the fact that Tayva would probably text him properly, however... Talos might not have much of an idea of human surrounding or the spelling of English words. And if Talos had Tayva's phone and was contacting Kyrian for help....

The elemental threw off his covers and stood up in his boxers, looking for his jeans which he hastily slipped into, grabbing his belt and sheath. The male then slipped into a black wife beater and looked at the message again. "come to H," was the only instruction that the message gave. Piecing together that Talos might not know how to spell everything in English, that Tayva was in a position where she couldn't text Kyrian herself, and that Talos had texted asking for help, Kyrian took the "H" to mean hospital. But which hospital was the real question.

Kyrian had no time to wonder, so he teleported into the ER of every hospital he knew in the city, showing people a picture of Tayva on his phone and asking whether or not she had been through there with a tall-ish man with short, black hair. On his fourth hospital, he finally got the conformation he was looking for and, walking back around the corner, teleported up to Tay's room.

Upon seeing Talos, then Tayva laying down in a hospital bed, Kyrian instantly fell to his knees beside the female and watched over her lovingly and protectively. Look back up at Talos, Kyrian ignored the presence of another man and addressed the dragon, "Talos! What happened here? What happened?!"

[Tayva Aschaund]

The dragon had bee waiting in the chair from some reply from the phone, or better yet for some stir of life from Tayva. Neither of which seemed to come soon enough for the dragon. Despite wanting to rest for the time, his desire to ensure her well-being and to keep some other creature from getting at her trumped such desires. Vampyres had been bad enough, but he hated to think of what else may be lurking out in the night.

His half-sleep state was interrupted however, as a flicker of movement appeared in the corner of his eye, causing him to quickly stand in his place in case it was trouble. Instead it was a rather welcoming change of pace, the familiar face of Kyrian in the room once more. He hadn't been certain of who else to call upon, as he knew the human Craig was probably long gone, and her parents were too far away.

Instead he watched in silence as the elemental crouched down by the bed, beside Tayva as if to see for himself what had happened. Of course when he actually asked there was no way for Talos to reply verbally, but a piece of paper and a pen did catch his eye. A little more versatile in using his digits thanks to the phone, he managed to scrawl down a few words, followed by a drawing that could have been passed for a four year olds, depicting a bunch of fanged figures surruonding a figure with long hair, and another possibly male figure standing off to the side. The words 'vampyres' and 'attack' were visible over the little drawing of the vampires, and over the male stick figure were the words 'influenced' and 'game'

[Kyrian Tidus]

Kyrian stared at the drawing that Talos had handed him. Having had to deal with that elder dragon back when he had first met Tay and Talos, he knew that dragons had a harder time doing things 'the human way,' he was prepared to be as patient as he had to with Talos. The drawing was actually way better than his text message, with legible words to help him piece together what was going on. Apparently, Tay had been attacked by a group of vampyres, and there was some other figure there with 'influenced' and 'game' written around him. Kyrian had no idea what that meant.

Staring down at the still Tayva, looking so peaceful in her sleep, Kyrian could've been fooled into thinking that she was dead. Leaning over her, he kissed the female's wounded forehead, spreading a little of his energy into her in order to wound the minor cuts and bruises all over her body. Although he wanted to give her all that he could in order to heal her, he knew that he needed his energy in order to take down whoever had done this to her. He whispered softly into the unconscious female's ear, "Don't worry, Tay. I'm here now."

Standing back up, Kyr looked at Talos, ready to get down to the bottom of what had happened. "Talos, is this man here supposed to be controlling these vampyres or something?" After Talos nodded his head, Kyrian asked the all important question. "Do you think you could guide me to this man?"

[Tayva Aschaund]

Even if Talos was willing to leave Tayva's side to help him hunt down the man, he needed to wait for the Draconian to awaken first, to confirm that she would be okay. Instead of a nod or shake he turned his head toward the sleeping girl, as a gesture that he needed her to awaken first. His eyes traced upon the rather deep-seeded scar that ran down her chest, from her fight long ago. It looked as painful and raw as it had been when she first received the mark, and the crisscrossing smaller scars from the vampyre's claws did not help

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The last thing Tayva could remember were the faces, the heartless eyes gazing into hers, fang-filled mouths snapping to try and reach into flesh in the same horrific matter as the claws had. Though one by one those faces had disappeared, not after having left their marks though.

After that there was a haziness, a fog of sorts that had clouded her thoughts and vision, keeping her from making any contact with the outside world, or her companion Talos. However this soon started to fade away, the Dragon perking up as the mind of Tayva slowly began to return to his subconsciousness. Moving toward the female, he crouched down and watched almost intently, as the girl began to stir within her bed. She needed to blink a few times to wear away some of the remaining fog that still existed, but slowly she returned back to the conscious world in the hospital bed.

The first thing she tried to do was sit up, but the restraint of a needle in her arm kept her from going too far. She glanced over, seeing the trickle of blood reenter her system from the tube, another running parallel to filer in some sort of clear liquid. As she became more aware of her surroundings, she began to notice that she was not alone in the room, Talos keeping fairly close as usual, as well as another figure. She cringed at first at the thought of the mystery man being there, but instead it was a more inviting face, that of Kyrian.

[Kyrian Tidus]

Kyrian smiled down at the girl as she took notice of him, wiggling his fingers in a funny manner, as though playing the same keys on an invisible manner. He let out a small chuckle as he spoke to her, his Texan accent coming out clearly since he was stressed to the point where he didn't even notice it, "Hey there, sugar cube. You look like a pile of shit today."

Pulling up a chair beside the bed, he kept his smile up even though he held so many emotions behind it: anger, worried, sadness, relief, exhaustion, fear. His smile faded though, and his eyes went cold as he looked into Tay's eyes and saw the pain and fear in them. "I promise you that whoever did this will never hurt you again, Tay." He moved his right hand to lay on top of her right one, clasping his fingers about her palm and gently rubbing the back of her hand reassuringly with his thumb. "I'm here for you."

[Tayva Aschaund]

Tayva was still trying to figure out how Kyrian had found out that she had gotten herself a little beaten up. She didn't even have to ask Talos before he replied with a simple 'he needed to know' look that caught the girl's eye.

"I figured out how to use your phone." he replied simply in her head, surprising the girl that the dragon could even figure out the device. Despite all their time together he had never shown any interest in human technology, which made her wonder how long it had taken him to figure it out.

Her gaze then turned toward Kyrian's able to see that he looked quite tired. He had probably been aroused from his sleep by the text that was sent. She felt a little bad for getting him dragged into the situation, even if there wasn't much that could be done right away. Still, his dedication toward ensuring her safety made her feel a little better that he was there.

"What happened to the mystery man?" she questioned the dragon that remained off to the side, who crossed his arms.

"He followed us here, though on unusual terms. He wanted to know why I was protecting you, but because I could not speak he said he would find us in the future. He seemed not to wish to continue in any hostile way, but promised to leave us alone once his answer was received. He seems...strange."

Looking back down, she saw Kyrian's hand wrapped around hers, and she gave it a small squeeze with her own. "...Thanks." she replied, her voice unable to hide her exhaustion. "...The man said something about leaving us alone for the week. And Talos claims that he only seeks a question." she replied, before frowning suddenly. "...I don't know how he did it... but somehow he drove the vampyres into a feeding frenzy, because I didn't accept some deal he didn't disclose."

[Kyrian Tidus]

Kyrian watched silently as the Draconian and her partner began to speak with each other telepathically. He hoped that it wouldn't be a long conversation, because it felt awkward having a conversation go on in front of you and not being able to take part in it, he also wanted to know if there were any important details going between them that he should know.

When Tayva turned her attention back to him and spoke of the man saying that he would leave them alone for a week, and only wanting an answer to a question, Kyrian felt kind of lost in his confusion. However, Tayva wasn't done there. She spoke of the man driving the vampyres that attacked her into some sort of feeding frenzy... Over some sort of deal that hadn't been fully disclosed. Whoever the guy was, he had power, and he was completely off his rocker.

Kyrian huffed and increased the flow of energy that he had been sending into Tayva through his contact with her hand. He closed his eyes and focused as her body was healed to near-perfectness, however he left the scar on her chest alone, feeling as though it should stay there as a reminder that she had the strength to overcome anything life threw at her. Once content with the state of her body, Kyrian stood once more and, after removing the machinery attached to her and applying band-aids to where the needles were inserted, he looked down upon the female. "Get up, Tay. You two are coming to my place. Now."

[Tayva Aschaund]

Tayva watched silently as Kyrian moved over her, beginning to feel almost refreshed as he proceeded to heal her wounding. A few scratches here and there wouldn't have done much, but the multiple razor sharp claws that the vampyres had possessed would have been enough for her to bleed out to death. Though her wounds had closed and healed, they were not entirely gone from memory and sight, small blemishes in her skin remaining where some of the worst strikes had been.

He then began to work on removing the few needles that had been pumping in fresh blood, feeling a little baffled. She wasn't sure they were supposed to be going anywhere, but he seemed rather determined to get the two of them away from this public place, and to his home. She placed her hands on the rails of the bed, pushing herself upright slowly as she did as instructed. Talos sped the entire process up, simply lifting her carefully yet quickly off of the stretcher / bed, and onto her feet, not releasing her until he was certain she could stand on her own. She seemed steady on her feet, though her pale-ish complexion betrayed her complete healthiness.

"Why do we need to go?" she questioned, looking a little confused. "Maybe he won't come back." If he had enough self control to keep himself from killing her off when he had the chance, then perhaps he would do as he had promised.