Nothing Special

[Xing]

The air was stale as evening came to finish the day banishing the light as well as the last bit of warmth from the area. The sounds of creatures settling down for the night or awakening for the night seemed to be a quiet distant hum at most. The bleak clouds overhead reflected much of the nature of the area itself giving an ominous air to just about everything. Yes... this was nice.. very nice.... Xing breathed in and breathed out.

Such a boring day it was... Xing frowned to herself as the words in her thoughts played as childishly as her voice would have if it had come into the air. The demon who at that point resembled nothing more than a teenager sighed again and resolved to sit up on the branch of the large tree that she had been laying rather prostrate on for the last few hours if not longer.

Sitting up slowly now, Xing stared off into the distance from her seat on the branch. No one comes to play anymore... it's so sad...I mean... she thought to herself frowning even more before suddenly smiling quickly. I'll go find someone to play with! There has to be someone around! Right? Right? Of course! came to mind, and no sooner had she thought it had Xing forced herself off the branch and flipped easily onto the ground.

Skipping now through the area, Xing kept her eye on everything and everything as though waiting for something more to happen. Barren trees cast shadows in every direction and seemed to distort Xing's image ever so slightly, and the remnants of a dark cloak appeared and disappeared as Xing moved between the shadows and the last rays of the day.

[pain]

Training was over.

Training was over and Pain felt more like her namesake than she had in a long, long while. Fingers cracked as she sought to move them: the nimbus of fairly impressive ice spell had washed over her, turning her and her... comrades into so many frozen balls of ice and snow. She'd been forced to transition into her true form before heading back into mirror form, warm herself up a little.

Switched genders, when heading back to mirror form. Not that it mattered much, one mortal corpse looked very much like any other mortal corpse. And so did she.

It probably helped that her mirror form was technically dead. It wasn't in her to figure out what sort of bizarre biology would permit itself to do what she was doing: literally flexing away the nimbus of an ice spell that should have shattered every digit in her hand. But the dead were not given to the same restrictions and she could allow herself to flex away, each crack echoing mournfully amongst the dead trees.

She considered turning into a rabbit. Rabbits had fur. Unlike this pesky mortal skin. But she hadn't done that since... well, since that little elf village that had confused her so much with its light and death and sugar. Pain sighed, shaking out the last remnants of frostiness and got to her feet, teetering unsteadily. Time to get going. There would be training tomorrow too.

[Xing]

Xing had continued skipping and wielding her light visage like a dagger of some sort to any refined eye and something odd to any other onlooker. She seemed to be off in her own world, yet as she caught sight of something in the distance, the demon seemed to freeze and stop in mid skip right then and there. Her visage remained frozen in a light excited look, yet the rest of her human frame had seemed to grow tense for a few seconds. Backing up for a moment, Xing stared for a moment before suddenly grinning and running straight towards Pain as if she had not stopped at all. "Hey!" she called with a light and easy voice as she skipped over now. "Hey you there~! Hi! Hey come play with me!" As she drew closer, Xing stopped now in front of the other demon with a grin on her face.

[pain]

Pain had just managed to lever herself upright when she was beset upon by a demon... creature... thing. She blinked at it, wondering if it could possibly be a mortal. Certainly she was un-used to demons being quite so... what would the right word be? ... chipper.

There was a moment of blank silence.

So.

Errr.

...play?

As much as Pain bandied the word about in her head nothing rose from the muck that consisted of the sum total of her knowledge that did not involve mortals in one fashion or another. She looked warily around for them, but it didn't seem like there were any present. So. No plucking eyeballs from prisoners, putting them in pits with the hellhounds, quartering them with equuses (equii? equus?).

So. 'Demonic' play. That could be awkward.

Pain rumbled to her feet. "Maybe later," she said, trying to stay polite. Asala-mortal had stressed the importance of politeness and it hadn't hurt her yet. Memories marched slapdash through her head but she couldn't recall this particular demon's mirror form and hadn't the faintest clue who it was. Certainly not a minion... but Pain had always been bad at gauging the strength of other demons and right now the ice was sapping at her strength, making her just want to find somewhere to sit down and wait to warm up.

[Xing]

Xing blinked at the 'maybe later' comment and then brought up her fingers and forced them into a frown as if she could not willingly frown on her own. "Neeeeeeh?" she asked with a light complaining tone. "But I'm so bored! And and and...." she stopped a moment and seemed to stop and think of what she was actually going to say. "Oh ya! And I'm tired of being bored!" she finished before crossing her arms in front of herself and smiling easily. After a moment, she leaned her form entirely backwards and starting to do a hand stand and walked on her hands. "So who are you?" she asked as though she had not even stated the other comments. "I'm Xing~!"

[pain]

Demons did not normally act... and at this point Pain's thoughts bottlenecked as demon concepts clashed with mortal ones and in the end all she managed was a frustrated like that which mostly meant the slight slip of a mirror form in front of him.

Spoiled, Asala-mortal said, singsong, in Pain's head which was ridiculous but Asala-mortal had never been singsong when she'd known her, but the voice marched on, inexorable and inevitable and wrong, the word you're looking for is spuh-oil-ed. Spoiled like a princess, like a prince, like a king, like a god.

Go away, Pain nudged. The voice laughed and retreated.

The 'spoiled' demon was doing a handstand. If Pain had been mortal, it would have probably looked quite interesting, what with things dangling and hair moving and so on. Pain was a demon and attraction for her began and ended with blood and copious amounts of it. She was impressed, rather, by the balance and strength it took to do that at all and was tempted to try it.

...maybe later.

"I have been called Pain," the demon rumbled.

Fairly certain that this 'Xing' would not move on until it found something more interesting to harass, Pain forced herself to her feet. "So, why are you... 'bored?'"

[Xing]

"Ah! Nice to meet you~!" Xing grinned even from her upside down position as she continued to walk on her hands. "And..." she was slowly forming a one-hand-stand now with a strange acrobatic format. "And... I'm bored because there's nothing to do," she laughed lightly and then proceeded to do a two fingered stand and started to walk on said to fingers. "There's no humans or elves to play with around here, and as far as I knew, there was no one else around here for that matter," she finished. In a half second, she had returned her full hand to the ground and then lowered her hand down to a regular hand stand again. "But I found you~ so it's all fine now hehehehe," she giggled to herself for a moment before flipping again and standing upright with ease. "So what do you do for fun?" she grinned.

[pain]

Pain wanted to eat the sun. The sun, the stars, the moon- everything that hung in the sky. But it was a secret, dark and dirty as all demon secrets must be. So he locked up those thoughts and tried to think of something innocuous and innocent that he did 'for fun'.

"I razed an elf village," the demon admitted after a moment of profound thought, more like a tentative offer than an assured answer. It hadn't even exactly been... fun, though. Catharthic, perhaps. Bewildering, certainly. Why had the elves killed one of their own? And such a small one too. So strange and incomprehensible.

Almost like as if they were demons just like he was.

"Not much else," Pain said after a moment. "I'm a barbarian. Fight fight fight. That's what we live for, ah?"

[Xing]

"Fight fight fight?" Xing asked turning her head to one side and then the other. Well that was certainly no fun at least in her own mind. Then again, depending on the demon, she guessed it could be fun. "But but but what about torment and inner turmoil and suffering slow and painfully?" She grinned now putting her hands together in front of her. "That's what I do for fun!" she grinned even more. "Humans are fun to play with, but demons are fun too!" She suddenly seemed to stop for a moment and looked rather thoughtful for a good second and a half. "So what should we play?" she asked blinking now.