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Post by Natalya Arlovskaya on Aug 28, 2010 18:45:39 GMT -5
Things had not gone well in Natalya’s first week of classes. She was loathe to discover that Hogwarts did not offer Dark Arts as one of the subjects, and she almost decided to just go back home right then and there. But she had toughed out her first day, and found out that they at least offered a Defense Against the Dark Arts class, which she supposed could function as a semi-suitable proxy until she found another solution. There were a couple other subjects that had caught her interest as well, such as Potions and Divination, and by the time her first day was over, she was feeling a little less angry about things. However, she kept frustrating the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor by asking inappropriate questions, and (even though she didn’t really care what they thought) she just knew that many of the other students in the class were judging her. It was making the already-difficult task of socializing even harder. Natalya was fairly happy keeping to herself in some ways. She had spent plenty of her time alone, and it did not bother her. But what she didn’t like was watching other people and how happy they were when they interacted with each other. She was a tad jealous that others seemed to have an easier time making friends than she did. On the few occasions that she had tried to approach others, she had more often than not just scared them off before too long. Her failed attempts were beginning to weigh heavily on her, along with plenty of other burdening thoughts, the melancholy transforming into a deep pain in her body. Her shoulders ached with tension and her joints felt creaky from disuse. She was used to a more active lifestyle, but the only sport this wretched school offered was Quidditch, and Natalya would rather be caught dead before she would be seen flying around in the air on a broom to chase balls. She had heard rumors that the school used to have a Dueling Club before it was shut down so many years ago, but Natalya knew that it would probably be some time before this could get started up again. She would have to find another solution in the meantime.
One advantage of having spent so much time essentially stalking her brother was that Natalya knew how to move silently. She had a heavy duffle bag slung over one shoulder, but she still managed to slip through the empty corridors without a sound. She knew that she would get in trouble if she was discovered, but at this point, getting a little exercise felt much more important. She ducked her head into a few rooms until she found an empty classroom that was large enough to suit her needs, and then she slipped inside. She laid her bag on the teacher’s desk at the front of the room and proceeded to slide all of the student desks against the walls. If she were more proficient at Charms, she would have whisked them out of the way with magic. Natalya actually knew more incantations than many of her fellow students, as her mother had secretly taught her a few essentials of wandwork. But though Natalya knew the spell required to move the desks, she did not yet possess the endurance to move so many objects. It would do no good to exhaust herself before she even got started.
Going back to the front of the room, Natalya lifted the object out the duffel bag which had made it so heavy – a compact magic radio. She knew that using this was risky, but it was much easier to perform gymnastics to a rhythm, so she only played the music very softly as she began unbuttoning her uniform vest. Beneath her normal clothes she had slipped on her gymnastic leotard, a pale lavender thing coupled with white stockings and black-and-white striped leg warmers. The room was a little chilly right now, and a small shiver ran through her small frame as Natalya folded up her clothes and laid them inside the bag. But she would be warming up pretty soon, so she reached up and pulled the customary ribbon from her hair in order to tie the silver strands up into a high ponytail. She knew she could have practiced in the girls’ dormitory if she really wanted to, even though the space was cramped. But it was impossible to get some time alone there, and she would be mortified to have any of the other girls see her this way.
Moving out to the middle of the floor, Natalya began doing warm-up exercises and stretches, all splits and bent elbows and knees lifted so high she could kiss them. She could immediately feel some of her tension start to melt away as she was finally able to move her body and stretch it to its limits. Before she knew it, she was moving in time with the music, spinning and twisting and moving through the air, her mind pleasantly emptying itself of distressing thoughts. All that existed for her right now was her body, slowly undulating through space and sound.
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Post by Alfred Effing Jones on Aug 28, 2010 18:57:00 GMT -5
Alfred's first day of class had been less than great, to say the least. Sure, he made out like he loved the attention and couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to be his friend, but there was only so much he could take. He wished he could be like Harry Potter was said to have been. Harry didn't have to bask in the glory. But when your personal catchphrase since childhood is "I'm the hero!" it was hard to convince people you didn't want the attention.
So Alfred finally slipped away from his friends and his "brother" Matthew, wandering the hallways alone. He'd gotten very good at sneaking around while he was looking for Pangaea and a way to defeat her. You kind of had to or you'd get way worse than a detention. Then again, Harry Potter's cloak would have been an awesome thing to have.
He peeked into a room, hoping to see that it was empty so he could chill there for a bit. But what he saw was even better. A beautiful beautiful girl was moving fluidly along to soft music, her hair in a high ponytail and her elegant body clad in a leotard and tights. Al knew he should look away and leave the girl alone, but he had fallen in love with the girl at first site. The grace, the elegance, and even the subtle power in her movements. She was perfect.
He didn't even realize that he'd opened the door and sat down on one of the desks near the wall until it was too late.
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Post by Natalya Arlovskaya on Aug 29, 2010 20:26:04 GMT -5
It didn’t take long for Natalya to become completely entranced by the music, her eyes drifting closed as she allowed herself to simply feel, all distractions melting away. Her current routine came to an end, and she held the tricky pose for a few moments, feeling the muscles in her thighs and stomach quivering with the strain, before she allowed herself to uncoil, her eyes fluttering open. And when she did, her gaze met clear blue eyes, staring intensely. She felt like all the blood was draining out of her limbs. There was someone in the room with her! Her heart sped up and her cheeks, already flushed from her workout, reddened further in intense embarrassment. Not being seen by anyone was precisely the reason that she had gone so far from the dorms to practice. Her first desire was to slice this boy limb from limb, but as she reached down to draw her knife from its usual sheath on her thigh, her slender fingers only made contact with soft cloth and quivering flesh. Her blood pounded in her ears as she realized that both her clothes and her knife were across the room. In a flash of long hair and limbs, Natalya made a scramble to get to them quickly, snatching up her blade and raising it threateningly to the boy. Her natural inclination was to advance on him and have the metal pressing against his throat for his intrusion, but he was over near the door, and Natalya opted to stand by the front of the room so that she could use her other free hand to slip inside her gym bag and draw out her towel. She draped it around her body in the hopes of covering it up as much as possible, her eyes never leaving his face, searching for any threatening signs of movement that would cause her to spring into action. There seemed to be no malice in his gaze, but this sort of thing had little effect on Natalya’s decisions to draw blood or not.
“How long have you been in here?” she demanded, drowning in the embarrassment of the thought that he had been there the whole time. “Who are you?!”
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Post by Alfred Effing Jones on Aug 29, 2010 20:55:31 GMT -5
Alfred blushed as he was spotted, caught like a deer in the headlights. His blue eyes widened, but he couldn't take his eyes off the beautiful girl not even when she raced to get a knife of all things. His eyes darted quickly to the knife, but went straight back to her entrancing eyes and beautiful face, flushed with embarrassment.
"I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you. I-I was looking f-for a place to chill and happened to find this classroom. I didn't think anyone was in here but when I saw you..." He ducked his head so she wouldn't see his intense blush the reached all the way up to his ears. "You were so beautiful that I couldn't look away." He whispered.
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Post by Natalya Arlovskaya on Aug 30, 2010 21:03:58 GMT -5
The appearance of a weapon seemed to have little to no effect on the boy. Was he brave, or just stupid? Perhaps if he had been aware that Natalya could throw the knife as easily as she could cut with it, he might have been more frightened, or if he knew that it also doubled as her wand. Not that she was able to do any offensive spells with it yet, in any case. Still, she felt that she had been foolish to lay it on the table, even if it would have impeded her movements. She vowed to not let it part ways with her body for the rest of the year, if strange young men were going to be skulking about through the halls at night. (Never mind that she was just as frightening as anything that could be found in the darkness of the castle, creeping through corridors as she had been.) If she couldn’t learn to move properly without a wand at her side at all time, then she had no right to wield it in the first place, Natalya felt, and for a moment her mind began to fracture off into dissonant thoughts, wondering if she really had the discipline needed to be a good witch, before her attention snapped back into focus by the feel of his gaze returning to her face. There was something about his eyes that seemed to penetrate her, such a clear and vibrant blue, and she felt like he wasn’t just looking at her, but looking into her. She tightened the towel around her as if this could somehow block the assault, but it didn’t help.
"I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you. I-I was looking f-for a place to chill and happened to find this classroom. I didn't think anyone was in here but when I saw you... You were so beautiful that I couldn't look away."
Despite his words, he did look away, and Natalya was grateful, not only for the relief of his intense gaze upon her, but also so that he couldn’t see the color in her cheeks somehow impossibly reddening further. It wasn’t that she had never heard that she was beautiful before. Ever since she had reached puberty, she was occasionally told this by some boy. But every single time, even now that she was 16, it still flustered her. She was unused to receiving compliments, especially so openly. It made her insides squirm to hear such things, part of her praise-starved brain lapping it up like a drowning man would drink in air. But the private and withdrawn portion of herself recoiled to think that anyone was paying so much attention to her. So she just ignored his statement, huffing as she reached inside her bag to pull out her white uniform shirt and slipping her arms through the sleeve but not doing up the buttons as she dared not sacrifice the hand that she had still pointed at him. It didn’t escape her attention that he had answered none of her questions. She decided to give up on the first as a lost cause, and just hoped that he had not been sitting there for very long before she noticed him. The matter of his identity, however, she was still determined to find out.“That’s not an excuse for spying on people,” she leveled at him with a glare as she deftly shimmied into her uniform skirt, doing up the button on the side with one hand and pulling away the towel now that she had a semblance of a presentable appearance, even if her shirt still hung open over her leotard. “Just who do you think you are?!”
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Post by Alfred Effing Jones on Aug 31, 2010 14:48:36 GMT -5
Alfred blushed again and laughed nervously. "I'm Alfred. Alfred F. Jones. Pleased to make your acquaintance, you are?" He babbled, holding out his hand to the beautiful girl. He felt like some pervert spying on her while she dressed, even though she'd only been doing gymnastics.
He didn't know what to do. Should he just apologize profusely and leave? Ignore the tension and play it off and leave after she did? He was too awkward in situations like this. His life hadn't exactly given him the most experience with girls. He'd been too preoccupied fighting the Earth's Children, taking care of his mom, and defeating Pangaea.
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Post by Natalya Arlovskaya on Sept 9, 2010 1:38:06 GMT -5
Though he was still a couple yards away, the boy extended his hand as if to shake hers, babbling with a cheerful voice edged with uncertainty. Natalya leveled him with a contemptuous stare, which looked a little strange in contrast with her still-reddened cheeks. Did he expect her to cross the room to shake his hand? Surely he wouldn’t believe something so stupid, but as each second passed and she took in the silly grin on his big mouth, Natalya suspected her first assumption to be correct. Even though she was still completely mortified, she felt like he couldn’t be much of a threat. Finally the blonde broke her long stare, but only to turn away from him, her hand lowering her knife in the process. Her radio was still playing music quietly, a soft classical serenade drifting out into the otherwise silent night air. It made the silence between them feel a little more tolerable to Natalya, even though she was the one that had instigated it. She felt like she couldn’t even justify this boy with a response. He had just witnessed her in a rare moment of openness, and she wasn’t sure she was comfortable sharing much else of anything. What did he expect, that they would just chat now? What nerve! Who did he think he was?! Though she had lowered her weapon, Natalya gripped it tightly in her hands, feeling the blood pumping through her fingers as her nails dug into her palm. That’s right. He had told her who he was. Alfred F. Jones… She was sure she knew that name. A few breaths of violin-saturated seconds and then she remembered.
Despite her earlier mental scoff at the thought that she would cross the room to shake his hand, in a flash of slick silver strands of hair and glint of steel, Natalya had spanned the stone between them and closed in on where Alfred sat perched atop the desk. She leaned over him, glaring down from above due to their positions. Her face was suddenly close to his, so close that she knew he could feel her strained exhales on his cheeks as she drew shaky and belabored breaths. And this time she did extend her blade towards him, because Natalya now knew exactly who this intruder was. And he was a threat, and she was not about to let her guard down. With pale eyes intense and wide, she pressed her knife against his throat and hissed into his ear, “Alfred F. Jones? I know exactly who you are! You’re the obnoxious little wretch who led the Resistance right to Pangaea’s door!” She could feel her hand shaking where it gripped the blade, and wondered if it might slip. She attempted to tighten her hold and drew a shaky breath, feeling repulsed that she was sharing the same air as someone who was involved in the organization responsible for her mother’s death. “You ruined my life!” she cried out.
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Post by Alfred Effing Jones on Sept 9, 2010 17:01:11 GMT -5
"Whahuh?" He stammered, jumping back a bit as she rushed him. He didn't know what he could have possibly done to the girl. He was so used to the praise and the thanks that being told off for it was odd...and oddly refreshing. But no less terrifying than if he hadn't secretly wanted someone to yell at him for killing someone.
"What did I ever do to you?" He whined, lip sticking out in an accidental pout. He didn't have to justify himself to her! Did he? He pondered this for a moment, but it was hard to think when she was so close to him and she smelled so pretty. She was such a pretty girl and it was hard to think.
"I only did what I had to. She was hurting people." He finally choked out, face red as he tried to derail the thoughts about how she looked and smelled.
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Post by Natalya Arlovskaya on Sept 16, 2010 21:27:07 GMT -5
[Sorry for the delay again, dear. I know this was long overdue. *kissu* (This week has been super-hectic.) Here, have some sexy sadistic Belarus.]
As to be expected of someone being descended upon by a madwoman with a weapon, Alfred tried to scramble away when Natalya leaned over him. However, instead of allowing for any sort of distance between their bodies, the gymnast just ceaselessly closed the gap, pushing forward if he tried to move back, so that there was hardly any space between the two of them at all. Because he had been sitting on top of the desk, Natalya was standing between his knees, the tops of her own thighs pressing into the hard wood and her free hand bracing her light weight against the dark surface next to his hip. If someone were to enter the room right now, they would assume that they had stumbled upon some intimate scene between lovers, complete with Natalya’s unbuttoned shirt and flushed face. But only because they wouldn’t be able to see the knife she had pressed to Alfred’s throat. "What did I ever do to you?!" he demanded with a whine, and Belarus was put off by his defenseless tone, having completely expected him to put up a fight. She took in his features - those infuriatingly bright blue eyes which seemed to search her face for some explanation, clear smooth skin and silken hair. He stuck out his soft lower lip in a pout and rather than evoking any sort of sympathy, it just made Natalya want to tear his pretty face apart. Somehow the fact that the one who had taken out Pangaea had the picturesque face of a young boy just made her hate him all the more. She wanted to destroy him just because he was beautiful. Natalya didn’t even get a chance to consider his question, much less to respond, before Alfred seemed to finally gather his wits and continue to make his feeble argument.
“I only did what I had to do,” he said, and Natalya noticed his cheeks going red again and she could practically feel the heat radiating off his skin from where she leaned with her face so close to his. “She was hurting people.” Natalya’s thoughts derailed as she tried to seriously consider for a moment what Pangaea had meant to most of the rest of the wizarding world, and suddenly the heat radiating from his cheeks felt like a furnace blazing in such close proximity her skin. Her head recoiled as if she had really been burned, blinding patches of white crossing her vision which had little do with anything physical and much more to do with the memories flooding her mind. Even as a child, she had some hazy idea of what her mother was forced to do as a member of Earth’s Children. But Natalya’s fate was to grow up and do the exact same. She had trained her entire life for a future that would never come. The blonde had never allowed herself to put much thought into all the people that were being hurt or killed. Soldiers didn’t have room for useless emotions, her mother had always told her. They just made you weak. “Hurting people?!” she screamed, her voice bordering on hysterical. “You think that there aren’t people everywhere that you turn that aren’t waiting to rip you to pieces?!” As if to accent this point, Natalya pressed her blade harder against the flesh of his neck, almost but not quite cutting. Her blood pumped faster through her body as she scanned his face for any reaction, spurred by the twisted desire to see those beautiful features contort in pain. “No matter where you go, danger will follow you. If you think that everyone is suddenly safe and happy now, then you’re a fool!” With this hissed statement, she lifted her free hand from the desk and gripped the boy’s hair, twisting it in her fingers. The loss of the counter-balance had her awkwardly pressing against him. “There’s still a lot of pain in this world that is very real,” Natalya hissed into his ear, accenting her words with the tug of her hair-tangled fingers, pale eyes hungry as they watched for a reaction. In a teasing tone, she added, “You think that you’re a hero who’s going to fix that?”
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Post by Alfred Effing Jones on Sept 20, 2010 12:47:33 GMT -5
"Yes." He answered simply, because it was the truth. He refused to rise to her bait, going serious in a way that few ever saw him. He looked up at her with earnest blue eyes, all overemotion replaced with a calm coolness that was rare. He reached up slowly and put his hand on the wrist of the hand that was holding the knife, gently pushing it away.
"There will always be pain and suffering and fighting. There will always be evil in this world waiting for you to turn the corner so it can snatch you up and turn your world around. But there will always be those willing to stand up and fight it. For ever villain there is a hero for every wrong there is a right and for all the evil in this world there is equal good." He told her, eyes blazing with conviction. It was obvious to anyone that he believed his words more than anything.
He grinned, the serious moment not quite over but coming to a close, and said, "And I'm the hero, you wanna be my villain?" He winked and pushed his luck by stealing a kiss before using the strength he'd been keeping at bay to lift Natalya off of him and sit her down in the chair.
"Immoblus." He sighed, flicking his wand and rendering the girl immobile. "It'll wear off in about 5 minutes, but by that time I'll already be gone. Goodnight, sweet maiden, may your dreams be plesant and your day tomorrow productive." He gave a bow and fled the room.
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Post by Natalya Arlovskaya on Sept 22, 2010 2:07:09 GMT -5
The boy didn't miss a beat when it came to declaring himself the hero. Natalya might have laughed, if it had been anyone else to make so bold and brash a statement. But as she looked into those clear eyes filled with quiet determination, she saw the truth and came undone. This boy really means it... Every word he says... He really thinks that he can save people from their pain... There was something in the complete purity of his intentions that made Natalya's insides recoil as if faced with a blinding light. It was painful to look at, and yet still one cannot look away, and the blonde felt disarmed even before he pried the weapon from her fingers, lavender eyes wide but unseeing just as the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. The very tiniest part of her wondered if Alfred F. Jones could ever save her, but the deafening clatter of steel against stone jarred her like a physical blow and the gymnast recoiled slightly, her body tensing at the unpleasant sound as her other hand instinctively loosened and slipped out of the boy's hair.
Natalya had no time to recover as he continued his monologue, every word stinging all the more just because he believed it so strongly. Her body began to pull back of its own accord, lifting and twisting in tiny increments, each point he made translating to a small twitch of her round shoulders. More painful than his statements about the eternal presence of suffering was his insistence that there was an equal amount of good in this world. This was something that Natalya just couldn't believe, not based on the world that she lived in, at least. Maybe this Alfred F. Jones had been able to live in some magical place where things were easier, she wanted to tell herself, but she knew it wasn't true. Some part of her knew that to do what he had, this boy probably had experienced plenty pain of his own, and to see him still bearing such a positive outlook on life after that just made her sick. Mostly because she didn't want to risk letting herself believe that he could possibly be right. If Natalya ever, for a second, thought that she loved something, she knew it wouldn't be long before it was ruined for her before long. Just as the Resistance had taken her mother, just as familial expectations had driven a wedge between she and her brother, just as one day she knew that Katyusha would probably stop putting up with her incessant whining or just disappear...
But somehow it was a little easier to forget those things, when Alfred Jones smiled at her with that sincere and childish grin. For just a moment, as she stated into the impossible warmth of eyes the color of summer skies, Natalya could forget that everything was going to leave her some day. For the slimmest flicker of a moment, the incessant noise in her head quieted as she just stared, unbelieving, into his face, and she wondered if maybe he could take people's pain away... "And I'm the hero," he said, as if he were answering her thoughts, "You wanna be my villain?" And before she could stop herself, Natalya felt an unbidden smile begin to curl on her lips. The images this thought invoked were somehow more appealing to her than she might have expected, and she really did still want to see what those baby blue eyes looked like when they were half-closed in pain or what those too-soft lips looked like when they cried out, after all. She wondered how serious he was being this time, a wink somehow not very convincing. She saw him tilting up towards her and her eyes widened as she expected a delayed counter-attack, and her gaze darted away, down to the floor where Natalya's weapon lay uselessly. And then she felt his lips pressed against hers, those very same lips that had made her react so violently before and there was little running through Natalya's mind other than pure shock and in the way that one can't snatch their hand from a burning stove immediately, for a strange, protracted moment Natalya did not move, leaning over Alfred awkwardly as he kissed her before she recoiled like a shot fired from a gun. In the same breath he lifted her up, so that she felt as if she was completing one long arc through the air and the small girl felt weightless as he effortlessly planted her on a seat.
He cast an immobilization charm which, at this point, was completely unnecessary, as the wide-eyed girl would have sat for a few good moments in silent shock in any case. Whatever words he said to her after that came through as a faint buzzing, and she only caught the phrases 'I'll already be gone,' 'sweet maiden,' and something about 'pleasant dreams.' After a few seconds of stunned silence, the reality of what had just happened sunk in, and then Natalya knew that he had been wise to place a charm on her. Thankfully for Alfred Jones, he was long gone by the time it would wear off, because unbridled rage was coursing through Natalya's blood and all she wanted to do was stab something. She'd just had her first kiss stolen by a tooth-achingly altruistic, egotistical, unnerving moron who then had the nerve to petrify her! The next time she saw Alfred F. Jones, he was a dead man!
[/END THREAD]
((Well damn, Natalya, why you go getting pissed off about everything? Anyway, now we need a new thread for them! Poor Alfred, he has set his eyes on a crazy one. I think maybe next time they should meet in a public/neutral setting so that Natalya can't attack him? ^_^0 We can talk about what we want to do next. I kind of want a classroom RP with them, so the presence of a teacher keeps her from going for his throat (quite literally). And I kind of want Alfred to show off all the magic he knows in front of Natalya so that she realizes he's not all talk. ^_~))
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