Bad Boys//Turt

Dusk settled into night, and so marked the end of the sun’s reign over the sky. It was time for the monsters to come out to play.

While normally Miller was one to follow the school’s rules, at least to a degree that he was comfortable with, the curfew was one that he couldn’t abide by. Being restricted to moving within the walls of the school was far too limiting, especially right now. It’s been months, maybe even half a year now, but someone’s been following him, he could sense it. It was something far beyond mere paranoia. He’d seen shadows behind corners, silhouettes in windows staring directly at him. The worst part was not knowing, it could be any number of people looking for him. Governmental spies, the scientists, people with grudges, or even those gang members looking to throw him back into those deathmatches. And that was just the usual suspects. He’d take the risk of running into some stray monster any day of the week, at least he could outrun those.

After everyone was funneled back into the building, Miller made his way out into the garden, leaping off from the roof of the main entrance. He moved swiftly yet silently, his deft feet tussling through the grass. His emboldened black eyes swished back and forth, his body coming to a halt in the rose garden. So far so good, no one had detected him yet, and if memory served him right, the campus police wouldn’t be sweeping the area for another ten minutes. Until then, he had some friends to visit.

Miller knelt down by the garden, specifically, a rose bed with a seemingly out of place yellow tulip. He smiled at the odd plant. “Hello” he greeted awkwardly in hushed tones. He pulled a water bottle from his back pocket and doused the soil around the tulip. He glanced from left to right, as if trying to think of a topic of conversation, then bowed his head politely. “Goodbye.” He turned his attention elsewhere afterwards, but remained low to the ground.

In his crouched walk, Miller moved over to the next nearest patch of flowers, passing by a sandstone statue depicting a fae creature without paying much mind to it. With his back turned to it, the face of the statue began to lightly crumble, a stream of sand trinkling down the side of it. Silently, it leaked into the grass, building up behind the student as he crinkled his water bottle and continued to water his select few flowers.

A snake-like tendril slithered through the grass, creeping toward Miller’s ankle. It snared itself around its target and pulled on his leg like a rope. In a sudden panic, Miller swung his body around and slashed his blade arm at the tendril. As it was severed, he leapt back in shock, his bulbous eyes as wide as they could be.

The pile of sand grew larger, expanding to a size twice that of Miller. “It’s past curfew, head back inside or I drag you back” the sand pillar explained curtly.

Promptly, Miller dashed immediately to his right, deeper into the gardens and toward the forest line. The shadow of the pillar was cast over Miller as it fell, causing him to hasten his pace in an attempt to outrun the crashing pillar. Tem’s elongated body smashed against the ground with a thunderous thud, shaking the earth along with it. While Miller knew he wasn’t in the clearing just yet, he thought this at least gave him a small head start. Boy was he wrong on that front.

Instantaneously, the pillar exploded into a cloud of dirt, whipping around like a sandstorm.

With eyes full of sand, Miller had little choice. Continuing forth was going to prove difficult, so, instead, he dove into a nearby hedge. Unbeknownst to him, he just leapt head first into the rose garden’s hedge maze. Once he broke on through to the other side, he rolled against the ground and halted himself against the wall of the maze, keeping as close as possible.

The swirling winds of sand ceased, rounding itself up into one location. Slowly but surely, it amassed itself into a much larger form, building up to Tem’s sand golem form. Her trifecta of eyes honed over toward the maze, stomping her way over so that she could peer inside. Looming over the wall, she began to quickly and calmly scan every which column of the maze, trying to deduce where the rule breaking student had gone.

Normally, Knell was not one to follow the school’s rules. Entering restricted areas, borrowing things without permission, the occasional harassment of other students, excessively obnoxious behavior, the list goes on. Rules were something to follow when they suited him, and tonight one in particular did not. The mandatory curfew.

It was simple, he was hungry, and the forest called to him. Those lonely trails promised the revitalizing melancholy that would keep him in tip-top shape even into tomorrow's activities. That was ignoring the obvious fact that the school had no place to judge what is safe or not for an actual God.  And of course, the trees were especially quaint when they were alite with the subtle glow of a pale moon. He was practically obligated to ignore Foresta’s restrictions and head out into the night.

The only issue was actually sneaking off this wretched campus. He could phasewalk completely undetected to the treeline, sure, but the seemingly missing security personnel presented an unacceptable variable. The construct was on-duty tonight. Knell had seen it earlier, and as no one else had taken over the nightly watch, it meant that wretch was still out there lurking about.

So he waited, because the last thing he needed was to re-materialize just as that demented sand puppet was taking a surprise peak through the trees instead of doing it’s job. It was too bad he couldn’t just dismantle it, but the TemThing possessed the typical brute strength that only mortal vermin would think necessary in their creation.

His patience was rewarded when some idiot decided to go jaunting around in the gardens below. It was hard to see any details, dark as it was, but there was definitely a humanoid shape moving about. Good. They would likely draw the construct out from wherever it had been lurking, giving the shade a chance to make his escape risk-free.

At least, that was the plan up until it actually happened. The stranger wandered about a bit longer before being predictably detained by a suddenly appearing sand monster, and at that point Knell dropped his book and vanished into the floor below. Quickly moving from one connected surface to another, he had made his way all the way down to the ground below when he felt the surface shake for a moment. Alarmed, he looked over from beneath the ground only to find his sight in that direction being blocked by what could only be the outlines of countless sand particles, kicked up into a churning cloud.

All signs pointed to the idea that the accused had made an escape attempt, only to incite some disproportionate retaliation from the construct. This would be acceptable were it almost anyone else, but as the golem was a magic entity in nature, it had no right to endanger what were rightfully his pathetic mortal subjects. Annoyance and a tinge of concern Knell himself was not fully aware of quickly took hold of his mind, and he decided he would need to intervene here.

He studied the situation for just a bit longer, waiting for his chance to intervene without being caught in the storm himself, and when the TemThing re-converged into one single mass that went stomping towards the hedge maze, so did he emerge fourth from the ground a little ways behind it. And now that he was really focusing, he could smell the fear of tonight’s quarry as well. They were in that same maze, likely trying to hide amongst it’s walls in understandable mortal terror. He would follow that same scent in a bit once he was done here, see why that pitiable thing was out here anyway, but first he needed to distract the abomination before it found it’s prey. There was one easy way to do that.

“Construct! Knell heard a commotion all the way from my dormitory room, what’s the problem out here?” He spoke loudly with a tone of false worry, even making a show of taking a scan of the area whilst keeping his distance from Tem. “I do not sense the presence of any emotions out here aside from yours, no telltale scents of aggression or fear...so are you simply interrupting the peace and quiet for your own little amusement? If not, well, anything you might have been chasing has either fled this area or ceased all brain function.” The shade's more natural, condescending form of speech and tone naturally began to take root after one whole sentence of acting the concerned citizen.

That wasn’t the end of the world though, he just needed the beast to consider his words for a moment or two, long enough for it’s quarry to slip away to safety. If it completely bought into them all the better, but such a dull thing as Tem should not be expected to head advice, even from a god.

As the sandstorm ceased, Miller scuttled toward the nearest wall and knelt down as ridged as a statue. He steadied his breaths, silently and meditatively gasping for air like he was taught back at the lab. If there was ever one benefit from his upbringing, it made avoiding these types of situations a bit easier. Despite his anxiety and general panic, his physical presence became more and more difficult to detect, as if he faded into the night and became one with the hedge.

Miller’s superior stealth quickly proved itself to be an annoyance to Tem. The mighty figure of the sand golem was reduced to something akin to an old man trying to read the morning newspaper without his glasses. With her mighty mitts, she tried to comb through the hedges one by one, but as she expanded her vision to the rest of the maze, she realized what a colossal waste of her time that would be. She might as well just start uprooting the things and tossing them aside, give her quarry far fewer places to hide. The groundskeeper could deal with the mess tomorrow morning. Better yet, reform into a sandstorm and expand through every inch of the place and flush him out. Either way would suffice, so long as Miller didn’t get away.

It would seem that he wasn’t the only student out and about after curfew. The spark of a voice grew from behind the sand monster, one familiar enough to be irritable. Just before she could enact her plan to flush Miller out, she had to investigate the nuanced nuisance. One of her emerald eyes sunk into the mass of her body and poked out the broad side of her back, narrowing and looking down upon Knell. One of the main arms of her body continued to comb through the hedge in front of her, while the other turned around, drooping at her side for the sake of displaying her physical might.

The gaseous creature spoke, but very little of it was heeded or retained by the sand golem. It sounded like a bunch of gibberish, mostly pertaining to his supposed ability to sense the presence of Miller. Tem knew little of what Knell’s powerset was, its not like she could be expected to remember the powers of every, especially with her recent health and welfare. Regardless, far be it from her to just take some random student’s word, let alone from one she had no compulsion to trust to begin with. “Don’t interfere with campus security’s business” she replied bluntly.

With the sound of both Knell and Tem’s voices, as well as the deft movements he caught with his vigilant ear, it was made apparent that Miller was bought an opportunity to slip past the sand sentry, however small it might have been. He raised himself to a crouched gait and began to lightly saunter forward, deeper into the body of the maze. His footsteps remained as quiet as ever, so unless someone had advanced hearing, the only way he could be detected was through sight, something made increasingly difficult considering that he was hugging the walls closely.

Seeing as combing through one section of the hedge maze was not a viable solution, and the fact that she had a second student to keep an eye on, it seemed that the best strategy was to divide and conquer. Since Miller was a previous assignment of hers, one that she had to investigate when she was part of the police force, she was decently familiar with how to handle him, so he was the least troublesome of the two. One of her emerald eyes popped out of her ‘head’ along with a small glob of sand. The newly formed slug beast raised to attention, scanning the column of the maze it found itself in with its mono-eye. When it found nothing, it slithered forward diligently, like a robotic drone.

Once the smaller piece of herself was sent out, the remainder of Tem’s body turned about, her remaining two emerald eyes gazing directly down at Knell. “The situation is being dealt with” she added as she placed her tree trunk sized foot forward. “And now you’re out past curfew. Go back to your dorm room before I drag you back” she spoke in an official yet distinctly assertive manner.

This was unfortunate. Knell had hoped to fully divert the golem’s attention, and if not that then at least be completely ignored, which would have still left him more room to work around. Instead the Tem had split a piece of itself off and sent it to continue the search, whilst the main body turned to try and threaten him with petty words and displays. Really, there could not be a more asinine way it could of gone about all this.

Needless to say, he had not reacted in any physical manner to Tem’s stomp and second warning, simply standing and grinning as Knell does. “The only one here interfering with your little task is you, construct. I stated openly that my reasons for being out here were to make sure no flesh-ants had found themselves in harm's way, given the crashing and stomping I was hearing,” he spoke softly, as though speaking to a child he didn’t want to scare or confuse. “I did that, and you decide to focus the greater part of your attention on me? All you are accomplishing is giving whomever you are looking for more time to get away.”

As he finished his assessment, Knell decided it would be wise not to stay in one specific spot for too long. He melted away into the ground, and seconds later reformed a ways off to the side of where he had been previously standing. Whilst staying in the area for just a bit longer was necessary, the golem was capable of many underhanded tactics. He did not want to have a trail of sand sneak up on him whilst he was talking. And there was still much talking to do.

“But, perhaps you just were not designed with the capacity for higher thought. Dust and sand will always be just that, after all, and I would not blame the good Mentuhotep for wanting his servants to be of the more predictable sort,” his eyes and smile broke apart into countless specks of light for a moment as he faced the golem, seemingly disturbed by the particularly wicked chuckle that accompanied.

Knell felt almost giddy at the chance to flaunt his findings on his foe. It had taken a bit of research, and bargaining for assistance with the infernal world wide web, but with a bit of basic logic applied to fill in the gaps, he pretty much had the Tem’s origins nailed down. They were formed of sand, made little effort to hide how they looked down on the meat-maggots as fragile and short lived, was nigh obsessive with their role as a guardian, their name turned out to originate from ancient Egypt, specifically the head wife of some pharaoh of old, Mentuhotep II. It all painted a fairly concise picture.

“Though that would seem to have come back to bite him, hasn’t it? His grand tomb plundered, the treasures spirited away to foreign lands. I wonder who he would blame for that.” In the best case scenario, these words would either anger or sadden the TemThing, leading to a nice treat for him alongside distracting it even further. If not, well they were still likely to make some sort of move very soon, so he phase-walked once more, this time a bit further away from the golem. A bit more breathing room never hurt. All that remained was to watch for the construct’s move, and react accordingly.