bakerstreet | Romantic Rescue Meme

Romantic Rescue Meme

The person you love is in trouble! They could be in danger or perhaps even captured, but no matter what, no one can keep you away from them for long. Be careful, though, and don't lose your head and make foolish mistakes out of passion. Remember, your loved one will be counting on you, and that may include for more than just being saved. Rescuing is a long process.

— OR —

Your rescuer (or your rescued, as the case may be) isn't someone you've met before; they could be doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, for a mission, or even completely selfishly, as you'll be valuable to them. Still, they've come to free you from your prison or your most perilous of situations. While this is happening, it may be easy for emotions to run high...and feelings to burst from behind the scenes. As you ideally work together to get to safety and avoid getting caught while participating in deadly chases, you realize something problematic: you're falling for the person you've rescued or the person who rescued you.

— OR —

Somebody saved your hide from certain destruction - problem is, you have no idea who they are! In your mind, however, you've started to get all kinds of ideas about them. What are they like? Well, surely they have to be this way or that way. They're most likely a saint! Oh, it's as if your heart is aflutter when you think of them. You'll stop at nothing to find out where they are. But once you do, can the real them ever live up to what you imagined?

Comment with your character and preferences.
Mention if your character is more likely to be the rescuer or the rescued.
Reply to others.
Use one of the scenarios above or choose your own.

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((I figure this can come a few weeks after Kay puts herself back together and they've had some time apart. Let them have settled in just a little bit to their tentative new roles!))

There was an uneasiness in the alliance that K and Agate had struck that was different from their usual squabbles. Something about the thought of renouncing the way that they had been clashing had meant that where the two of them had met half-way in the past (even if it was to brawl or snipe or posture) now, there were eggshells. When Agate wasn't sure how to approach the other AI without going for a weak point -- and right now K had a lot of them on trial -- he withdrew.

It wasn't an ideal truce, considering that they had originally sketched out some kind of alliance... but the world was very specifically an AI consume AI sort of place. It meant that, suddenly, their backs to one another without worry of a dagger embedded in exposed weak points, there was a whole world of possibilities to exploit.

While K was recuperating, Agate had turned outwards to focus his full intention on those niggling worries that he had merely been holding off while he and the AI in question were watching each others backs. It had felt like a new day had dawned: full attention to glorious revenge for petty crimes? Agate would take advantage of that any day.

Of course, things were more complicated than that. While Agate had been doing well on his front, there were a few fish in the sea large enough to cause him troubles, and by the time that K was coming around again, he was beginning to bite off more than he could chew. He just didn't know it yet. He had permitted the other AI general access to his domain and his surroundings, and even from K's vantage point, his fronts facing the collective honeycomb that riddled Nexistence were in trouble. He was being flanked. Not all AI's were incapable of forming truces; it was clear that the comb and another semi-collective of face-changers were homing in on the large, expansionist asshole that Agate had grown into.

Even now he had projected himself into a watch-tower, not unlike the one that Kitten had been held hostage in several months ago, overlooking a sprawl of city and foreboding forest that he controlled. When K materialized within, he was looking down on the edge of his domain, frowning fiercely.

She had spent some time creeping around the edges before she'd beelined for his physical reference point, gaining the lay of the land and the weight of the impending threats. Her thinking had shifted: in a way this was now an adjunct of her own territory. She might not articulate it in quite those terms to Agate, but she was seeing those interlopers and feeling territorial.

That he'd just let so many threats in -- it ground on her, too. Her own defenses were unforgiving things and they had earned her a reputation so that even when she'd so recently been at only half-mast, the nibblers come to try and pick away at her domain had been comparatively few. Or at least, the ones she'd had to pick off personally.

"Bit of a crowd you've got in today," she said to him, becoming corporeal. "Having a potluck or what?"

He took her appearance in stride, even if she was in a part of his domain that he rarely, if ever, had offered her before. Casting a glance in her direction, he gave a light scoff to hide his concern. "We're having a convention, 'how to mould your humans'... of course, there are a few strong opinions about raising and upkeeping, but you know how specialists can become agitated."

That, at least, he seemed to be.

Agate turned away from his little overview to pay her full mind. She looked better. More agitated, herself, but that was to be expected. "Speaking of having a crowd in... what do you want?" Perhaps he hadn't fully realized that being on the mend and being available for one another meant a drastic shift in language. Agate seemed to at least hear what he'd said. A moment after it had slipped out of his mouth he cast a look aside, annoyed. "How are you?" He was feeling preoccupied; it was difficult to switch from irate vengeance to concerned fondness at the drop of a dime.

There were a lot of set meanings of dialogue choices in their interactions, like speaking in code, depending on the context, the tone... K had not batted an eyelash at his snarky greeting. That, by itself, had never really been a sign of serious aggression. Still, she realigned when he did.

Blinking off any surprise, she answered him with a shrug and then a grin. She wouldn't tell him where she'd been, but she'd started her day well. "On top of the world," she drawled, less sarcastic than she might have been. She even bumped him with a shoulder, like a cat, as she went to get a better view out the watchtower, over the metaphorical crowd. "So you're hosting a gaggle of enthusiasts," she offered.

Peering out, the short skin added, "They don't look they're entirely behaving themselves on your lawn, eh?" She did bite her lip against a couple of high-spirited suggestions of what she might do to help with that; their apparent alliance was new enough that both of them still had to watch their jokes.

"They're behaving, for now," he replied. The truth of the matter was that the comb was a rather unnerving neighbour. Like the wildlife that plagued every domain, the comb seemed to grow in the nooks and crannies between organized code. it had thusly crept in on Agate's forested back lawn, if metaphors for peripheral territory were to be used. Since he had gone and pissed them off, it looked like they were attempting to target him; unlike wildlife, the comb could hold higher thought and thusly, a grudge.

The face-changers were a different sort altogether. A few were actually within Agate's domain even now, individual skins; extensions of the collective. He had initially displeased them and was now in the process of backpedalling, as evidenced by the fact that some of his topmost minions were entertaining them. Like an ominous cloud on the horizon, their massive collective face was giving him something of a stink eye.

"They won't be if I'm not able to juggle them off against one another." Agate sighed, allowing himself to sag at the podium-like protrusion fronting his particular pedestal. Life was hard for an oversized ingrate. It was only then that he noticed that K seemed to be in high spirits... but rather than make a comment -- yet -- he watched her, eyes narrowed as she peered down on his troubles with carefree enthusiasm.

Not necessarily carefree, though 'enthusiasm' might not be far off. She was gazing down at the prospective battlefield with something like cheerful avarice, and certainly with an analytical eye. She was a creature of passion, but she wasn't dumb.

She took her time looking, and then shot a glance back at Agate. "Not often do I wish I'd looked more into your social machinations," she told him, grinning. "If I was at all inclined to get involved with fools, we could flank them."

"Who's saying you can't get involved now?" he asked dryly. "There are two of them. Flanking one puts the other at my back-side, and you can imagine what they'll try when they're there."

K shrugged, indomitable in the mood she was in, and then spread her hands wide and grinned. "Well then where do you want me? Come on, mastermind, we've got the element of surprise here. I could help you seriously fuck with some people."

That, at least, drew a grin from him. It was hard not to double-check K for any alternative goals; what was she planning on the side? Agate forced himself towards transparency. He quickly ran through possibilities with the other AI, fast enough on a grid of a playing field as to flash in her view. They accounted for any backstabbing that K might try... transparency was transparency, after all. Overall, he seemed more inclined to let K play to her strengths. Strips of her fiery influence lay latent in the fabric of his domain and had for a long time. They had never been tweaked before, not beyond the physical representation of Agate's skin, but they were thoroughly integrated. "The one really bothering me could learn a thing or two for going out of bounds," he considered, settling on a projection of blazing fire running up the crystalline spires that were butted right up against him. "The face changers prefer a big talk. They might back off if you announce yourself like that."

"So you want a burn-and-scare," she drawled, putting her hands on her hips as she watched the last of his little scenarios play out. She hadn't offered any of her own suggestions into them, further orienting herself to the situation through his impressions of it.

"I like that for those idiot polygons. The facechangers'll carry a grudge for the startle, though, won't they? Or are you talking about torching the honeycombers, letting the collective marinade for a while in the implicit threat?" Tapping her foot, she considered. "Yeah, I could see that."

"More than one way to skin a comb," he chuckled, feeling just a little infected by her good humour. "And I can still salvage this situation with the changers. They're trying to pin my elbow against my back, but they still have wiggle room... How about you keep an eye on my backside while I try glossing them up a little? It's been... difficult to do both at once on my own."

He turned towards her, grin still quirked. "Don't even mention biting and chewing. I've been on a diet for long enough now that I needed a break."

At that last, she chuckled a little wickedly, but otherwise it was down to business. She rubbed her hands together, cracked her knuckles in the age-old symbol of gettin'-serious. "Right. Not a problem." After all, if he'd had a dry spell, she had been suffering the same; it'd been a while since she'd gone on the offensive and it was about time to get some more field practice.

Visions of scenarios were dancing through her threat assessment centres, and she liked it. Turning to him with a bright grin she said, "You know, the longer we can keep this reasonably under wraps," she gestured between the two of them, their newly unidirectional alliance, "we're gonna be able to pull some great tricks." There was a gleam to her eyes.

"A facade, then." Agate replies, eyes suddenly attaining that particular twinkle. "A fake attack. Or an attack from the flank," he suggests, pointing comb-ward. "The face changers will press their advantage... but if it's just them, I can handle them." Now, looking her short form over with a somewhat droll grin, he added, "that is, if you want honey-heads for your prize. Would you rather switch things up?" Suddenly he had options. This made for a very happy Agate... which, given their recent encounters, was perhaps a change for the better. He almost had a Fa-like glow to his cheeks when he was plotting out incipient mayhem.

The comparison was not lost on K. It was nice to see it from this end -- a nice change, even given that she'd enjoyed their mutual animosity, too.

"No, I like the idea of tearing up the local geometry a bit," she held up a hand. "Anyways, it sounds like those velvet-faced assfuckers are going to need a light touch in the end."

"You might just terrorize them right under my wing. These are dangerous woods now that you've gone and taken a turn for the mysterious..." that last part, however, he seemed to pull back from, even casting her a quirked frown of apology. "You want to do this?" he finally asked, raising his brows in a query.

When they were ready to go, Agate returned from his high perch to the playing field, a little old skin of a humanoid amid the delegation of masked diplomats who made up a few of the multiplicity that the facechangers called a whole, single domain. On seeing him, most of them flocked his way from his underling, demanding answers for his recent transgressions. It was going to be a tight call; Agate was going to have to mince his answers until K was ready to light up the sky... and from there, the blonde was ready to take what measures were needed to quell this intransigent bunch.

He certainly had time to get some quality waffling in. She didn't dawdle, sauntered, but it was maybe for the best lest anyone tweak onto them if they appeared too closely in conjunction.

Not that the quick ones won't still catch on soon, but they had at least a few days to flank their enemies with covert alliance. At least a few.

When she did appear, the hexagons had been edging in. She wasn't entirely visible to Agate's current guests at first, not from their angle -- she was behind the hexagon's sprawling meta-shape, and the first indication they got of her arrival was that the hexagons seized on the other end, pulling focus away from where they were bent on Agate. At that point, it wasn't clear that K was the specific antagonist, at least... not yet.

The moment that K struck was apparent; the hive-like construct bit deeply into Agate's domain, forcing a rolling defensive shift in the landscape. The shape-changing delegates gave Agate one look and several of them winked out of existence, returning to their own domain to discuss their options. Three stayed to watch the blonde skin; one seemed preoccupied with the flames that were quickly consuming the AI beyond his domain.

Agate -- the skin, the humanoid figure standing before them -- did very little. He had folded his arms into the black folds of his robe, frowning faintly hexagon-ward, but the moment he noticed the delegates glaring at him, he turned a wicked smile their way. It never hurt to play darkly knowing in any event, even if beyond this skin, the meat and bulk of his domain was doing its best to expel the seeds of geometry that were attempting to force their hand into him.

Luckily, K was there to snap up anything that had been cast away from Agate, which meant that in a few moments time, when Agate-the-skin turned his full attention on the face-shifters, the grin he was giving had some weight behind it. "You were saying you wanted more leverage?" he was asking. "Are you sure it's necessary to be making threats at a time like this?"

By this point, things were beginning to come clear... and within a few moments more, the last of the delegates slipped out of his domain, tails tucked between their legs. All Agate had to do now was wait to see what K did with her surprise victim... it might change the game even further if she snapped it up whole.

There seemed to be a complicated give-and-take going on; sometimes K seemed to press her advantage, gain upper hand, start toying with her prey like a cat with a stunned mouse, but other times the labyrinthine geometry would gain the upper hand in impressive, covert or even straight-up indecipherable back-plays. If K was paying attention to how Agate's ploy was going, she gave no sign of it. If how she was tearing fervently and doggedly at the hexagons was any intention, she was playing for keeps -- can't bust back onto the scene with any less than her A-game, right?

When the showy mess that was that right came down to brass tacks, K set one of her self-perpetuating digestion viruses -- that is, set fire -- to the hexagons. That ran down one arm while she worried savagely at another, destroying the perfection of their geography, sending shards and fragments in all directions. That was the trick -- their expansionist nature was neutered and confused by the destruction of their symmetry, it rendered each individual hexagon a tiny, mindless AI without a direction. Agate could feast, if he so desired, on the detritus as the fight came to its apex.

What did he look like, some kind of scavenger? Agate seemed to scoff at the cascading geometric geodes that came raining down on him in light of K's catastrophic mayhem... but they sunk into his holding centers quietly enough. Examination, containment, and eventual ingestion seemed like an easy win. Mostly, his attention was still on the face-shifters... he was a hair's breadth away from reaching up to rip them apart in a show of appreciation for K's intervention.

He almost settled for letting them run when, clearly, they began pulling back with alarmed realization... but K had just let a juicy chunk of severed AI fly right into Agate's waiting hands and he was feeling a blood-lust that he usually saved for more muted occasions. He turned on them and gave chase, pulling masks from their frightened faces and ripping away their defenses at the same time.

The brutality was swifter with him, but no less messy. Soon he had situated his humanoid figure atop a massive pile of shredded wooden masks, waiting for K to return to him. He even tossed a particularly pretty one her way whenever she deigned to join him. "How do you feel about rather a lot of new skin to work with?" he grinned.

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Romantic Rescue Meme

Agate | OC | for Kay

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