Would You Kindly Fight Your Friends?

'___' marks transition from RP to RP.
'---' marks a divider in the RP itself, used for Arsenic's inner thoughts as well as his flashbacks.

_______

For a year, Arsenic had remained a spectator on the cosmic scale rather than a combatant, reverting to his old ways for seemingly no reason. In that time, he had grown, drastically- whereas before he was short, scrawny, and appeared almost malnourished, he had shot up drastically, now sitting somewhere in the region of five foot seven as a fledgling teenager. The armor and clothes he'd donned as before, which'd been bought too large, now struggled to fit over his vastly longer and larger limbs.

It was this boy that arrived before Arimanes as of little to nothing had happened in the span of the year he had dropped from the face of the globe, staring tiredlessly at walls, hanging out alone, just thinking...his reversion to introvert had been abrupt, and it had been full-force. He had spent so much time thinking. So much time alone.

So much time alone with the voices in his head.

They whispered madness, and now, well, he was here, standing before Arimanes for the first time in ages, utterly flatfaced. When he looks to the giant yokai woman, crossing his arms and balancing all his weight to one side, he makes the childish pouting face that'd been characteristic of a kid half his size...and just continues to do so for some time. Inevitably, however, this was going to get boring...

"Did I ever tell you after we met, I made friends?"

It was probably a strange way to initiate a conversation, but it was how he and Arimanes had spoke, atleast from his end- she wasn't interested in the small goings on of his life, as interested, even, as he was with hers, but he'd try and make them seem interesting and perhaps relevant to his inevitable corruption at the hands of occult madness.

"Crazy stuff. Never knew anybody could stand me but me."

_______

He is visibly taken aback.

The boy practically flinches, the question so utterly uncharacteristic of the yokai that he's forced to reel his head back. What the fuck? is at the forefront of his mind, and, right after, a visual of him having his chest stabbed clean through and one of his lungs popped like a pinata. All of the interactions between them to this point are ran through the teen's head in a manner of instants, and, for that timespan, he looks utterly dumbfounded....

It was just so strange a question for the earnestly terrifying yokai to ask.

It wasn't even that the answer was a clear and concise no, it was that he'd never expected to be asked such a thing by his sinister-seeming, ruthless, giant associate. He scratches behind his head, tilts it afterward, and his face smooths into an expression of an altogether more agreeable disposition, and he seems, now, to be weighing his thoughts on the subject...

He seems to decide on something.

Arsenic settles out of his contemplative stance, looks up and into Arimanes's eyes, and then, rather slowly...

"Maybe."

_______

Arsenic shook his head.

He didn't know if she'd find it disappointing or not, but it was the earnest truth. While Levi'd proceeded to continue blazing forward and leave him in the dust when Arsenic was just managing to arrive at his heels, Arsenic had stagnated, having chose to pursue the goal of contemplation and introspection until he achieved...something. All he had obtained was a headache, a cynical world view, a good deal of frustration, and a touch, just a touch, of insanity.

"I might've even got rusty the last year," he admits. His team had even gone on an adventure or two without him, to his knowledge, which sucked abit. "I.."

How did he explain what he had been doing?

The boy had fled from home shortly after meeting Arimanes; even in his emotionless state, he'd known he couldn't return to them the way he was. He didn't want them to see him. They'dve never understand, and goddamn it, he didn't care anymore if they did- so he had left, and never looked back, hitting the ground running. His arms crossed, he bit his lip, and he stared down, and at one specific blade of grass, as if it had all the answers to every mystery in the universe..

"I was just...thinking. For a long time. I'll tell you what I thought about when I figure it out."

A year wasted, essentially.

_______

Arsenic looked to the vast legion of yokai who'd pressured him so long ago, forcing him to leap from tree to tree and fight defensively in his attempts to thin their herd...

He hadn't lifted this sword in a year.

His eyes flit from foe to foe, and it was all he could do just to hold the excitement brimming just under the surface. Whether this'd been how he were born or how the darkness had molded him, this, this is what he had lived for.

"No cake. No party. Just right back into it, huh?"

It didn't mean he wouldn't pretend to be upset about it though.

The smile on his face gives away the joke, and he sprints into the fray, fast, as was one of his sole defining attributes as a combatant aside from the highly offensive nature of his fighting.

His elbow cracks dead into a yokai's face with the force of a cannonball, and he turns, just in time to come face-to-face with one that'd aimed to rake it's claws across his back, as one had when he were little-

---

A young Arsenic took a severe cut, gasping out and leaping to a nearby tree, looking down at the horde. Form a shield? How the hell was he supposed to do that?

---

Effortlessly, a barrier of occult magic shielded him from occuring any sort of damages, and his foot rose swiftly, embedding into the foolish yokai's gut and propelling it, spiraling, into a tree. He spins, pivoting on his heel, as three bare down on him at once now, and his hand raises to the hilt of his sword...

Then, in that moment, by his perception, time slowed. There were three above him, his knees were bent low, his hands on his sword...but he held all the time in the world.

Jackpot.

Time resumed pace as per normal, but not without him having exited the freeze in a stunningly ferocious spin attack that bisected the whole trio of yokai, the spin continuing with the flat of the blade so that he then batted away the chunks of the deceased across the forest. The sword was placed on his back once more, and he taunted the rest now, both hands raising in a 'bring it' motion.

...I forgot how much I love this.

---

A young Arsenic watched as the children played. Levi overcame Fou Lu, and with that, the politics of Frostvale, or atleast, between the youngsters, had changed..irreversibly. It wasn't cool to fight- someone had lost a leg. Arsenic, then, played along, pretended he hated magic, pretended he hated fighting, told himself that just wasn't who he was.

Oh why oh why did he have to lie?

---

The rest of the yokai were child's play. Tendrils shot from his body that impaled them and siphoned their life. He rushed and darted through their midst like a specter of death, still infinitely more deadly than the bulk of his peers even with the year of time for them to catch up. He was totally, completely unafraid as he faced their advances, lobbing exploding electric grenades with reckless abandon.

When the fighting stops, and he's left to stand there in midst of it all, he smiles. There isn't a scratch on him, but there is blood...

None of it his.

"Maybe I'm not rusty afterall."

________

He never was adequately placated by her words. He was so immeasurably ambitious that to him, anything but the might of a champion wasn't worth commending, wasn't anything to respect. In his eyes, he may as well not at all be given a word of praise, not until he stood atop the same lofty pinnacle as Adelaide Hirano herself and conquered the final frontier of magical might.

His arms crossed at the mention of Arimanes commanding more powerful yokai. That seemed like a troublesome prospect...is what he'dve thought years ago.  Now he eagerly awaits the challenge, immediately wondering how soon is soon? Only time would tell, he supposed.

He withdraws a coin from his pocket, then flips it. After catching it and looking at the side it'd landed on, he'd pocket aforementioned currency, and then return his attention to Arimanes.

"Do you say that to all the lovely little boys and girls?"

There wasn't really a tinge of jealousy there, just a playful jab...the slight curve of his mouth indicated he was repressing another smile.

________

Arsenic stared.

Was he actually intending to do such a thing? Like openly, with Arimanes? He didn't know what exactly she was implying was her method of attack, but 'fight against Nostvale' implied she was assaulting a town. And that meant, in all likelihood..

He'd have to cross blades with Levi.

He'd have to think on that one.

_______

Arsenic'd leave shortly after that, departing from Arimanes's sight and leaving the gargantuan yokai to her rest. She required plenty of it, afterall, between all of the standing around and the ominousness. He was sure that, in it's own special way, it consumed a lot of energy.

"Hmm..."

But where to go off to now?