PP-F2: Not what I was looking for

[Mari 1]

Esther had been missing for far too long. Mari didn't know the ditzy purple headed woman all too well, but her completely disappearing, removed from Mari's friend list, ignoring her messages. Something didn't sit right with the pinkette. Part of Mari wanted to ignore the situation completely, dust her hands of the needy, naive woman and call it a day. Wouldn't that be easier? To just forget Esther ever existed? It wasn't like she was close to Mari. It's not like Mari considered her a friend, or even an acquaintance. She was just a foolhardy girl who was too trusting, and too caring for such a world.

So why was Mari out here? Why was she skulking around in the fields of the second floor after having searched the entirety of the first? 

"Dumb ass b**ch." Mari muttered, running a hand through her pink fringe with a sigh, pausing in her walk. Two nearby players noted her red icon, and scurried away. Unsurprising. Her icon, her noteriety either had players challenging her, or avoiding her completely. Mari had forgotten what a normal conversation was like. At least, until she met Esther.

Try as she might, Mari couldn't help but admit that the other woman had somehow managed to wriggle her way through part of Mari walls. She had managed to make Mari care, at least to the point of having her actively look for the other. Amari had even reached out to Arc, someone she tried to avoid, having assumed he immensely disliked her. "F**kin' Arc's not respondin' either."

"F**k me..." Mari muttered with another sigh. 
 

[Corvo 0]

"You know what I hate?" Corvo asked the wind wasp as it flitted too close to him, one too many times. He gripped it by the wing and tugged, hard. As he drove his dagger down its abdomen, it split into a million fragments of data. "You, mostly," he spoke to the deceased mob, "but pretty much everything else, too."

As the Rogue fell to the grass in a graceless mess of black fabric, he glanced up and spied a pink haired woman in the distance. That wasn't something he saw everyday.

...and the cursor that marked her was even rarer. "Hot damn," he smirked. This was either the quickest way out of Aincrad, or a good time. Or both. Corvo wasn't arsed one way or the other.

He hurried toward her, and just as she got close enough for him to hear, he thought he heard her say something about someone. Coulda been anyone, though. Not important.

"Howdy," he greeted with a curt wave. Her last words had been relatively audible, and so he seized the opportunity like any good scumbag ought.

Carpe Diem.

"That an invitation, gorgeous?"

[Mari 1]

"Depends..." Mari replied, the shock of having another so enthusiastically approach her hidden from her features and deadpan tone. "Would you be willing to strip now?" She asked, shifting her weight to one side. Crossing her arms. Dead blue eyes challenging him.

 

Challenge accepted apparently.

 

The red headed mans eyes lit up and he lifted his hands as if to take off his shirt.

 

"What? F**k, Stop." Mari reached out, grabbing his elbows and pushing them back down. "The hell is wrong with you. Does it look like I'd just strip down and bang a stranger?"

 

He opened his mouth to reply but Mari quickly spoke over him, "don't answer that." She muttered, shooting him a glare.

 

Turning away from him she sighed

Who the hell did this man think he was? Who just approached someone and asked for raw, dirty nuptials? Not only that, but a Pker of all things.

 

Looking over her shoulder her gaze glanced up and down his form. This guy.

 

"Stupid. Insane. Suicidal." She mused. "That's what you are, in case you haven't noticed- I don't 'do' people." She offered him a smirk. "Naked or otherwise."

 

She waved him off, and began to walk away. "Go find someone else to bother, I can't be bothered pretending to be civil today."

[Corvo 0]

Ha. Haha. Hahahhaha!

Was she serious? The woman asked him to disrobe, so the obvious course of action was to comply. When her fevered response was flustered and she practically forced him to stop, Corvo could do nothing but let out a loud guffaw.

She turned away and said a few things, biting and intent on driving a wedge between them. This girl was great at pushing people away. Unfortunately for her, Corvo didn't give a damn about that. 

Hell no.

This was too much fun. "Looks to me like you do 'em just fine," he indicated her cursor, stained orange by system outlawed actions. Murder or otherwise, Corvo didn't particularly care. It never once bothered him that someone might do something in this game to get them in trouble. Hell, he half expected to leave Aincrad with a tarnished cursor of his own.

As she turned, he took a step forward and grabbed a healthy handful of her rear. "Ain't no one asked for you to be civil," he told her with a wink, he let out a wild laugh when the instinctive slap rounded and took him in the cheek.

He only grinned. "I been bored, see," he told her, "and I saw me an opportunity to change my luck. You wanna stab me, go ahead. Wanna take this back to an inn? Be my guest."

Corvo spun his dagger idly and pointed it toward her thoughtfully. "Your move, pink," he said, "either way, I got no reason to be scared. My death waiver was signed the minute I logged into this game. Might as well let a pretty lady do for me."

Edited November 24, 2016 by Corvo

[Mari 1]

The F**k. 

He had grabbed her, manhandled her- and in turn she slapped him. Mari hadn't met anyone so bold and so frivolous. So idiotic and foolish. Someone who had such disrespect for everyone and everything around him. 

"Luck, huh?" 

Mari spun on her heel, giving him a hefty roundhouse kick to his sternum, knocking him to the floor. "I suppose someone as foolhardy as you would believe in something as flittering and nonsensical as luck."

He wanted action, she'd give it to him. Mari was not in the best of moods, not that she ever was. Today, wS worse. She had completely lost contact with Esther, and Arc was being a dick- as usual.

Amari pulled out her own dagger, a unique weapon with blackened black, it's hilt a myriad of snakes entwined in each other. She spun it effortlessly around between her fingers as she sat on his stomach, straddling him. 

"Just fine, eh?" She mused. Her eyes glancing toward her dagger then back to him. "It'd be easy, one slice, one fancy flurry of movements and you'd cease to exist. That's the problem with this game." She allowed the dagger to fall, it landed in the soft earth beside his head. "It's all too easy. Death, relationships, friendships, it's all just a farce. Something to keep idle minds busy."

She pressed her hands against his chest, ignoring the sh*t eating grin he wore. "This feeling, this heat-" she leaned closer, allowing her lips to brush against his ear, "skin against skin, blade against bone. It's nothing."

Mari pulled away.

"So it doesn't surprise me to see you're bored." Amari climbed off him and shoved her dagger back into her inventory. That should be enough to get the guy to bugger off.

"Unless you're planning on buying my wares-" She paused, clarifying for him. "Potions, mind altering elixirs and the like, don't bother me. I'm busy."

Again, she walked off. 

[Corvo 0]

He howled when she struck him again, not in pain, but excitement. The woman manhandled him in a way few girls ever had, in the game or outside. He absolutely loved it. He ate it up. "Yeah," he hissed when she started talking down to him, treating him like some kind of subhuman piece of garbage. "That's the stuff, lady. GIVE IT TO ME!"

She pulled her own dagger and pushed him down, and Corvo pitched the biggest damn tent he ever had. Might be she even felt it. (Somewhere outside Aincrad, the nurses watching his body got a real surprise.)

"You got a real good bedside manner," he told her in a raspy voice as she went on about how she could kill him, "but you ain't stabbed me yet."

She said it was all nothing, but then, if she truly didn't care she wouldn't have even bothered to try intimidating him. She would have killed herself a long time ago, lost in the futility of life inside SAO. No, Corvo saw through that.

There was a stark difference between being bored and being hopeless.  She was somewhere lost in between the two extremes. She probably wasn't even sure which direction was up anymore.

"Real busy," he sneered as she started off, "when you can tease a poor sod's ****, but not finish the job. Fox."

He shook his head and slid the dagger back into its sheath. "Just you wait," he called after her, "Imma make you scream my name one way or the other, pink!"

[Mari 1]

"I've shed enough figurative blood, red. I need not shed any more." Her reply to his cheeky comment was spoken with a heaviness that did not suit the situation.

It was best for him, and for her if she just avoided him. In different circumstances she may have been tempted to amuse herself with his antics, but that was then, not now.

Mari glared back as the stranger made a comment on her actions, and how they seemed to get him going. "not my d*ck, not my problem. You got a hand, fix it your damn self."

As she wandered further away the man claimed she would be calling his name. What a rort. 

"Don't know it. Don't care to." Mari called back, not bothering to glance back at him. The more interaction she gave him, the more ammo he had to work from.

Mari didn't know how to handle people like that, so cavalier, it made them difficult to read, difficult to guess their movement and what state of mind they were in. Although the pink haired woman could safely assume the redhead had a mind that was permanently 'off tilt' insane. That was the only way to describe him.

"What I do need..." She muttered to herself, "is for someone to f**king answer me. Nothing from Esther, Domarus or Arc." 

She ran a hand through her hair, Mari knew she was the worst person to be around, but she thought she would be good enough for at least a single damn reply. "I hate people."

[Corvo 0]

"Hey... HEY! DON'T GO WALKIN' AWAY!" Corvo waved his arms comically, fighting for her attention as she denied it to him in the cruelest of fashions. This world already drove him to the fringes of his sanity, and the few moments he had where he could have some kind- any kind- of correspondence with another thinking, rationalizing, functioning human being gave him a reason not to start cutting people down like trees. "It's a lonely fuggin' world, pink," he mewled, more to himself now that she was too far to hear. "And yer only makin' me lonelier."

With a despondent sigh, the Assassin picked up his carefree façade once more and struck off after the woman. "It's Corvo," he called after her loudly. "COR- VO. That's an easy one, ain't it? Don't even gotta think hard."

He heard her say Arc, and his ears perked up. The redheaded lunatic sidled up beside her and opened his menu, flipped to his good friend's name, and opened a message template. "What, you wanna invite good ol' Arc, too? I'm down. Might be fun to do a tour de France- ever seen the Eiffel Tower?" he asked absently.

"Wait, no, he's got a girlfriend- I don't think he'd go for that." Corvo considered the notion briefly. "Sheeeeyit, if only Thom was here, I'd've talked him into it. Probably. Well. Maybe not."

Corvo shrugged. "Neither of them was all that great with girls."

[Mari 1]

The red-headed man screamed at her, something about not walking away- but Mari didn't care. She had business. She had finally received a reply from Domarus, who was all too willing to meet her on the 10th floor. Good. One down, two to go. "Good..." She mused. Now she could concentrate on more important matters.

"COR-VO."

Or so she thought.

Amari turned on her heel, exasperated. "Ok. Red." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Persistent aren't ya?" 

Corvo started rattling on about Arc, and Amari visibly winced. "You a friend of his?" She sounded less than impressed. "I don't think he's exactly the type of person who extrudes fun," She paused. "Maybe after a few drinks, but I di- wait..." She paused.

Did Corvo just say that moody sunovab**ch had a ...girlfriend!?

"HE has a girlfriend?" Amari scoffed at the idea. "I don't believe it. He's a moody, drunken ass." Her eyes travelled up and down Corvo's form. "Suppose that's why yer friends with him, no?"   Amari grabbed his hand and lowered it. "Arc and I don't exactly see eye to eye. Best not mention me to him, may get his panties in a twist." Mari offered the red headed man a small smirk, "Then again...yer seem like the type who'd want to do that."

It was then, that Corvo mentioned Thom. Amari's eyes fell and her demeanour sunk.  "Thom was here." She repeated in a hushed whisper. She offered his hand a tight squeeze. "Sorry to blow yer mind, but it appears both Arc - even if I don't believe it, and Thom, had girls." Amari let go of his hand and pushed her pink fringe back and away from her eyes.

"Let me reintroduce myself. I am Mari. Ex leader of a guild, wanted Player Killer - and Thom's ex girlfriend."

[Corvo 0]

"Ah-" he started to speak, his general loud, comical, and inappropriate routine, and then she said it. Thom's ex-girlfriend. Leave it to both of those clowns to find love inside a virtual world. His expression was one of grim introspection for a moment before he glanced up and narrowed his eyes. "Well damn," he said quietly, "looks like Alkyboy found ya first. Wouldn't you know it. Guy was pretty good at finding treasure in games."

He glanced away, not sure of what else to say. Evan always seemed to find a moment for his friends, even in this world where he willingly scattered his sanity to the winds. Corvo, however, was a fickle fellow. He disliked these overlong, tender moments.

They really cramped his style.

"Listen," he said as he slid his fingers into the waistline of his pants. "I know what happened, and I've done my time crying about it. I'm sure you have, too."

His eyes slid back to the pink haired woman and he gave a lopsided grin. "I ain't in the business of wallowing in grief, and I don't particularly care about no one's rap sheet. So you killed a few c*nts. Bet they had it comin'. I'd've laid waste to a slew of them m'self."

He reached up unbidden, let his fingers touch her cheek gently, and tilted his head. "And well, call me cheeky, but I'll take you for a ride even if my dead buddy got it first."

Corvo let out an inane laugh and tilted his head back as he took a step away from her. "I think we can be friends, Pink!"