#[[Three Ghost Lizards in a Trenchcoat]] - Reptilitones

[lost-kingsmen]

@demcntwins liked for a starter from the Reptilitones

Branwen stared at the extended hand for several long seconds, visibly thinking. Behind her, Chopper made a sound akin to glass marbles falling down stairs and twirled one small claw near the side of her head. Griflet gasped and smacked her with the long end of his tail, and Chopper trilled angrily at him as Bran suddenly perked up.

Opening her jagged mouth wide, the orange spirit reached a hand in and dug around for another second before pulling an alarmingly long bread knife out from the glowing depths. She presented it with a proud whistle, but when this didn't get the positive reaction she expected, Bran dropped the bread knife to the ground with a disappointed huff. She reached into her mouth once more and pulled out the first sharp object she felt.

Was this your card knife? She could keep going if it wasn't.

[lost-kingsmen]

As Danny talked, Gawain's eyelights slowly rounded out from their smiling slight tilt to a wide, stunned oval shape. That...was far more of an answer than he'd been expecting, and still contained an annoying number of unfamiliar terms. Damn, and he'd thought he'd gotten all caught up on his current events.

Okay, okay, he knew who the Justice League were, at least. From the context 'Lanterns' probably went with 'Green Lantern' (there were more than one??), and if the heroes were already on the case, then it probably wasn't something that he had to worry about, right? Oh, but Aether's cover story of Gawain being his 'bodyguard' to excuse why he was around so often meant that he wasn't exactly out of the public eye, and he didn't exactly look human anymore and he'd never figured out that invisibility trick Griflet swore he should be able to do so hiding wasn't really an option-

"....that's naff." The knight said at last, sounding more than a little lost. The Reptilitones traded looks and whispered amongst themselves (Crisis? What number is this? Bad time. Not here.) for a moment before the largest one opened her mouth.

"Put it in the box, boss." Branwen advised out loud in the voice of what sounded like a young boy. The words were choppy, and sounded like they were mashed together from two different occasions - but they worked to pull Gawain out of whatever thoughts he was stuck in.

"Right! Right..." The knight gave his head a shake and rolled his shoulders, as if physically shrugging off the thoughts. "Sorry. Guess that's what I get for asking." He chuckled a little. "Ah, your turn for a question, yeah?"

Gawain thought about his next question for several seconds before speaking. If he asked the right one, he might be able to answer a few of them in one go...although, with the way things had been going, it was more likely he'd just end up with more questions. It never hurt to try, though.

"You mentioned a 'GIW' before," The knight said at length. "What - or who - is that?" It probably wasn't good, considering the context was that he'd need to get a warning if they were seen in the area.

[solitaria-fantasma]

((It is done. Gawain’s own sideblog is (technically) live!

So is Callahan’s, but it’s all still rough themes and half-finished pages. Pardon the dust!))

[lost-kingsmen]

Late Knights in the Lizard Lair

———

((Arthur has told Gawain a thousand times that they aren’t calling his shed workshop the ‘Lizard Lair’. I need to put this down now. My phone is starting to lag from all the layers the file has to open.))

[lost-kingsmen]

Gawain, how much for you to smack the Mayor?

"One french fry." The ghost said with a deadpan voice. One of his spirit companions pulled away from his helmet flame to hang off of his shoulder, and whispered something frantically into his helmet.

"Correction," Gawain held up one finger. "One french fry and the extra crunchy burnt bits that always fall to the bottom of the cup." Bran breathed a little sigh of relief.

[lost-kingsmen]

"Oh, dear, someone's been talking about me? I hope it was only the good things." Gawain made a quiet sound, similar to the click of a tongue, and one of the orange spirits drifting around behind him leapt into his hand, reshaping into the form of a sword with an eager little laugh. The other two flew off to the side of the arena and settled on the floor, out of the way and ready to spectate.

He wasn't ready - not in the slightest. He'd heard stories himself about Big Barda's combat prowess, and was sure that he didn't measure up. But backing down from a challenge was hardly the way to leave a good impression on your fellow heroes, and at the very least he knew that he wouldn't die (again). But he raised his blade into a defensive stance, and sent a quiet mental push to Chopper to remind her not to bite too hard.

"En garde, and all that!"

Open Fandom RP (to all fandoms)

Big Barda was a member of the New Gods, a race of powerful alien and was born on Apokolips, where she was forced to train to be a servant of Darkseid. Thankfully, she was saved and freed before being brought to New Genesis to become a hero. She loves battle and relishes at the thought of fighting a strong opponent, like your muse.

"I was told much about your skills in battle. Let's see if they are true or not. I make no promises to hold back, so I suggest you go all out. Are you ready?"

[lost-kingsmen]

Ao3

"You need to rest." Gawain's eye lights flickered briefly - first up, over the edge of his book, and then down to the pages again - at the quiet crunch of dried leaves. Chopper lashed her long tail as her liege tried to ignore her, and grudgingly uncoiled from her comfortable position beneath the desk lamp to stand up and arc her spine in a stretch. "You have been active for six months and fifteen days. You need to rest." She insisted in the soft shushing of leaves in the wind.

"When did you start counting?" Gawain flipped the page of the book to try and make it clear that he wasn't listening. He hadn't read a single sentence in the past ten minutes. He just...he couldn't focus on the words. He got too distracted by the surreal glow of his own eyes on the page and how, no matter where he looked-

Little orange claws hooked over the edges of the pages as Griflet hauled his body up from the knight's lap. Though the spirit's negligible weight barely even made a dent in the paper, Gawain lowered the book anyway, allowing Griflet to climb up and resettle over the pages in a definitive end to his distracted reading.

"Rest is important." Chopper made sounds like the creaking of old trees in a storm as she gathered her long body at the edge of the desk, and then jumped across to take up the space in Gawain's lap that Griflet had vacated. "You need to-"

"NO." Gawain moved to stand up abruptly, causing Chopper and Griflet to tumble off his lap with a series of startled chirps. They recovered quickly, though, and gave their master matching looks of mild offense. "I can't risk it. I can't risk losing another twenty years-" He made a sound akin to breath hissing through clenched teeth as something tried to wedge itself between his palm and clenched fingers, and almost jerked his hand away. Branwen simply reached out again to take the knight's hand and lifted it to press it against the heart-shaped mark on her chest.

"You are not alone anymore." The spirit said in the soft clicking of his brother's building bricks. Gawain made the hissing sound again, but softer - quieter - in the fragile silence that now filled the space in the wake of his own near-shouting. He felt Griflet and Chopper grasp at his other hand, and let his arm go limp so that they could lift it, too.

"We will wake you." Branwen promised in the soft rumble of distant thunder before leaning her long neck in to press her head against the side of his helmet. Griflet and Chopper echoed her with rumbles of their own, patting his hand and arm with their little claws, and Gawain's eyelights narrowed.

But...not in anger.

"I can't lose another twenty years." He repeated in a voice far more defeated than before. Griflet moved to wrap his arms around the knight's wrist in a reassuring little hug. "I've already missed so much, I-. I can't."

"You will not." Branwen promised again, this time in the gentle ticking of the old clock that hung on the wall of his uncle's study. "We will wake you. You are not alone anymore." Gawain said nothing and let his eyelights flicker out of sight. He did not resist, however, when the three spirits guided him to walk around the bean bag chair he'd been sitting in and stand in one corner of the shed, where he could lean against the edge of a windowsill and the frame of a cluttered shelf.

They settled around him - Branwen stretched across his shoulders in a comforting weight, Chopper coiled around his boots like a patrolling guard dog, and Griflet draped across his hands - as the fatigue he had been fighting off for so long began to weigh on him, impossibly heavy and inescapable.

He felt a spike of fear as his awareness began to fade into the dark, but fighting was no option, anymore. Gawain's helmet dipped slightly as he dropped fully under, and Chopper heaved a heavy sigh.

"So dramatic..." She tutted in the tinkling of broken glass. Branwen reached a paw deep into her mouth and dug around for a few seconds before producing an old hourglass in a wooden casing. She set this carefully on a clear spot on the shelf beside them, and then settled back with a satisfied hum.

"Start small." She told the others in the splashing of little feet in a shallow puddle. "One hour. Later more." Chopper rolled her yellow eyes but didn't argue further. Instead, she kept her gaze on the falling sand as the other two drifted off for a quick nap of their own.

"Start small..." She whispered to herself. One hour wasn't nearly enough to make up for months of neglect, but she could understand Gawain's fear....after all, how could one tell an hour from a year when unconscious to the passing of time?

Chopper coiled herself a little tighter around Gawain's boots and watched the falling sand for the rest of the hour.

[lost-kingsmen]

@answrs

((Guinevere’s count for ‘Goons Bitten’ rivals Chopper’s, despite her shorter time on the roster.

It’s always a tough media day for Gawain when he has to utilize both of them, as ‘Microphones Bitten’ is also a factor he has to worry about in the aftermath of a rogue incident.))

[lost-kingsmen]

"No worries. I won't fly off without you~" Gawain joked with a smile in his voice, even as he lifted a foot or two off the ground. As Zoe moved away to begin her checks, the glowing plume of his helmet flickered, and separated into three smaller, serpentine shapes. The Reptilitones circled around him in the air once or twice before one of them stopped and made a sound of mild dread. Were they going to have to stay close to the plane?

Engines were so...so loud!

"Y'all can take a pass, if you like." Gawain reached up to scratch behind one of the creature's floppy spines. "So long as you don't get into too much trouble, of course. We shouldn't be gone too long." Two of the three spirits perked up immediately, and - with an appreciative chirp - flew off and out of sight. One spirit remained, and made a show of yawning before once more merging with Gawain's helmet plume.

She was good, thanks. A little noise never bothered her anyway.

"We have some time to kill, you want to go flying?"

[lost-kingsmen]

((What’s the point of having a little sibling if you don’t bother them with increasing gravity every once in a while?))

[lost-kingsmen]

[cont from X.]

@manofplastic

"I don't think I do, no." The lights inside Gawain's helmet flashed in mimicry of a blink as he turned his head towards the other. "Don't even really get tired unless I've used up a lot of power throughout the day.

"I've sort of passed out once or twice when a rogue gets a good whack in, but I don't think that counts enough as 'sleeping'." He looked over at his other shoulder, where one of his orange tagalongs was lounging on his pauldron. "Do you think it counts?"

The orange creature lifted it's head slightly to look Gawain up and down for a few seconds before it's sharp-toothed maw pulled down into a frown, and it made a sound similar to the rapid clacking of a typewriter before putting its head back down and closing its yellow eyes. Gawain let out a small laugh and looked back to Plastic Man.

"Ah. That would be a 'no', I suppose." He said.

[lost-kingsmen]

A Cold Night in Gotham

Ao3

It hadn't been difficult to find the site of the summoning. If the eerie clouds hanging in the sky hadn't been clue enough, the frost painting fractals across the concrete and floating in the water in the height of summer were a dead giveaway.

The knight touched down on the ice where it thickened at the threshold of the shipping container, and knocked on a piece of door that had been blown outward into a twisted metal shred twice before simply phasing through the wall of blue ice that blocked off the container’s interior. He didn’t spare more than a glance for the frozen chunks of ice entombing the unfortunate men who had been left on guard.

It was probably a mercy, compared to what the local vigilante would have inflicted on them.

As soon as Gawain’s suit cleared the icy barrier, the flame atop his helmet flared and split off into three pieces. Griflet, Chopper and Branwen crawled down his shoulders and arms in their more corporeal forms. Gawain crossed his arms over his chest and leveled the hulking skeletal entity seated across the room with a stern glare.

“Again?” He asked rhetorically. All activity within the container abruptly ceased as fifteen pairs of eyes snapped to the newcomer, wary and frightened in equal measure but for one. The entity did not falter under the knight’s glare, and made no move to rise from where he sat on the ground. When the stranger in gleaming armor was not treated as a threat, the group of near-trafficked children slowly began to relax, and one of them even threw a snowball at another.

Griflet, Branwen, and Chopper all dropped to the icy floor below and scampered across the ice, using their little claws as crampons, and falling over one another in pursuit of the snowball, and the rest of the tension seemed to break. A few of the children laughed, and they resumed playing among the drifts of snow and ice. The skeletal entity leaned their elbows over their knees andmade a sound like a sigh.

"Yes, again." He growled out. A child slid between them, laughing as they were chased by another, seemingly unbothered by the icy coldness of the room. "Look, I feel a summons, I answer a summons. It's not my fault this city has a trafficking problem."

"It is your fault so many children apparently know how to summon you." Gawain argued. Another child ran by, pulling two more on a makeshift sled with Branwen’s help. "This is the third time this month you've been summoned to Gotham, specifically. Gotham. Eventually you're going to get the attention of the locals. Goodness knows how you haven't already."

"Melkein toivon, etten olisi soittanut sinulle..." Red lights rolled around dark, cracked eye sockets in a dismissive gesture. "Are you gonna get me home or just stand there and lecture me?"

“Who says I can’t do both?” Gawain stepped to one side to avoid a child sliding across the floor, laughing as Griflet rolled a sizable snowball after him. “Your husband will make me a double ghost if I don’t get you home, not to mention your father…” He moved toward the center of the container, where the ice seemed to radiate outward from a circle of frozen spikes.

In the center of the circle was a rough summoning graph, drawn in black marker against the steel floor and sealed beneath a clear layer of ice. Four stolen cigarettes stuck upright in chewed gum stood in for the candles, and a red ribbon from somebody’s hair was placed in between them. In the middle, on top of the ribbon, lay a single, battered trading card with bent corners. Gawain knelt down and picked up the trading card, careful not to catch it on the seams of his hand.

“The cigarettes are a creative substitute.” He said quietly. The entity shrugged.

“They used what they had available.” He said back just as quietly. Gawain floated back toward the entity, and held out the card. The entity took it in one heavy, gloved hand, and passed it on to a young girl with a gaunt face and bloodshot eyes. She took it and pressed it to her chest, sniffling, and buried her face against the entity’s shoulder. A red shape moved behind her, and a canine-like blob rested its head on her own.

“I expected more of your polter-pack to be around, Ivan.” Gawain commented, a smile on the edge of his voice. The girl made a watery laughing sound, and the entity - Ivan, just like the name on the trading card - swiveled his skull to glare at the knight.

“They’re keeping the perimeter clear, at least until the local heroes show up…and don’t call them that.” He growled. “We’re not giving them some gimmicky name.”

“I think we are.” Gawain’s eyes turned up in a smile. The makeshift sled passed them by again, this time carrying three children as Branwen dragged it backwards in her teeth, her claws scrabbling at the ice in a frantic pace. “It’s been said out loud now. It’s not going away.” Ivan muttered something in Finnish that was probably impolite and slowly shifted his weight to begin standing up, giving the children leaning on him or near him time to move, themselves.

“I’ll corral the little ones.” He decided. “You make sure the coast is clear, and we’ll follow you out.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Gawain ignored the amused snort he got in response, and whistled a quick tune. His three little spirits came running back to him, and he phased them back through the icy wall without a word further.

[lost-kingsmen]

Orange eyes crinkled at the edges, as if smiling, and the knight made a snorting sound akin to laugher. Him? Going around licking people? He’s need to possess a tongue for that.

“I did the watching, aye.” He admitted. “But Branwen did the licking.” A rounded head and snout slowly peeked out from behind his head, blinking yellow eyes at the vigilante. It opened a toothy maw and made a string of sounds reminiscent of metal scrapings heard down a long hallway, and the knight tilted his head, as if listening.

“She says she’s sorry for that.” He translated. “She thought you looked sad and wanted to cheer you up.”

❛ today isn’t your day, is it? ❜ ((From Lost-Kingsmen?))

"No." Robin replied, still on his back staring up at the night sky after a rough landing from his grapple. He was probably due a new one, the poor things got used so much they eventually reached a point where they just had to be replaced. "No it is not. Wait... are you the thing that was watching me a while back? And licked me?!"

@lost-kingsmen

[lost-kingsmen]

@manofplastic

((Perks of interacting with me: I went to art school and I will make it everybody’s problem.))

[lost-kingsmen]

The Things You See in a Convenience Store

“What is that?”

“Hah?” The cashier straightened up from beneath the counter, holding the customer’s requested lucky color of lighter, and looked around in confusion. “What’s what?”

“That! Right there!” The customer looked at her in wide-eyed horror.

“You can see it, can’t you?” The teenager frowned and looked in the direction the man was pointing. She didn’t see what there was to fuss about. All she could see on that side of the store was the Icee machine, the coffee bar (which Edgar still hadn’t refilled, the lazy bum), an orange snake monster floating near the hot dog rollers, and a few discarded straw wrappers that hadn’t made it to the trash-

Wait.

“…oh! That!” The cashier relaxed and smiled at the shaken man. She leaned over the counter and waved in the direction of the orange creature hanging over the edge of the bun warmer. “Hi Bran!” The creature lifted its serpentine head and looked around for the sound. Its expression appeared to light up - almost literally, by the reflections on the side of the Icee machine - when it realized it was being spoken to, and it raised one short, clawed arm to wave back. Then it returned to pressing its snout against the warmer’s glass front, seemingly enraptured by the slow turning of the hot dogs.

“That’s just Branwen. She likes to watch the hot dogs roll around when her dad is nearby but doesn’t need her. She’s harmless - unless you’re a bratwurst.” The cashier placed the lighter on the counter and tapped at the keys of her register. “Let me guess…you’re from somewhere up east, right? Metropolis? Gotham?”

“Uh…Metropolis.” The customer held out his debit card to the keypad without looking, or even really listening for the beep. “I had some business in El Paso, but the weather back home cancelled my connecting flight, so I’m stuck here until Monday.”

“Well then, welcome to Sigil City! Let me give you some advice from a local…” The cashier tore off the receipt that printed and held it out to the man with a smile. “I know we’ve got a hopping bar scene downtown, but try to be indoors by 3am, and if you can’t, try to stay in the streetlights. If you hear someone calling your name from the alleys, no you didn’t, and walk - don’t run - away quick as you can.” The customer raised an eyebrow at the strange words as he took his receipt, but the ringing of the front door bell interrupted any comment he could have made.

Habitually, he glanced at whomever had just entered the store, and his eyes widened as a faceless figure dressed head to toe in shining golden armor walked by, with a cape as red as Superman’s flowing behind him.

“There you are!” The figure said, his voice just on the edge of inhuman. Branwen looked up from the hot dog roller, and made a musical sort of whistling sound before leaping from the machine to land on the figure’s pauldrons while he was still two aisles away. “I should have guessed you would be here.” He turned to look at the front counter as the orange creature lounged across his shoulders like a particularly long cat, and the customer realized with horror that the helmet was empty. A deep darkness filled the space within, and only two golden lights - flickering every now and then, as if blinking - floated in the void where eyes might have been.

“Thanks for letting her hang out, Sandra.” Gawain reached up one hand to scratch Bran behind her spines as he stepped up to take his place in the queue. “What do we owe you for…the….“ He trailed off into silence as the first customer suddenly turned and bolted out of the store, leaving the door to slowly swing shut as he disappeared into the night.

“…huh.” Gawain leaned forward slightly where he stood, tracking the figure as they retreated, and nodded his head in the direction of the doors. “What’s with him, then?” Sandra shrugged.

“Oh, don't worry about it...” She picked up the receipt the man had dropped on the counter in his haste and crumpled it up. “Just another tourist from up east.”